Barbara Dettering
Barbara Dettering was born in 1939 in Guyana. She traveled to England in 1961. Barbara has made Bristol her home and is an extremely active member of her community. She discovered Silai for Skills in 2000 and is the Chair of the Management Committee.
"I came to England in 1961, so it's a long time, I've lived more years here than I've lived there. We came over on the SS Kenya, which is a passenger ship. It was bringing immigrants here from the West Indies. Arriving in England, by the time we got to where my cousin was living, which was in Clifton, here in Bristol, it was about two o’clock in the morning, and all you can see is these chimney stacks along the houses, and the houses all joined together. Now that struck me as very, very weird, because in the West Indies, in Guyana, the houses are detached houses. You very rarely find a terraced house, only in the housing schemes and they were few and far between. So seeing all these terraced houses was alien to me, you know, and in the middle of the night. And all the houses with the smoke coming out. "Is it on fire?" and my cousin said, "No, it's what they use to keep warm", "Warm??!"
I came to Silai about eight years ago, and I came on a summer course of hat making and I stayed ever since, I think the atmosphere in Silai is really really good. It's a pleasure to come, lets put it that way, because of the camaraderie in the workshops with the other students, and the tutors. In this particular group that I'm in at the moment, we're always phoning each other, I left one student yesterday, and two hours later we were on the phone chatting, it's that sort of love, and atmosphere that goes on in here thats very, very nice."
