The whole world over

“How long was your journey?“ I ask. They’ve just spilled out of the coach. A large group of children are gathered on the wide pavement outside St Mary’s Church.

“52 minutes,” quickly responds one lad. He’s obviously had his eye on the clock from start to finish, from the moment the coach pulled out from Blaenavon to the time they now take their first steps into Butetown.

Yes, one time-conscious lad knows exactly how long it took to travel. 52 minutes.

Blaenavon is 28 miles away from Butetown, and was built on iron and coal, growing from the first Ironworks established there in 1788 and which was then taken over by the Blaenavon Coal and Iron Company in 1836. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and many people will be familiar with its Big Pit National Coal Museum.

Time is against us today with the 52 minute journey to Butetown and back, and we don’t get the opportunity to visit the Betty Campbell statue in the City Centre but we do get the chance to see the performance of the play for schools from Mewn Cymeriad, “Betty Campbell: a journey through Butetown.”

It’s a play that’s been performed quite a few times here at St Mary’s Church for different schools which is quite apt. It was here, in Butetown, that she lived and worked. She was the first Black Headteacher in Wales, and the first named woman to have a statue in a public place. It was also here, in St Mary’s, where she worshipped. Her life was quite a journey.

If we’d had time to visit the statue today, the children would have seen a beautifully rich image created by Eve Shepherd which includes so many details, and in which they would have discovered a connection, including a coal cart or two.

“What is Blaenavon famous for?” I ask as they settle into church.

“Heritage,” they say.

“What heritage?”

“Mining. Coal,” they respond.

“Cardiff as we know it today was built on coal,” I say. “The coal was dug from Blaenavon and other valleys communities and sent out to the world. This community wouldn’t exist without your community.”

That’s the connection.

Two different communities with a common past, a linked heritage. Each reliant on the other.

In a novel by Alexander Cordell, called ‘Peerless Jim Driscoll,’ about the Irish boxer of the old neighbouring community of Newtown
there is a strike in the mining industry of the South Wales valleys, and here in the Docks they are beginning to feel its effects as work and money became tight. ‘When they sneeze, we cough,’ said Jim Driscoll.

Yes, we are interconnected. We needed each other then. We need each other now.

This week, we are celebrating many things, particularly Refugee Week. The theme this year is “Our Home.” It’s a beautifully simple theme but one that is so rich and poignant. What does home mean to us? And whose home is it anyway? How do we respond to those who have to leave their home to seek a safe space? Those who arrive at our borders, in our country, our communities, our street, our school? How do we appreciate the long and laboured journey they have made, and which some, sadly, never completed?

We are just 52 minutes apart from Blaenavon, and yet life is so different there, with its own unique changes and challenges, its own benefits and blessings, its own history and heritage. And yet we are connected.

We are connected by coal.

But there is more.

Far more.

After the Betty Cambell Play, and time to play with their new twinned friends at the playground of St Mary’s School, we make our way through Butetown, stopping at the Mosque, and onwards to the place now known more widely as Cardiff Bay.

The children rush to the water tower feature which stands outside the Wales Millennium Centre. Alongside children from St Mary’s School, they exhibit so many other connections.

Together they splash in the water, take delight in the coolness it gives beneath the unusual heat of the sun. They want the same things. Laughter, fun, play, mischievousness, wet hair and damp clothes which will soon dry in the kind weather. They’re just children, just having fun.

In this moment, there is little that separates them.

A little time later, after a quick circuit through the Bay, passing the Merchant Navy War Memorial in the shadow of the Senedd, we wait for their coach at the statue of Mahatma Gandhi.

As the teachers count in each child onto the coach, all 51 of them, I wonder if they will meet or match their 52 minute journey home.

Butetown and Blaenavon. So different. Yet, in so many ways, much the same, give or take 52 minutes and 28 miles.

When they cough, we sneeze.

It’s the same the whole world over.