The Unterbrunn “garden gnomes” show how integration can work.
Marthins Regbenyen has the journeyman's certificate - also thanks to his boss.
Unterbrunn
- With a lot of personal commitment, Mario Nast (39), head of the "garden gnomes" in Unterbrunn, which was honored this year as an exemplary training company, managed to integrate a refugee into his team.
The Nigerian Marthins Regbenyen (25) “started with us at the beginning of 2016 and has now passed his apprenticeship examination,” says the master gardener and technician with cautious pride.
"Martin", as his colleagues call the now 25-year-old, came to Europe with the first large stream of refugees. As a 14-year-old, the baptized Christian had fled from “Boko Haram”. Because the terror group demanded that he become a Muslim and threatened him with death. Mario Nast knows exactly how life went, because the boss of the “garden gnomes” accompanied his current gardener journeyman through the entire asylum seeker and work permit process.
The young refugee from Nigeria ended up in the Starnberg accommodation via Syria and Italy. With two other refugees, "Martin" applied to the Unterbrunn horticultural company as an apprentice. After the trial, he saw that “he suits us and is motivated,” says the boss. At first he communicated with the Nigerian in English and gradually in German. But the cultural differences, the German language, “learning to document” and the vocational school were a challenge not only for the refugee, but also for himself. First of all, he had to win the Nigerian's trust and personally take care of the trainee.
Nast was supported by “welcome guide” Susann Liebe from the Bavarian Association of Landscaping and Horticulture. At some point he was at a point where he no longer had a nerve for the lengthy process. “But I fought my way through.” When his trainee applied for a passport, master gardener Nast was personally present: his protégé, “who is like a brother to me”, was the only applicant who had all the documents for the passport to have of the embassy in Berlin. But although Regbenyen has the journeyman's examination as a gardener in his pocket and has work for him, the completed training "does not change anything in his status". His journeyman was only tolerated by the authorities. For the residence permit, the refugee needs their own apartment and has to be self-sufficient.The application for the residence permit, who continues to live in the refugee accommodation, is still pending.
A conversation with Marthins Regbenyen was not possible yesterday - the gardener was constantly out and about for the “garden gnomes”.
Meanwhile, yesterday's “Girl's Day” was very busy: “Our shop is full today” with future trainee candidates, says Nast.
His company has 52 employees and ten trainees.
Christine Cless-Wesle
