rashundatramble.com

Ricardo Lumengo is the first black member of the Swiss National Council, which I believe is the equivalent to the US House of Representatives (feel free to tell me if this isn’t the case). He was selected this year during the federal election.

I took the liberty of doing an off-the-cuff translation of his website bio. The parentheses are where I added something for clarification or I didn’t know what the word meant. German speakers, sagen Sie mir wenn ich habe etwas falsche geschrieben.:-) (Oder…wenn ich etwas falsche geschrieben habe…I can’t ever get the word order right).

“I came to Switzerland in 1982 as a 20-year-old asylum seeker because I was persecuted as a political activist (in Angola). After a few years in Switzerland, I got my residency permit, studied law in Fribourg and today work as a legal adviser at the intercultural (Begegnungszentrum…don’t know that word) “Multimondo” in Biel. At the same time, I work as a legal counselor at the Sekretariat des Gewerkschaftsbundes (something about a business chamber or something, I guess like the Chamber of Commerce, but I’m not sure) in Biel.

I became involved in politics very early. Already in Angola, where I was born, I was a member of a party at 17. In Switzerland I joined the SP in 1996. In 2004 I was voted into the city council of Biel and since 2006 I’ve been a member of the county commission (Bern), where I’m also a member of the Justice Commission.

An important gain (thing?) in the multicultural (must look up “Begegnung”….hmmm…LEO says “meeting, encounter, congress”) is the fact that I speak eight languages: French, German, Portuguese, English, Spanish as well as three African languages: Kikongo, Kikongo ya Leta and Lingala.”

Me again: With all of my criticisms about Switzerland and its acceptance of diversity, there is hope.

I swiped this photo from Lumengo’s site.