Saturday, December 15, 2007

Little Lithuania

Recently it was revealed that my part of East London (Beckton) has the largest Lithuanian community outside of their home country. This afternoon I went to a community forum event, a Christmas fare of stalls and entertainments. Naturally a troupe of Lithuanian dancers performed and the large crowd there got into the swing of the music and clapped along. This is a recently arrived community. Unlike the previous Jewish Lithuanian communities now in Tower Hamlets, the Beckton community was almost entirely male until the accession of the Baltic States to the European Union. Now these young men have been joined by their partners and children who are attending local schools. I wonder if these families will integrate fully into the community? Certainly the local libraries are well used by these newcomers, and the stock of Lithuanian language books are regularly borrowed.

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