Add an 'e' to refuge...

Part of the work done over here involves various poverty-education focused 'life experience' programs, which attempt to increase people's knowledge about, and compassion and empathy for, the billion in this world who live in slums, those suffering from HIV/Aids and refugees. I had the privilege of taking part in one of these programs focusing on refugees last friday night, and it moved me in a big way so I thought I'd share...

Each stage, each scene of our flight from our village to a UNHCR refugee camp was recreated for us as realistically as possible under the circumstances, with team members acting as soldiers, officials, teachers and aid representatives. A lot of research and interviews go into planning these programs, and one guy acting as a soldier in the camp was actually a refugee himself, from the Congo. I asked the Lord before the evening commenced to open me up to the experience and change me as much as possible, and boy did he answer that one. The night commenced with us all being given an identity, the person we were to become for the evening. So for a little while I was Farooqa, a 12 year old Afghani girl, malnourished, my face almost hidden under a headscarf, with strict instructions not to speak to any male not in my immediate family circle, as this was definitely not done. I was from a village that was shortly, we were to discover, to be attacked by the taliban. Sitting in a village meeting, we were told to prepare to flee our village, but before any discussion could begin the lights went out and soldiers attacked, in full army gear and brandishing their guns - they were absolutely terrifying. As I tried to imagine what this would feel like for a 12 year old girl, ordered at gunpoint to lie face down on the ground, I was reduced to a sobbing mess. We were ordered to flee across a 'mine field', where we were told a land mine could explode under us at any moment.

What followed was lining up at checkpoints, huddling in frightened groups, attempting and failing to find my family, trying to fill out incoherent forms to apply for entry into the camp as a refugee, constructing a shelter, and lining up for meagre amounts of food and water, only to have them later stolen by soldiers who had to rely on theft and intimidation to keep from starving themselves, as their pay consisted of US$10 a month. To get out of the camp, we were told we had to go to a school within the camp and learn Russian, and although my school lesson only lasted 20 minutes, I tried to imagine how difficult learning a new language must be when you're starving, sick, vulnerable, and absolutely full of fear. That night a man offered to smuggle me out of the camp to work in a garments factory - desperate to get out of the camp, to earn some money and see if my family were still alive, I imagined Farooqa would have accepted the offer. Very soon I discovered I had been sold into a brothel. Incidentally, after the 2004/5 tsunami, orphaned children being led into prostitution was very common.

The simulation ended there.

Obviously, and needless to say, we can only attempt to begin to get our heads around the trauma and grief of those millions in the world who go through the real pain and ongoing difficulties, for years and years, of life as a refugee. But the experience was invaluable in opening me up to a few things. We were treated like cattle to be stored somewhere, fed and watered, never with the dignity and respect human beings deserved. The soldiers who were there supposedly to protect us in reality were there to survive themselves, and consequently were violent and exploitative. As a child, and perhaps particularly as a female child, I was intensely vulnerable, and intensely powerless.

Those running the activity shared with us the scarily common problem many women in refugee camps have - that of blindness, not through medical problems with their eyes, but through the amount of grief and stress they have to go through without being able to process any of it. We were also told how in many refugee camps, rations are given to families according to how many members they have. So of course, if a member of your family died, you would be anxious to conceal this fact form the authorities to ensure the food kept coming. Apparently it is common in some camps to see piles of bodies in the centre of the camp, stripped of any identification.

What a good reminder, for me, never, ever to think of refugees as a troublesome group, a global faceless 'problem' that governments need to solve. What a good reminder that each refugee is an individual with a personal history and personal needs. One of the UNHCR posters I've seen quotes, 'It is not your fault if a man becomes a refugee. It is if he continues to be one.'

Wow.