Refugees

There are many things of injustice and inhumanity which make me angry in this world. One of them is when people talk about refugees and ask: 'why don't they just go home', as if they had a choice in leaving their homeland, and all that they love and know. Read a report by the NZ immigration department recently. At the beginning is a poem that says it all. This is just an excerpt.

IF I COULD
Yilma Tafere Tasew (“Agonising Wounds”)
For African Refugees
June 1995, Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya

Please don’t ask me
‘Why don’t you go back?’
Do you think I like staying for 12 beans
Or two weeks rationing?
Wishing to stay without soap
Suffering with malaria, typhoid
Here in the bush
Where nature is playing its ugliest games
Where?
Wind, dust-blowing trumpet
Do you think I like staying?
Seeking for second-hand clothes
While I can help myself
While I can build my homeland
Do you think my shoulder has carried
Rather than a fountain, a head, a human brain
Which can’t think far
Do you think I like staying?
Without my wife, husband, children
My father, mother, sister, brother, family
Without feeling homesick?
Please! Don’t ask me!
‘Why don’t you go back?’

I know what to do

Have decided to use this to broadcast my notes from the field. It will not be as exciting nor gripping as being an embedded journalist during the invasion of Iraq but it is my unique offering to nomadlife;) Only Tee, Devrim, and sometimes Jude read this anyway, so at the very least I can entertain them.

Next trip is India in October. I do have a holiday in July in Europe (Paris, London, Geneva, maybe Dubrovnik), but everybody goes there.