To be a refugee

So recently, I haven been thinking about what it would be like to be a refugee. When I came across this picture I thought it summed it all up. These were a few of about 15,000 refugees who had fled to a chicken-breeding farm in Batnoga, Croatia. There were 20 large houses in which they could live, each one housing around 700 people. They were not free to live as they pleased in this new country they had stumbled upon during their exodus, and they certainly could not go back to what was left of their homes, so they lived as livestock. Once a week they would be able to receive mail from loved ones, all of which was first checked for sensitive material and marked as "read". Devoid of home, many family members, and dignity their last bit of humanity was stripped away from them as they lost their privacy too. This is what it is like to be a refugee. To live somewhere and be labeled as an outsider, you are safe, so to speak, but are you really living? Their are many who would argue that it would have been better for them to have died than to go to a refugee camp.

Refugees. They are feared in masses around the globe, these issues are not singular to Croatia. Salgado took these photos but he soon realized that he was just beginning a ver long documentation of the spectrum of human cruelty and bias that exists in a world as large as ours. 

Maybe this is not how all refugees are treated, but for the many around the world it is just like this, accepted,yet exiled; brought up, yet humiliated. 

God grew tired of us

So I watched the most incredible movie the other day, it's called "God grew tired of us" I've included the trailer so watch it!. First I will have to give you a little background on the story for you to understand. In Sudan there was a mass genocide of black christians by northern muslims in the late 1980s (specifically of men and boys so as to eradicate their existence). However, there was a large group of young boys who fled into the forest and embarked on a 5 year exodus to Kenya so as to survive, these young boys became known as "the lost boys". This movie shows these lost boys 15 years later still living in the same refugee camp, never having left. It follows the story of a handful of them who were adopted into the US so as to better their life. I was shocked. These men had never even flipped a light switch before in their life. They had to learn everything that we as a culture take for granted at the age of 20+. They struggled at first trying to adapt to "normal" life. It really just made me think. How many times do you see a little kid who can barely even talk pick up your iPhone, open it, and look for the game applications? These men couldn't even comprehend the idea of potato chips in a bag. They had been stuck in their situation for years because they simply couldn't go anywhere else. The Kenyan government only had them in the refugee camp without access to anything, they couldn't go home to Sudan for risk of being killed immediately, they had no choice but to stay. The first thing that really came to my mind was, "what is really happening in this world right now?" This was the early 2000s when they filmed the documentary. It's recent. I always thought of these things of happening in the past, but no, it's happening today. The refugee camp in Kenya is still there, nothing has changed and there are over 150,000 people living there that have not been so fortunate as the handful in the documentary to leave. Watching this documentary it made me think, there are real issues out there, the issues of the world extend beyond history class and our silently hidden in our everyday reality. It's time we go looking for them.

And if that was me?

The family in the picture had just seen death, and had been forced to leave their homes in Zepa, Bosnia, or die (Srebrenica). Left to walk the 10 km away to a nearby city, this family finally lays down after the emotional and physical horror of the day. When I saw this photo I saw myself laying down on the ground next to my family, I felt the confusion as I considered what was to become of my life. Though I attempted to see or feel what they did, refugees are placed in situations I can not imagine, let alone attempt to rationalize. Refugees in the world are people like you and me, people who deserve respect and and a feeling of acceptance as they leave their gruesome realities for that of a foreign one. I am trying myself to understand how best I can help refugees now, but for now, I know that changing my view is as good start as any.

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. 1995. Photograph. New York: Aperture Foundation, Inc., 2000. 127. Print

"July 27th - 13th anniversary of the fall of Zepa". Srebrenica Genocide Blog. 24 July 2008. Web. Jan. 4 2015

Displaced

Hey everyone!

I will be using this blog to discuss the realities of the displacement of refugees (who they are, why they are refugees, etc...). For the most part I will post a picture taken by famous photographer Sebastiaõ Salgado and talk a little about it. Sebastiaõ Salgado has traveled around the world and has placed himself in the thick of many situations to capture the essence of raw humanity or as some call it "the natural man". I hope that through the furthering of our knowledge on both his work and refugees we can see that we can make a difference in our own community and maybe even the worldwide community. I'm excited to start this journey with all of you. Below I have posted a link to a documentary of Salgado, it's called "The Salt of the Earth" and I highly recommend all to see it. It shed a lot of light on how one man can make such a difference in the world by solely publicizing what happens in it, and who knows, maybe one of you will find the desire to do the same.