‘I am always scared that the police will nab and take me
back to my home country or a refugee camp because I don’t have any legal papers’
‘When I fled my home country, I had to walk many days
without food or water to get to a place of safety’
‘They rape us and our girls and there is nothing I can do
about it because we are at their mercy’
‘I don’t understand why foreigners have to be allowed in our
country. They are now taking our jobs. Why can’t they just go back to where they
came from?’
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| Somali Refugees Image from: http://education-for-solidarity.blogspot.com |
These are some of the sentiments that I have come across
from a number of refugees, all affected in one way of the other by prolonged
conflict either in Somalia or another Africa country. It is always easier to quantify
and qualify some of the effects of war like instabilities, increased vulnerabilities
by minority groups, and economic stagnation. But very often, effects that war
has on the family unit, social interactions within communities, and integration
of refugees or asylum seekers in their newly found and sometimes temporary
homes are ignored.
I have never been a refugee. What I write here is solely based
on my interactions with Somali refugees in various parts of the world, and my
knowledge from what Kenya faces, with an ever increasing number of refugees in
the country.
The refugee status in any country has its own limitations
regarding how integrated one can be. For instance, it stipulates that one can
only work (if allowed) for so many hours and often the wage is perhaps not good
enough for one to be able to feed a family. I am aware that a lot of refugees
prefer to run away from the refugee camps and take on jobs that may sometimes
be very demeaning so that they can be able to take care of their own. And in
doing these jobs, the refugees often do not have legitimate legal working
papers, are abused by employers in the name conditions of employment, do not
have the same rights of recourse like citizens when they are abused by
employers, and often have to live with the fear of the police arresting them.
Many refugees today were once upon a time successful people
in their countries of origin. I know of people that were teachers, lawyers,
public servants, doctors, nurses, accountants, police or defence officers that
have now taken up jobs as parking attendants, waitresses/ waitrons, domestic
workers and other jobs that they would not have otherwise done if their
countries were safe and peaceful (not to say that the jobs mentioned above are
not important). A few weeks ago, I watched a programme where a man, originally
from the DRC had been a parking attendant in South Africa despite being fully
qualified as a Maths and Science teacher (and he was very passionate). He began
offering after school tuition to learners on the parking lot where he worked
and was eventually hired by a school in Johannesburg. Because refugees often do
not have legal status in the adopted countries, have often run away from home
without any proof of their qualifications, it becomes very difficult to secure
jobs.
Then there are the constant nightmares that many refugees
have to deal with at night as a result of their experiences during times of
conflict. It is very easy to heal the physical, and even when one gets their
life together in a foreign country, there will always be those ghosts that they
have to confront. When one witnessed their entire family being killed, it is
very hard to get over that trauma. When a woman has been raped multiple times
or been kept as a sex slave for prolonged periods of time, something about
their sense of humanness is lost, and it is hard for them to comprehend life.
Refugee aid agencies do a lot of work, and are too inundated to offer the
psychological support most refugees need, and therefore a proper healing
process is never initiated.
Other silent consequences of war include xenophobia like we
have witnessed in South Africa. A lot of Somalis continue to face this problem
within the communities they live and this increases their vulnerabilities. I
have heard of cases where a school would not allow children of a refugee to
attend school because the school could not ascertain what grades the children
were to be placed. Refugees also suffer from problems involving integrating
themselves in the societies that adopt them, and often face social rejection.
This problem partly explains why they will tend to associate with those that
are like them rather than integrate.
Our societies are not properly informed of what the word,
‘refugee’ actually means.
Our societies do not understand the circumstances that force
people into the life of being refugees.
Our societies do not understand that refugees, more than
anything, need our love and understanding as they struggle to integrate in our
societies.
Part of our responsibilities as humans, first and foremost,
is to identify and care for those amongst us that a most vulnerable. This is a
responsibility that goes beyond caring for only our own. It is a responsibility
that should be extended to those amongst us that really need our friendships; those
that have faced far much worse circumstances due to conflict and war.
Next time you see a refugee or a foreigner in your society,
smile at and befriend them. Sometimes, that is all they need to keep going!
