Taking advantage of the opportunity to volunteer at Joel Nafuma Refugee Center has been an incredibly eye-opening, as well as an intense, fulfilling experience. By re-telling some of the highlights of this experience, I hope to not only reflect on, but also advance my cultural understanding and awareness. Many of these reflections come from my second visit, for I feel that during this visit I was less overwhelmed with initial reactions and could therefore spend more one-on-one time with the refugees and better understand their situation.
My second, and last, day at the Refugee Center, I smiled at three boys fitting puzzle pieces together, and sat down at a game table located in the center of the main room, with its space filled with many languages coming together over movies, ping pong and foosball. Glancing down at the table I saw that the pieces were being forced into the cut out shapes, but the Power Ranger picture that made up this sphere shaped puzzle wasn’t being paid attention to. The oldest boy gave me a few pieces to start working with and I began to fit the pieces together such that the picture began to form. The youngest boy kept on sending pieces relevant to my section of the puzzle in my direction. Soon we were collectively working on different parts of the puzzle. At first, we mostly worked in silence. I wondered where they were from, how old they were and how they all became friends, but wasn’t quite sure how to go about asking personal questions to these boys, especially with the language barrier. About a half an hour later, the atmosphere around the table had lightened up – we laughed when the half formed sphere fell apart, or shared excited glances when we found the piece we were looking for. Unable to contain my curiosity, I asked: “how old are you guys?” They looked at each other, and then back at me. I pointed at myself and said, “Catherine, twenty-one.” Their faces lit up. In the end, we shared our age with each other by using our hands. For example, I showed ten, ten and then one for twenty-one. After learning their ages, we took turns saying our names. At first, I asked them to write their names. They replied by saying “Farsi.” Although I didn’t get the information I was looking for, I had learned something new about them – they were from Iran. Nodding, I indicated that they could write their names in Farsi above where I had written their ages. Each boy pronounced his name for me and helped me sound out and write their name in English. Having learned a lot more about one another, we continued working on our puzzle and finished just before the center closed for the day.
Towards the end of our time at the center, our presence was well known and people began to approach us, rather than vice versa. Soon, Esmaeil (Ishmael), a twenty-five year old from Afghanistan, walked up to me and greeted me with “ciao!” Stupidly, having just been sitting in on a conversation between Kristin and a man from Cote d’Ivoire, I asked him if he spoke French. He replied, much to my excitement, “No, italiano e inglese.” I had taken particular interest in the people fleeing from Afghanistan and I couldn’t believe my luck that someone that spoke English very well, from Afghanistan had approached me! Esmaeil shared with me that after his school was shut down an Afghani woman had invited him into her household and taught him English.
Esmaeil left his hometown of Gazni, Afghanistan for Iran – the first leg of his long journey to Italy. Esmaeil told me that it took him about 2 months to travel from Gazni, located in Eastern Afghanistan, to Iran by foot and car. At the Iranian border, he paid about 1000E to cross without documents. The next part of his journey took him from Iran to Turkey, for the price of 1300E; this took about 3 weeks. Although I did not find out his exact transportation across Iran, given the time period, I suspect that he traveled mostly by car. Esmaeil explained that he was only able to enter Turkey because the smugglers had contacts at the Turkish border that let him enter the country illegally. Once again, 2500E was paid to cross the border from Turkey into Greece. Esmaeil then spent 8 months living in Greece, perhaps finding odd jobs to raise money for the remainder of the trip to Italy, or maybe simply waiting until smugglers were ready to leave Greece for Italy. Next, Esmaeil and others boarded a ship filled with other people, most likely other asylum seekers from Iraq, Bangladesh and Pakistan, to cross the Mediterranean Sea and dock in Italy. Esmaeil described to me how the ship was loaded with people and left at 11pm at night, and then arrived around the same time the next night in Italy. The crossing from Greece, likely the port of Piraeus, to Bari, Italy took a day and cost 1500E. Esmaeil said that after he got off the ship, he found his way to the train station where he caught the first train to Rome.
Esmaeil’s goal is to get documents so that his family can come to Italy. I learned a lot about his character and future goals when asked if he was afraid during his journey; to this question, he replied, “no.” Esmaeil’s response was that he was happy because anything was better than Afghanistan. He stressed that he did not embark on this journey for himself, but rather for his family. It occurred to me that his selflessness had allowed him to move beyond fear, for he wasn’t afraid for himself or his life, but instead was incredibly focused on obtaining a better life for his family.
For the last few minutes of our conversation, Esmaeil and I discussed why he left Afghanistan. He told me of Afghanistan’s decades years of war, going back to fighting the Russians, Iran, and the Taliban (Pashtuns). He made a comment about the USA fighting the Taliban and the Afghani people joining in to fight with anything they had, including rocks. Mostly, he expressed that he didn’t agree with the Taliban, especially because they want to introduce Pashto to the Persian speaking Afghani people. Although Esmaeil felt that US intervention in Afghanistan was better for the Persians, he left because he didn’t want to witness any more fighting. He told me a story about a father being killed, so the police went into his house to investigate. Although I’m unsure about the story, as I understand it, the police went in to talk to the family, but the Taliban had planted a bomb in the house and ended up killing the police and the entire family. Esmaeil explained that fighting the Taliban is very difficult because there is no central authority. He said that because the police don’t know whom to target, it is near impossible to make any headway.
After we were done talking, he came up to me once again and asked that I write one more thing down. He said that he was happy that the US was fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. This was a very personal moment for him and me. Two people, coming together over nations at war, in a foreign country.
No comments:
Post a Comment