Throughout this summer, the word "refugee" has slowly lost its shock value for me. After hundreds of conversations about everything from music to tattoos to relationships, people are people--nothing more--with the good, the bad, and the unique parts of their personalities and experiences all rolled up into individual human beings.
Yet because of this, it can be so easy to forget what survivors these men and women truly are, and how drastically their lives have changed.
I cannot count how many times I have heard the phrase "before, my life meant nothing." The man from Baghdad, who had suffered through so much war and pain and loss, that every time he received a death threat there was a sense of release--as if perhaps today would be the day that all of this would finally end. The woman from Burma, who lost all but two of her seventeen children to starvation, war, and ethnic cleansing, and who somehow managed to raise and protect those final two with a smile on her face and light in her eyes. The man from Afghanistan, who now supports a wife, two children, brother, and mother in his home country, after his father was killed and his brother saw an explosion that decapitated and mutilated so many civilians that he lost his faculty of speech and reasoning. The couple from Ethiopia that trekked for months to find safety, watching their friends fall away as they walked, only to discover that in each new destination there was less promise than in the last.
With death and loss so constantly at one's doorstep, I cannot even imagine how one would begin to view life. Survival is instinctive, but without hope it can appear impossible. Yet what is so inspirational is that these men, women, and children have not only survived, travelled halfway across the world, and begun a completely new life, but they are looking towards the future. Towards children and families they thought they would never have. Toward education and employment, festivals and the Fourth of July. They are living their lives, giving to others, and making their new home a bit more beautiful, interesting, and full of life.
-- Elizabeth
