Take Your Dreams And Go Back To Where You Came From

I live in la-la land a lot of the time. I will hide behind the excuse that I’m an Aquarian and we reserve the right to be dreamers. ;-)

We went through some tough financial times as a family and of course at times it was very depressing. But my parents, my dad in particular, is infectiously optimistic and a dreamer. They always encouraged us to dream and dream big – assuring us that we shouldn’t worry about how to make the dreams come true. It’ll work itself out, they promised.

In The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho writes “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

It’s a simple but beautiful line. I love you Mr Coelho and The Alchemist is one of my favourite books, but I think my parents beat you to the punch. They’ve been telling me this since as far back as I can remember. They are wiser than I believed at the time. It did work out for us and my sister and I have realised many of our dreams and are en route to fulfilling some more.

I’m still a dreamer but at 26, I’m slightly jaded too and I know fulfilling those dreams would’ve been near impossible in a less fortunate environment and I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve had.

In yesterday’s post I talked about the children in the Kenyan refugee camp and their dreams. The power of believing in your dreams is incredible. Sometimes, it’s all you have. These kids have lost everything, live their lives in limbo in a refugee camp that is only marginally safer than their war-torn homeland – but they still have big dreams. It’s sad because you wonder if the universe is conspiring on their behalf too?

It’s a Catch-22. Without their dreams for their future, life would probably seem very bleak to them. But, how many of these dreams are biting the dust?

When you tell a refugee family to “go back to where you came from”, you are not only denying them their right to life, but killing the dreams and hopes of young children who have little else to live for. 


*This post is part of the NaBloPoMo challenge for July 2011.

Go Back To Where You Came From: A Reaction

A few weeks ago SBS aired its controversial documentary/reality TV show ‘Go Back To Where You Came From’ where six Australians had a firsthand experience of refugee life – from staying in detention centres in Australia, to halfway houses in Malaysia, Jordan and Kenya; to going back to where it all starts in Iraq and Congo – interacting with real refugees and learning their stories.

**SPOILER ALERT** - If you haven’t seen the show, I will be discussing some bits below, just you know.

The show has been hotly debated since and everything else apart, I think it was just useful in showing people some realities of life without first-world privileges and why people flee and seek refuge. The fact that it created a national debate is important in itself.

Denying asylum to genuine refugees is a violation of basic human rights - denying them the right to "life, liberty and security of person", at the very least. It’s as simple as a dying man asking you for a drop of water that will save his life and you turning your face away. Australia is a big BIG country and we have a lot of room for refugees and just a blanket “Stop the Boats” policy is not humane.

Yes, it is important to ensure we don’t encourage non-genuine refugees to take advantage of this. Integration and societal assimilation are very important too. But those are secondary issues. It’s easy to sit on your couch and pass judgment on the “queue jumpers” telling them to wait in line, like everyone else. It’s easy to say you would wait in line if you were in the situation. But if your life was in danger and you couldn’t see a way out, would you wait or would get on a boat to find some hope?

The show stirred many emotions in everyone – making some angry, some cry and making some others even more jaded than before. For me, there is a bit in Episode 3 that touched me more than anything else – where a man waits in a Kenyan refugee camp for his fate to be decided, having fled war crimes in Congo. He says something to the effect “…all we ask for is tomorrow”.

You and I, we take tomorrow for granted. We assume tomorrow will come.

“What should I wear tomorrow?”; “How am I going to get through tomorrow on $10?”; “I need to call mum tomorrow”….We may stress about how to deal with tomorrow, and the tomorrows after but we never question if we will see tomorrow.

But for these people, there hope lies in just seeing tomorrow and they are literally living one day at a time.

His children talk about their dreams; dreams of becoming doctors, engineers, teachers…and it really puts things in perspective. If I dreamed about becoming a doctor, I’d only have to work hard enough for it. But for these kids, working hard doesn’t guarantee them the opportunity to realise these dreams. Yet, they dream. And they pray for tomorrow.

*This post is part of the NaBloPoMo challenge for July 2011.