On the run

As you could read in my introductory post, a considerate part of my EVS involves volunteering with refugees. There are 2 parts to this: once a month we go to the refugee centre in Kutina (run by the state with support of Red Cross and IOM) and twice a week we go to a children’s home where unaccompanied minors (refugees under the age of 18 who are on the run on their own) are staying as well. As a supplementary activity I also visited the NGO Are You Syrious in Zagreb, who is doing wonderful work, there and online.

For me this part of EVS was actually the main reason to come to Osijek. For several years I had been feeling increasingly disappointed, powerless and at times angry after reading news about war, climate change and (often Western-backed) corrupt governments disrupting countries and societies, killing thousands of human beings and chasing many more away. I finally wanted to do something more than sharing articles on Facebook, donating to NGO’s and trying to vote for ‘the good parties’. I wanted to get involved directly, do something useful myself and to get to know some of the people I saw mainly on the pictures in newspapers. So when I saw the call for the Social Atelier some pieces of the puzzle in my head fell right into place.

Organising activities for children was something completely new for me, as was directly working with refugees. But experience isn’t everything (unlike what most employers seem to think). All you have to do is wake up your inner child and think about your own skills and interests. In this way, everyone can contribute something, with the right amount of flexibility, receptiveness and empathy. In the end we are all human and you are not doing activities with aliens. 

 On the other hand it is good to be prepared for the unexpected when working with refugees and not to take things personally. It is enough to read some of the personal stories you find on the internet to realise that these people have been through a lot, however diverse their background or journey might (have) be(en). So yes, some of them will seem uninterested or absent-minded sometimes. And yes, the children will say or do things you do not expect from a child, like making drawings of people crying or asking why Croatian police broke their phones (their only means of communication with family back home or already in Europe). But they are still children who deserve a chance to be just that. 

Before coming here, I tried to prepare myself for anything: for great sorrow, my own failure and frustration, even partly confirmation of the more negative ideas about refugees (I wanted to say racist crap, but let’s stay diplomatic). However, talking with people and listening to their real and personal life story turned out to be a crash course in debunking these popular myths about refugees. The main theme here is that -on a personal, human level- it’s not so complicated as it is often portrayed. People firstly want the same anywhere: a stable, safe life with basic human dignity and a secure future for their children. Maybe some people in Western Europe have so much trouble believing this because for us this is not an issue but a given fact? So whether they are running from war, natural disasters, an authoritarian government or a collapsed economy doesn’t matter much. In most cases it is a combination of these things (take Afghanistan for example). It is unbelievable I still have to repeat this, but trust me: people do not leave their whole life and family behind and embark on a dangerous journey if they still have other options. You wouldn’t, right?