Nauru - My Experience
I have just returned from Nauru where I have been working with Asylum Seekers for 3 weeks.
Coming home is surreal.
For the past three weeks I have worked in hot conditions, where the land is dry and barren. The buildings are run down and people drive around in cars with dints and no windows. Windscreens that have big cracks in them. It is not uncommon to see three people on the one motorbike, texting as they drive along with no helmets or a baby in a basket.
The coastline is beautiful and the water is warm during the day and refreshing to swim in at night.
The locals are too kind but live in this oppressed country that is extremely run down.
The Frigate bird is a reminder of what goes on just up the hill in a place called Topside, but this bird can fly away at will, provided it isn't captured.
Topside is the place on Nauru where there is currently 400 men being held in an Asylum Seeker camp.
The men here that I have worked with over the past 3 weeks are beautiful souls. For absolutely no reason whatsoever, they made me feel welcome and accepted my friendship. I listened to their stories and shared each day with them feeling frustrated by my own helplessness.
They'd offer me a seat at their table and if i ever were to sit on the ground due to a lack of chairs, someone would always do everything they could to find me a seat, often giving up their own.
I laughed with them and in my own private and personal space, cried for them. To leave them behind felt like i was betraying them.
Asking them to trust me was an invalid statement for me to make. How could they trust me when so many others before me had stripped them bare of such a thing. So many times they had been lied to. The very essence of their current situation being that people had fed them with meaningless lies.
The frustration of not being able to do anything for them except care for them and support them was an ongoing battle in my heart.
I was constantly astounded by their gentle spirits. By their willingness to open themselves up to me. I was always curious about why they had allowed me to befriend them. I was much more understanding of those few men that rejected my friendship with absolutely every reason to reject me.
Coming home and in fact even during my work, people commented at me that these men deserved to be in the camp for trying to come to Australia through illegal channels and I realise that these men are responsible for their own decisions and their own journeys but my own humanitarian heart still aches for their freedom. Not only freedom from the camp itself but freedom from persecution, freedom of speech, freedom of a life of peace and equality. Freedom even just to exist and have equality. Such a profound thing coming from any individual, in any community.
What stood out for me during my time in Nauru was their normality. They are human beings just like you or me. They have families, they have qualifications, they have jobs, interests, dislikes, skills. They hurt, they rejoice, they joke, they laugh and they cry. Just like me and you.
No-one wants to be in their situation and for all of those men, no-one wants to have endured the life they have experienced.
In fact, i felt like i also had betrayed them in leaving. I had made friendships with them, taken an interest in who they were as people but yet again, just like everything else they had experienced, i had stripped them of that friendship, another alleviating part of life taken away from them.
In leaving, I told them i would not forget them. I said that they were a part of my heart and a part of my life from that day forward and that i would remember them in my spirit, that i would think of them daily and i do.
To some, that meant a lot, to others, one in particular, would not even hear of it.
But regardless of whether or not they believed me, their stories and smiles and who they are will remain with me for a very long time.
I hope to join them again someday and my heart will continue to be heavy until i can continue working alongside them to make life somewhat less painful and just a little bit more tolerable.
Coming home is surreal.
For the past three weeks I have worked in hot conditions, where the land is dry and barren. The buildings are run down and people drive around in cars with dints and no windows. Windscreens that have big cracks in them. It is not uncommon to see three people on the one motorbike, texting as they drive along with no helmets or a baby in a basket.
The coastline is beautiful and the water is warm during the day and refreshing to swim in at night.
The locals are too kind but live in this oppressed country that is extremely run down.
The Frigate bird is a reminder of what goes on just up the hill in a place called Topside, but this bird can fly away at will, provided it isn't captured.
Topside is the place on Nauru where there is currently 400 men being held in an Asylum Seeker camp.
The men here that I have worked with over the past 3 weeks are beautiful souls. For absolutely no reason whatsoever, they made me feel welcome and accepted my friendship. I listened to their stories and shared each day with them feeling frustrated by my own helplessness.
They'd offer me a seat at their table and if i ever were to sit on the ground due to a lack of chairs, someone would always do everything they could to find me a seat, often giving up their own.
I laughed with them and in my own private and personal space, cried for them. To leave them behind felt like i was betraying them.
Asking them to trust me was an invalid statement for me to make. How could they trust me when so many others before me had stripped them bare of such a thing. So many times they had been lied to. The very essence of their current situation being that people had fed them with meaningless lies.
The frustration of not being able to do anything for them except care for them and support them was an ongoing battle in my heart.
I was constantly astounded by their gentle spirits. By their willingness to open themselves up to me. I was always curious about why they had allowed me to befriend them. I was much more understanding of those few men that rejected my friendship with absolutely every reason to reject me.
Coming home and in fact even during my work, people commented at me that these men deserved to be in the camp for trying to come to Australia through illegal channels and I realise that these men are responsible for their own decisions and their own journeys but my own humanitarian heart still aches for their freedom. Not only freedom from the camp itself but freedom from persecution, freedom of speech, freedom of a life of peace and equality. Freedom even just to exist and have equality. Such a profound thing coming from any individual, in any community.
What stood out for me during my time in Nauru was their normality. They are human beings just like you or me. They have families, they have qualifications, they have jobs, interests, dislikes, skills. They hurt, they rejoice, they joke, they laugh and they cry. Just like me and you.
No-one wants to be in their situation and for all of those men, no-one wants to have endured the life they have experienced.
In fact, i felt like i also had betrayed them in leaving. I had made friendships with them, taken an interest in who they were as people but yet again, just like everything else they had experienced, i had stripped them of that friendship, another alleviating part of life taken away from them.
In leaving, I told them i would not forget them. I said that they were a part of my heart and a part of my life from that day forward and that i would remember them in my spirit, that i would think of them daily and i do.
To some, that meant a lot, to others, one in particular, would not even hear of it.
But regardless of whether or not they believed me, their stories and smiles and who they are will remain with me for a very long time.
I hope to join them again someday and my heart will continue to be heavy until i can continue working alongside them to make life somewhat less painful and just a little bit more tolerable.
All the darkness of the world cannot extinguish the glimmer of a lonely small candle.
posted by Unknown at
Friday, November 02, 2012
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