They're just like us.

The refugee crisis has always bothered me. The thought of families fleeing their homes for their own safety, the journey across the sea deemed safer than the land, upsets me - as it would any other ordinary human being. And I've even blogged about it before >> (http://thoughtsofapsychologystudent.blogspot.com/2015/09/how-dare-they.html ). 

But if I'm honest, it's only been over the past week that I've begun to realise the scale of upheaval and atrocity that these people have experienced, and the sorrow that I feel for them has been made that much more tangible through the genuine realisation that they are just like us.

Bloggers, and activists, and human rights advocates have been screaming it from the rooftops for months. They are just like us. I knew it in theory, but after visiting 2 exhibitions, 1 event and reading a book about refugees over the past week (see list below), I feel compelled to write this post.

Book: Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees by Caroline Moorehead

Exhibition 1: The Calais Jungle - Festival of Love, Southbank Centre, London

Exhibition 2: Freedom from Fear - The Archivist, Haggerston

Event: From Warzone to Sanctuary, Bath Welcomes Refugees, Bath

The media coverage of the refugee crisis has been constant, and often careless and damaging to peoples perceptions of refugees. Though their technical status is indeed 'refugee' until they are able to legally apply for asylum, the word 'refugee' has become tainted by media coverage. It has become synonymous with perceptions of free-loaders, trouble-makers or at worst, terrorists. In the eyes of many, without conscious effort, they have become 2nd class citizens. But sometimes I think that even those of us whose hearts break for these people, those of us who want to help and put a stop to their suffering, on some level, we seem to be incapable of viewing them as our equals. 

See, Dennis Lehane once said:

"Sympathy is easy. You have sympathy for starving children swatting at flies on the late-night commericals. Sympathy is easy because it comes from a position of power. 

Empathy is getting down on your knees and looking someone else in the eye and realising that you could be them, and that all that separates you is luck"

By endeavouring to humanise refugees, the book, the exhibitions and the event over the past week has helped me make the transition from sympathy to empathy. Because empathy in this situation is the realisation that goes something like: "oh my God that could have been me" or, as I said earlier "they are just like us".

Put it this way. The very fact that you are reading this blog post now is most likely because I have you on Facebook. I probably have you on Facebook because we went to the same school, or college, or university. At any one time in our lives, we have both lived in the same area. Therefore, the fact you are reading this blog post is very likely, due to chance (and some sick social media promo obviously...). 

Where we end up living is a postcode lottery. And me and you? We've been dealt a seriously good hand. We live in a stable country (though it's easy to think otherwise at the present moment). We are not under immediate threat. It just so happens, that these people fleeing their countries, squatting in camps in neighbouring countries, washing up on Europe's shores, they literally just got dealt an unlucky hand. The postcode lottery was not kind to them. 

For example, in Human Cargo (the book I'm reading), Caroline describes the decrepit corrugated iron fence that lines Tijuana beach, marking the boarder between violence-ridden Mexico and the USA's San Diego, a comparative land of hope and affluence. It is crazy the difference the line in that sand makes. Caroline writes, "these lines often lie like geological faults between the worlds rich and the worlds poor". 

As Dennis Lehane said, it is luck that separates us. Abbie Trayler-Smith, a photographer who spoke about her work at Warzone to Sanctuary showed photos of countless refugees she had photographed in refugee camps around the world. Behind each face was a story. Alain, a TV presenter in the Democratic Republic of Congo, arrested for criticising the government in a TV programme. A man who is just like us. Can you imagine if I got arrested every time I criticised something the government did?! The only difference between me and Alain is the country we live in. Luck.

Alain, from Abbie's collection "Still Human, Still Here"

Caroline Irby, the photographer behind the Freedom from Fear exhibition photographed refugees now living in London alongside their stories of how they came to live in the city. Eiad Zinah, a graduate dentist from a middle class Muslim family in Damascus who fled his home to avoid military service under the Assad regime. Eiad was a middle class graduate - much like majority of us will be soon. The difference between us and Eiad? Our country doesn't have forced conscription, his does. Luck.

Eiad Zinah in a Syrian supermarket in Shepherd's Bush

One of the photos in Caroline's exhibition was of a gentleman named Charles from Senegal, and something in the interview that accompanied the picture made my heart sink a little: "After that, in 2011, I fled to England because it is a tolerant country where people are open-minded and respect differences". It breaks my heart to think that in light of recent political events, this might not be true anymore. Can you imagine, fleeing your own country, making a dangerous journey to somewhere you thought would be welcoming and safe, only to be met with prejudice and discrimination? 

It's children too, making these dangerous journeys, often without parents. They are forced to leave their home, then their families, escorted across dangerous terrain by smugglers for large sums of money. Can you imagine if you'd been born into their country, and this had been you? Or your little brother or sister? Or your cousin?

I don't know about you, but the hardest thing I experienced growing up was choosing which Pokemon cards to trade, working out if you're year 8 crush liked you back, and eventually hiding strongbow cans from the community support officer in the park. These kids have seen horrors the very luck of our postcode protects us from. They long to study and learn and get a job and do all the things that we take for granted and view as chores. 

So as if the book, and the exhibitions weren't enough, at the end of the Warzone to Sanctuary, we got to hear the testimony of a Syrian refugee who has recently come to live here in Bath with her 3 children. As she sat on the stage, accompanied by an interpreter and an interviewer, and told us about her journey from Syria to Bath, it was like the transition from sympathy to empathy was finally complete. Here was a woman who had been through everything I had been reading about and hearing about. It became real. I was no longer sympathising from my position of power and privilege, I was looking at her, realising that I could have been in her position, and all that separated us was: luck.

Because the reality is, I'm sure she'd love to go to Society Cafe in Bath and have coffee with her friends. Or sit in Mill Meadows in Henley and watch her children play by the river. Because, shock horror, she's just like us. It just happens that the postcode lottery she was dealt with meant that she had to risk her and her childrens' lives, to save her and her childrens' lives.

But now that she's here in Bath, I couldn't feel more relieved and happy that she and her kids are alive and well. It was poor  postcode lottery luck that forced her to flee her home, but good luck that she has arrived safely in the town that I also call home. I feel lucky that I am now sharing a postcode with her too.