Today is World Refugee Day.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are now more than 42 million people worldwide who have been uprooted from their homes due to wars, conflicts and disasters. Some of them are refugees, languishing in camps that were meant as temporary shelter but have now seen new generations of children grow to adulthood within their confines. Some of them are Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), stuck in their own countries--by fear or force or lack of resources to get out--with no place to live or work or take care of their families. Some have been relocated to other continents and told to begin their lives over again. Many of them have seen their family members abused or starved or killed or tortured. All of them spend days into weeks into years battling hopelessness and wondering where to go next.
Yesterday my Karen boys showed me photos and video footage of their homeland in the Karen State (an area of Burma...a sad and complicated history of land-ownership which I won't share here, but if you contact me I'd be happy to explain what I understand about it). Families with children working in fields were shot at without warning. Two beautiful little girls displayed their gunshot scars. A sixteen-year-old civilian had his leg blown off by one of the landmines the Burmese soldiers have scattered throughout the jungles where the Karen and Karreni minorities have fled for "safety" from the attacks on their villages. Chemical bombs were dropped on a resistant faction's outpost. Two thousand people--farmers, basket-weavers, fishermen, children, pregnant women--congregated in a small valley wondering why the soldiers had burned down their houses and stolen their food, and wondering when they would eat again. People were collapsing from untreated injuries and malaria and malnutrition and exhaustion from endless walking with no place to go.
My boys showed this to me, and then we played a cardgame. We goofed off and laughed and practiced English as usual. Two of their friends came over and my boys proudly helped them with their English pronunciation. It was relaxed and normal and fun. It was weird.
At the end of the night, people from the pictures I had seen walked into the living room. My Karen family's new neighbors--a family who arrived from Thailand only eight days ago--came over. It was the dad and his four beautiful children aged maybe two to ten, all still sporting their short lice-resistant haircuts and expressions of excitement and exhaustion and joy. The kids smiled and played with the colorful cards I had brought and looked at my books, and while we were laughing together part of me could still see these children running in terror from soldiers and gunfire towards landmines and starvation, or facing endless days in the squalid boredom and violence of a refugee camp, or being frantically shoved on a raft across a river to safety while their parents held off the soldiers on the near bank.
There are bright spots. There are hundreds of people giving their lives in service to feed and clothe and provide medical attention to uprooted peoples. There are teachers who sneak through dangerous jungles to train new teachers in remote hide-outs so that children can be educated. There are people in North America and Europe and Australia who are opening their doors and hearts to welcome displaced people from all over the world, to help them adjust to their unfamiliar new home and language and life. And there are thousands of refugees who are struggling to maintain their dignity and hope, to smile and learn and love and survive through it all. But sometimes these bright spots seem rather feeble to me in the desperation of these circumstances.
God is a God of hope. His heart is breaking for the hungry and and homeless, whether they're in Burma or Sudan or Afghanistan or downtown Portland. And sometimes--often--I have to remind myself that ultimately He is their savior, not I. But I hope that maybe He can use me somehow to help. There is always so much need, everywhere. It can be overwhelming.
So, as an ending to this quite long and not-so-perky post: May we each be listening to where He is calling us--whether it's a refugee camp or an urban center or a rural airstrip or the suburbs--and spread His peace and hope in the hopelessness of this broken world.
Please pray for the world's refugees today.
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Here's some more information, if you're interested:
UNHCR - the global refugee situation
Burma Issues - the current Burmese situation
Drum Publications - Karen culture
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1 comment:
It was great attending the "Real People, Real Needs" event with you last night, at the IRCO headquarters. (For those who have never heard of IRCO -- Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization -- it's a non-governmental, non-profit entity that helps immigrants and refugees in various ways. One of those activities is working with refugees who arrive in Portland, helping them get settled and acclimated to their new life.)
It was heartbreaking to hear the stories of violence and displacement that these refugee families have had to deal with. But it was also encouraging to hear that they find respect and compassion in the United States. Despite all the greed, waste and self-serving politics we see in the United States, it's still much, much better here than in much of the crazy planet we live on. It's gratifying to me to know that my lovely daughter is part of the "respect and compassion" that welcomes these wonderful people to our country! :-)
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