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I Can’t Breathe. The System is Choking Me.

“In my thinking, I would also skip the perseverance that I had shown until this moment, having applied for the Schengen visa the second week of June. It was a day before my flight, the eighteenth of August, 2015, but I still did not have it! The correspondence with the college did not help much, except for boosting my constantly fading faith.

My meditation, right before concluding with a deep breath and a long, sorrowful sigh, would then give way to a landscape of uncertainties, unknown possibilities, finally all interrupted by a conversation with my father.”

Refuge-e: The Journey Much Desired, 242

Interview with Lisa Wickham, award-winning Producer-Director and President/CEO of Imagine Media International.

The dog; me.

It is 3p.m on August 18th, 2017. I just hugged a girl who holds a special place in my heart and passed through security check in Frankfurt international airport. Her presence in this massive, crowded yet empty airport fought back my perpetual loneliness. It took me through the apprehension that follows my identity every time I travel internationally. That yearning of belonging, of being.

I have completely forgotten the stress and near-depression that clung onto me a week earlier, after waiting to hear from the Canadian embassy for more than three months. The University of British Columbia (UBC) required me to attend Jumpstart – the orientation program for first year students – within seven days; my German study visa was expiring within five days. Having declined Georgetown University’s generous Arrupe scholarship and, consequentially, a possible future in the United States, not being able to obtain a Canadian study visa to pursue studies as an International Leader of Tomorrow, I had imagined what it would be like to go back to Swaziland. Feeling like a dog whose owner just admonished for being a dog. Wagging and coiling its tail all at once. The dog; me. The owner; my refugee identity.

If you can feel a tiny-bit of what I feel on a daily basis, I have done my homework.

I have been in touch with a friend across the Atlantic. Just a little more than a year ago, in June 2016, I met her at Yale University during the Yale Young Global Scholars program. Her family lives in North-Vancouver. They will generously host me for two days before I can access my room in Totem Park Residence at UBC. They will pick me up from YVR, Vancouver international airport. That will mark the start of a new journey in Canada. A new array of possibilities and stressors.

A Reunion

It is 6pm on August 17th, 2018 – a year later –  I just got back to Vancouver from Calgary. I organized this trip to see a childhood friend. Who knew we could reunite in Canada, after surviving destitution and deprivation in Dzaleka refugee camp? Nearly seven years since our last encounter, after I left Malawi without even saying goodbye. I wonder how many Butterfly Effects led to this reunion! Flying is unsustainable, but I booked buses for both ways to bask in the gorgeous landscape along Trans-Canada highway, crossing the inland southern parts of British Columbia into half-way Alberta. The Fraser River Valley, the topography of Kamloops, the Rockies, Banff National Park: O’Canada!

When we embraced each other at the Greyhound Bus Station in Calgary, I was like, “Dude, you haven’t changed a bit.” His father drove us home, chatty about his recent legal dispute of a traffic ticket. Apparently bending traffic laws is only unique to Africa – or the Third World, one might say. It is only reserved for whites in North America.

We prayed. His mother – just like my mother would – served us beef stew, and all the seven years condensed into a night. An evening even. Just an inexplicable shadow projected backwards called ‘Time.’

We talked about a lot of things. Unbelievably, two completely different routes brought us across the Atlantic. I am still a refugee; he is a Canadian Permanent Resident, soon to be a citizen.

Change, Privilege?

In August 2017 when I came to Canada, I had finished writing the manuscript of my book, Refuge-e: The Journey Much Desired. I had already contacted an editor and a self-publishing company. I had faith in its publication, despite the uncertainty about my education, my future, my life. My publisher’s editorial review warned me that my book ends on a “bleak”. I ask a simple question, “Do I just go to sleep with a troubled mind and a restless spirit?” (Pg. 257). Apparently, such an ending embodies my anxieties and a book should generally end on a positive note to satisfy the reader. My 19-year-old reaction? I can’t betray my feelings of helplessness and hopelessness to please the reader; YOU. If you can feel a tiny-bit of what I feel on a daily basis, I have done my homework.

Map by Tristan Bobin

Almost three years in Canada, a lot has happened. I got to interact with professors and students from various fields and walks of life. I got to speak and do musical performances on stages across North America, Africa, and Europe. I even made a conscious choice of temporarily halting media engagement and quitting social media. It all seemed too much. How more privileged can a refugee be?

So much curiosity surrounds my identity. A lot has changed in three years, and more so in eleven years, but one thing remains : I am a refugee.

I might be a refugee, but I’m a human first. I can’t breathe, because the system is choking me.

The Dance

Almost three years after bidding a temporary bye to my love and to my life in Germany, life has circled back to uncertainties: I am dancing to the same study permit rhythm with the Canadian immigration system. My summer job will soon be terminated because such a dance keeps you busy, with rarely an exit in sight. It takes away opportunities. We call the dance ‘bureaucracy.’ Or systemically targeted limitations that at times amount to structural injustices. I got a job offer that would require me to move to Berlin in September, but this seems unlikely. I will likely still be dancing to the rhythm.

In the past few days, I sleep with “a deep breath and a long, sorrowful sigh.” I awake with “a landscape of uncertainties, unknown possibilities.” Just like 5 years ago when I was restless, waiting for the Schengen Visa. Just like three years ago in my perpetual waiting for the Canadian temporary residence (study) visa. Just like now. Time is slower for the 79.5 Million forcibly displaced peoples.

Photo by Life Matters from Pexels

But my father is not here to interrupt my thoughts. George Floyd is. Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, and many black men and women whose killings have led to the current revolution. To topple systemic racism, to end racial injustices against people of color and indigenous populations around the world. Depending on how far back you go, the list of these black folks gets longer. The likes of Patrice Lumumba and Malcolm X might appear. The Agĩkũyũ warriors wrongly termed “Mau Mau” and significantly massacred by the British might come to light. The soldiers from all over the African continent massacred by the French in Thiaroye, Senegal, after fighting alongside whites in the Second World War might appear. The Zulus crushed to make way for Dutch settlers and British imperialists, and who eventually crafted Apartheid might appear. All the way down the history lane, to ‘black women raped, tortured and killed by their ‘slave masters’. To the very first black men and women taken against their will, packed into boats and forced to cross the Atlantic Ocean to become properties following genocides against indigenous peoples of the lands.

My thoughts, my story, get drowned in the ocean of grief, sorrow, anger, frustration and, simply said, exhaustion of oppression. And my thoughts, my story, get amplified by the larger mass. After all, it is these systematic exclusions and executions that render me, and twenty-six million other individuals ‘a refugee.’

I might be a refugee, but I’m a human first. I can’t breathe, because the system is choking me.

Today, June 20th, just like every day of the year, let us take a #step_with_refugees. En masse, in solidarity. With Black Lives Matter. Idle No More. The LGBTQ+ community. And many more individuals and minority groups fighting to be heard, fighting to live fully and truly. Fighting to breathe.

Njamba J.M. Koffi, in celebration/commemoration of Refugees World Wide. #World_Refugee_Day_2020, #step_with_refugees.

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The World Refugee Day – June 20th, What Statistics Won’t Tell You and Hope for the Future

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Song performance on World Refugee Day in Mpaka Refugee Camp, 2015

Time to celebrate refugees and asylum seekers? June 20th was set by the United Nations to “commemorate the strength, courage and perseverance of millions of refugees.” The day was proposed in 2000 and enacted for the first time in 2001, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

This year marks the 18th celebration. The number of refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons (IDPs) has reached its record high since 1951. Perhaps it could be because we celebrate them a lot? Just a thought.

I’m not an economist to give figures and statistics. In fact, my basic critique is that these statistics tend to eclipse the lives they represent and the core complexities of issues leading to such lives. The record number is 68.5 Million according to the newest UN reports. Okay. So what? The Guardian equates this number to “3 million higher than the total population of the UK,” and breaks it down into refugees, IDPs and asylum seekers. This, I believe, is to help readers put “the crisis” into perspective. However, if you are anything like me, the numbers will put you off, you’ll close the article and move on to check your recent Facebook notification.

Instead of these depressing statistics, I’d rather have a cool success story about a refugee family which immerses the reader into some little-discussed challenges. Perhaps, an article about a specific community in a specified country about how specifically the community makes lives of refugees less painful and more worth of living. This might inspire other communities elsewhere to learn how best to support refugees among them.

At the least, why not report exactly why these people are fleeing? I don’t mean the usual, to borrow AlJazeera’ words, “refugees are fleeing violence, war and persecution” and “We have an obligation to help them”. If you consciously click on a link to read about refugee issues, you probably know that already.

We are famous because of the statistics. We are forgotten because fewer reports dig deeper than the statistics.

As the public we deserve better.

Reports about refugees ought to be much more in depth; and not in isolation from the main political and economic factors causing multitudes to flee.

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Abro from South Sudan, Kakuma Refugee Camp, 2018

For instance, you might want to know who exactly is funding the two factions fighting in South Sudan, or providing weapons being used to kill civilians and force millions south the border to Uganda. To the best of my knowledge, South Sudan has no gun manufacturing industry, and what’s often termed “tribal conflicts” has much more powerful forces behind it.

This youngest country in the world has become more of a graveyard than a country. Its children are being haunted by extreme poverty in refugee camps despite the rich oil reserves which mightier nations are eyeing – if not exploiting already. In my view, statistics will serve only to rouse the ever-decreasing empathy from media consumers. On contrary, thorough case studies detailing the country’s past, foreign involvement and how it relates to domestic instabilities and the economics behind it all might lead to an understanding of these vulnerable people, and possibly incite some action from the general public.

Or let’s take the golden case of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Why are DRC’s minerals and other natural resources like timber being pillaged by foreign, mainly western, multi-national corporations? It’s an open secret that these MNCs fund conflicts. By causing chaos, they can plunder as much as they want without so much to fear! This (not so) outdated article by The Guardian points fingers at British corporations, but I find the research paper by Billy Batware slightly more substantive. It accounts the roles of neighboring countries like Uganda and Rwanda as well as local companies in these refugee-manufacturing-schemes. MNCs are expected to uphold international ethical standards, but the chaos they cause is so well orchestrated that they have no concern whatsoever about the million Congolese who are brutally massacred, raped, or forced to flee.

If only news articles featuring Congolese refugees were detailed enough to accommodate Congo’s conflict minerals, you might be able draw a relationship between the iPhone you’re using, the child laborer who mined Coltan and his/her cousin who ended up in a place like Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi. That way IDPs and refugees would be much closer to your heart since you contributed to their situation in the tiniest way possible!

But who am I to be suggesting these implausible alternative reports on a World Refugee Day?

I’m just a two-decade old guy who will soon have spent one decade of his life living as a refugee, one of “the undesirable elite, the famous yet forgotten beings” as clearly articulated in my book “Refuge-e: The Journey Much Desired”. We are famous because of the statistics. We are forgotten because fewer reports dig deeper than the statistics.

My experience has made me acutely aware of the world’s irony.

I wish we would focus more on the root causes of global issues than always try to revolve around consequential realities.

But that’s not what politicians want! They want us to understand this year’s theme, “Now More Than Ever, We Need To Stand #WithRefugees.”

The under-representation or misrepresentation of refugee issues in the media neither celebrates refugees nor exposes what ought to be exposed.

The World Refugee Day has more to it however. It is about raising awareness; calling the wide world to stand #withrefugees .

Only if the world was to embrace this philosophy, we wouldn’t have refugees, or at least refugees who are not cared for.

On 2015’s World Refugee Day I was in Swaziland. In a show solidarity, three friends from St. Marks high school where I was temporarily studying accompanied me to the camp to celebrate the day. The four of us delivered a poem centered on “Ubuntu.”  Ubuntu is an African philosophy derived from a Ngoni proverb “Ubuntu ngumtu ngabanye abantu” (“A person is a person through other people”). Only if the world was to embrace this philosophy, we wouldn’t have refugees, or at the least, we would sincerely celebrate refugees as people worthy integrating into our communities, people deserving of assistance.

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Swazi Women Performing a traditional dance, Mpaka Refugee Camp, 2015

There were many remarkable performances, and my personal favorite was dances . Young refugees, mainly Burundians and Rwandese, performed traditional dances. A group of Swazi women from the Ministry of Home Affairs also delightfully danced to the awed majority refugee audience. It was a pleasant multi-cultural, multi-generational experience. For a short period, refugees were taken from the day to day miseries to a world of entertainment-fused-acceptance. That was possibly a platform where statistics did not matter, and the refuge became one with the refugee.

If the world’s greed and politics can’t exist without causing multitudes to flee, surely refugees can coexist with host communities. And every day could be a World Refugee Day. This is my hope for the future.

#withrefugees