The road too often travelled

You have twenty minutes or less. Pack a small bag, but hurry! You (and your family) must run, in order to live. Go! Now!

Whether it is wildfire or war, a natural disaster or one created and fuelled by people, this is the reality for millions of people every year. The lucky ones escape, but with little (or nothing) more than their lives.

June 20 is World Refugee Day. Given the thousands of people evacuated from the north already this year, more Manitobans than ever will understand what it feels like to be a refugee.

People become refugees by circumstance, rarely (if ever) by choice. They want to stay in their homes, in their communities, with their families and friends. But something happens, often suddenly, and they have to flee from wherever they live to somewhere less dangerous.

Notice that I did not say “safe.” Too many refugees flee from one disaster to another, until finally they literally have nowhere else to go, and are trapped there.

Our own refugees are considered “internally displaced,” unlike those who are forced to flee from their country. Once you cross that international border, you are totally dependent on the charity of others, however — and in a foreign land.

Notice that I said charity, not generosity. Our own climate refugees (which is what they are) were cared for by the government, the Red Cross, by the communities that welcomed them and the volunteers who showed up with donations and offered to help. But that is rarely the situation elsewhere; here, we are wealthier, have fewer refugees, and many of our 21,000 refugees will soon be able to go home. Literally, we can afford to give more, but those in Manitoba trying to survive on (eventually) $34 a day might challenge whether this amounts to “generosity.”

It seems impossible, however, to scale up even this level of support to meet the current need in other places. Uganda hosts 1.8 million refugees; though Kenya hosts less than a million, camps like the Dadaab complex have become commercial hubs, not just temporary homes, with some families living there for three or four generations. In total numbers, Turkey leads the global list, with 3.6 million refugees.

Or consider Sudan, where 16 million people are internally displaced, and 4.1 million more have fled abroad. There is civil war in Sudan, making the government half the problem, and none of the solution. There are few resources, and those bringing aid in from outside have become targets. Neighbouring countries (like South Sudan) are so desperately poor themselves they have little to offer the refugees who arrive. Worse, crucial food and medical aid are vulnerable to politics elsewhere, like the cuts to USAID driven by MAGA ideology. Can there be a worse situation than famine in the midst of genocide? Where the UN is powerless and the African Union is hopeless?

The theme for this year’s World Refugee Day is “community as a superpower.” But when your own community is scattered to the four winds, when you flee with little and have nowhere to go, you must depend on the charity of strangers to survive.

From this grim and increasingly common scenario, I want to go back to that moment people find out they have to flee, transformed in a few minutes from citizens into refugees.

Only someone who has gone through the same experience themselves can really understand how it feels. If you can take anything with you at all, what will it be?

That moment offers terrifying clarity about what, in your life and the lives of your family, matters most. It might be documents, to cross borders; necessary medications; whatever money or valuables you can carry. Perhaps a change of clothes. Pets are left behind.

In other words, all those important things in your life, that you couldn’t possibly even consider giving up for any reason, are suddenly abandoned, as you flee for your life.

Unless you started the fire (or the war), it is not your fault that you are a refugee. You want no more for yourself and your family than what you had before — what other people in this new place still enjoy.

The future you thought you knew has vanished, perhaps forever. Starting now with nothing, in a strange place where you wonder if these strangers will help or care, is overwhelming.

In the news, or on the streets, you witness angry voices talking about “closing the borders,” about sending “those” people “back where they came from,” about regarding refugees as a threat. Shamefully, these may even be your own words from your life before.

The real superpower of community is compassion, love that emerges from understanding our shared humanity.

If you need a further reason to be generous with your compassion and support, consider that — somewhere, some day — you and your own family might yourselves suddenly need to depend on the generosity of a community of strangers.

Peter Denton writes from his home in rural Manitoba.