What, So What, Now What? Redefining Refugees

Jack Foersterling

WRIT 1733

Professor Leake

What, So What, Now What?

Redefining Refugees

            Overall, from the time I registered for this course and the time that I am now writing this paper, I could not have a more completely different view not only on refugees, but truly the entire course in general. When I first signed up for the class, to be honest, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. It was an honors writing class, it fit my schedule, and there was some volunteering involved. It wasn’t really until now as I am writing this blog post that I really appreciate all that I have learned not only in class, but out volunteering at the African Community Center as well. Besides my Pioneer Leadership Program course, through which I volunteered at the Somali Community Center, I had never really experienced this kind of class setting before, doing both schoolwork and volunteering in conjunction. However, this class took what my PLP class did one step further, it directly incorporated what we were learning in class to what we were doing volunteer wise. PLP simply required you to volunteer at a variety of different sites, and in class we really only wrote maybe a paper on our experience. Now in this class, the two are almost one entity in itself. What I learn in class I bring to volunteering and what I learn at volunteering I bring back to class, it is a constant cycle of learning and actually directly using what we learn, which I think is more important than learning the information in the first place. While we can all “learn” an infinite number of facts and information, I really don’t believe that they become truly important until we use them outside of a school or classroom setting. It is when we realize their real world potential in use that we gain 100% of the importance of learning them.

            In this class, while we did learn a lot about “refugees” such as their definition, where they come from, why they left, and what they are doing in America, I believe that the biggest theme we learned about in class was humanity. When coming into this class I had no real major background on who or what a refugee was, like I said in my first blog post. “A ‘refugee’ in my definition is someone who changes location, from their physical home or homeland, by either force or on his or her own accord. Whether it is from a country, town, government, etc. The person moves from one specific “place” (as this can be not a physical move, but maybe a mental one) to another.” (Foersterling) Basically, I gave the general public’s view on refugees and also tried to throw in something a little deeper and more meaningful. Now however, at the end of the class, I try and look at refugees without this shameful and pitied view. While yes, almost all of us have had better off lives than them, but the line from Chef Duffy has really brought things home to me, “People are people, it’s pretty simple.” (Duffy) While yes, some of them drank their own pee, “there were a handful of boys who drank their own urine, a few more who ate mud to keep their throats wet,” (Eggers, 21) and some of them were robbed, “I sit and now he shows me the handle of a gun… I never know the things I am supposed to know. I do know, now, that I am being robbed…” (Eggers, 4) and some of them even ate bugs to survive, “…these Sudanese youth ate insects and grass, risked being eaten by jungle carnivores, and drank their own urine to survive” (Fadlalla, 102) but at the end of the day, we are all human beings, and should be treated as such to that extent.

            My largest argument throughout this entire course, and for which I have found both evidence for and against this idea, has been that refugees themselves should be described and treated as individuals, and not a group or one being. In too many articles that we read, even the one at the very beginning by the UNHCR, refugees weren’t really even described as people, more just like objects, items. “Owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country…” (UNHCR, 3) While incredibly in depth in its description, we as readers cannot put a face to this suffering; it is simply a title, a definition. However, when reading the personal accounts of refugees such as Deng and Mawi, and seeing the long journey that the Lost Boys went through in God Grew Tired of Us, I saw that there are very impactful stories out there told by individual refugees, we just need to find them. We need to break outside the mold of just seeing refugees as coming from Africa and moving to America, this is where I think that our final project, “Working with Refugees” really takes the upper hand. It encompasses all that we have been building upon in the course and truly provides an accurate and encouraging view of refugees and their lives. They can come from many diverse places, the Congo, Burma, Bhutan, Iraq, and they can each have a story more diverse than the places they came from. In this class we have opened up our own eyes to the real story and meaning of a refugee, and now it is our turn to share this idea with everyone around us.

Works Cited

Asgedom, M. (2002). Of beetles & angels: a boy's remarkable journey from a      refugee camp to Harvard. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co..

Eggers, D. (2006). What is the what: the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng            : a novel. San Francisco: McSweeney's.

UNHCR. (2012, September). Protecting Refugees and the Role of UNHCR. UNHCR, September 2012. Retrieved March 19, 2013, from https://blackboard.du.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id _2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%

Fadlalla, A. (2009). Contested Borders of (In)humanity: Sudanese Refugees and     the Mediation of Suffering and Subaltern Visibilities. Urban Anthropology,           38(1), 80-113. Retrieved March 23, 2012, from https://blackboard.du.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=  _2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype            %3DCourse%26id%3D_208109_1%26url%3D