About seven months ago, I decided to look for voluntary work in Brussels where I had moved to study a Master’s degree recently. In my online search, I came across a very intriguing project; a befriending voluntary activity with Afghan refugees, living in the Béguinage Church near St Catherine. Now, I was sure I had caught a distant glimpse of that church at some point, but I had no idea that there were people actually living inside it.
So I decided to go and meet these people. And now that I’ve been going for a couple of months, I can say that I am really glad I did.
‘Volunteering’ doesn’t even feel like the right word to use here anymore. Why? Because I love spending time with them. It has been such an enriching, learning experience for me, to see these guys so determined to fight for their rights; to see them face every challenge head on, and keep moving forward despite all the hardship, has been beyond inspiring.
I have loved talking to them, learning more about their lives, going to protests with them, and taking a minimal part in their struggles. I have loved teaching English to those who have shown so much passion for studying, despite or perhaps because of everything they have been through.
It still amazes me to see the level of optimism and hope these people still manage to maintain, in spite of their heartbreaking stories of anguish, loss and estrangement. I have come to consider some of them as very close friends of mine, and feel truly sad whenever I see life throwing more challenges in their faces. Like receiving a negative response in their petition for asylum. Or, more recently, like being asked to leave the church, rendering many of them homeless.
Even so, they keep showing determination to keep going. Recently, in fact, they held an event which demonstrates just that.
On Sunday 26th of July 2015, the Afghans held a public event in the Béguinage Church, where they formerly resided – and as side note, I am truly sorry to have missed it, being out of the country and all. The event was to publicly exhibit a group project these guys had been working on with a psychologist for the past couple of weeks, namely to construct a model Afghan villa by using a combination of all their skills – be it wood-work, lighting, painting, polishing and so on, as a way to show off their abilities to the public and, more importantly, to themselves. This project was also a way to keep their minds busy through these difficult times and get them to help one another through them.
Below are fragments of a moving speech, which the Afghan refugees wrote and delivered together at this event last Sunday.
“We live in constant insecurity. We don’t dare to submit a new asylum application or even go out on the street for fear that the police will pick us up, lock us up and repatriate us…. Every minute of the day we are confronted with our desperate and undignified situation. In addition, there is the continuous flood of bad news from our homeland. We cringe with every attack, with every public reprisal …Perhaps someone we know is concerned? Is this the situation we are supposed to go back to? We walk around with photos and movies on our cell phones of dismembered, decapitated and soulless bodies …”
“It’s quite ironic … the only place that gave us relief the last couple of months and years can cost our lives in Afghanistan. People over there don’t know the situation here and they will not understand our despair. In their eyes, our presence in the church is a sign of apostasy, as if we deny everything of our own faith and tradition.”
“We are here in self-preservation and our values, hopes and prayers are kept alive in our discussions and in our hearts. Some of us have slept on the ground for the last 12 years… believe us, if we could have, we would already have returned a long time ago to our country and our loved ones.”
“We don’t ask for pity or charity of Europeans, of the Belgians. We ask for a fair chance to a dignified and safe existence. We are not criminals but people like you who wish for a normal life. We are not freeloaders, but hard workers who want to take their lives into their own hands.”
“Like everyone else, we want to feel useful in this world and contribute to society. Right now it looks like we don’t belong to it. If you don’t have papers, you’re invisible… People walk past us without knowing what we have in us and without seeing the potential in us that we’d like to develop so eagerly. That makes us sad and we don’t know how we can show ourselves to others. We have however many talents, skills and knowledge we would like to use… we want to make a difference, do something important, create something. It is sometimes hard to remind ourselves of this when we look at ourselves through their eyes. The feeling of being useless and unworthy sometimes sneaks into our hearts. But we know that it is a consequence of circumstances and we must continue to believe in ourselves.”
Click here : The-Afghans-of-the-Beguinage-church for the full text.
A final word from me.
In the light of countries in the EU demanding an end to the migration ‘crisis’ (clearly a misuse of the term ‘crisis’ as it refers merely to the sheer possibility of having to pay slightly higher taxes to help people escape death and devastation), I think it is all the more necessary to help bring refugees’ stories to light. We are experiencing a crisis, for sure, but it is not a crisis of human migration. It is a crisis of humanitarianism. Lack of empathy and selflessness is overriding our Europe, and this, in my mind, is the biggest challenge to overcome. And that is why it is all the more pressing to hear it straight from the refugees’ mouths, and then decide whether we’d still have the guts to look them in the eyes and say ‘There is no room for you here’.
So please help me share this text – distribute it online, send it to friends, and so on. Help bring visibility to this cause and help others see why it is necessary, now, more than ever, to stop treating refugees like a burden and start giving them the welcome they deserve.
Image credit: extracted from document: The-Afghans-of-the-Beguinage-church
Miscellaneous Thoughts 