I just can't stop sharing Oddny Gumaer's words from "Displaced Reflections" (p. 98):
FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
"There are times, I have to admit, that I think of the refugees in terms of us and them. Sometimes doing that helps me cope with the stories I hear about them. It becomes a way to distance myself from the realities of lives lived in poverty, fear and pain. If I can think about them as a mass of people far removed from me, I can convince myself that maybe their pain is not as real as mine. When I distance myself from them and start thinking of them as a large group of people rather than individuals I find excuses for my own lack of involvement.
"But then I see a picture of a little boy having school in the [Burmese] jungle and he somehow makes me see him as a child no different than mine. The cells that make up his body are much the same as the cells in my own children's bodies. The heart that pumps his blood is made in the same amazing way as the hearts of my own daughters. His brain has been wired with millions of little brain wires, making him more amazing than the most wonderful computer. He feels happiness, fear, sadness, cold, hunger and pain exactly the same way we do.
"It bugs me. Because then the people come so close. Then I feel like I can't just ignore what they feel. Then I can't just ignore the pain. I start to almost feel it myself.
"I think it should bug me. Not to fill me with guilt and hopelessness, but to wake up my heart. I need to feel my heart and sense the pain so the people we are helping are not simply numbers on pages and faces with no names. I need to think of them as people who are as excited about the first day of school as my little girl.
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