You don’t get used to it even when you have lived through a similar experience. The sight is the same, the experience fresh even when far removed in time and place. It still tugs hard on the heart and hurts, brings a heavy lump in the throat and wetness to the eyes. I suppose even those who have never gone through similar experience will feel the same when they see refugees fleeing their countries for the safety of foreign lands. It is always the same. Lines of ordinary people, their meagre valuables in their hands or on the head, make their way across harsh terrain to an unknown destination and uncertain future. At nightfall they camp under the open sky or, if fortunate, in an abandoned warehouse or some such other structure. Families hurdle together on a piece of the ground in an instinctive search for warmth and safety in kinship and to stake out familial territory. Wherever they camp, the women immediately look for water, collect twigs to light a fire, and set about cooking whatever little food they have carried. The maternal instincts for providing nourishment and protection come to the fore in the harsh and unfamiliar circumstances. Then the sight of children, tagging along or holding tightly to their parents, or running ahead of the rest. Some appear bewildered and lost, others terrified, and a few see their march as some sort of adventure. Everywhere, signs of dislocation. Next, onwards to a sprawling camp of tents, sheeting or other materials that may take days to reach. Here they will make a home for an unknown stay. By now the food they may have carried has run out and so they have to depend on relief aid. The inevitable relief operations set up in the camps. Queues for food and other supplies will form. The food is necessary to keep body and soul together but the queue for it is also a kind of humiliation. Having to line up for food hurts the dignity of people used to feeding themselves. The workers who manage the relief operations whose role is to alleviate the suffering of the refugees, and often do, can also sometimes compound their situation. They can be many things. Some are real humanitarian angels; others vicious predators. Some see an opportunity for expiation; others adventure. Some are kind; others callous. There are even those who see in their efforts proof of superiority. It’s all there. It always plays out this way. Refugees are often fleeing from conflicts in which they have played no part or whose cause or origin they know little about. All they know is that their families are in danger and the first thing is to save them. The authors of their plight are in various capitals Their usual quarrels over power or resources, usually resolved in periodic elections or other arrangements, have broken out into outright war. Ordinary people are the major victims. All this came to mind as I watched TV news reports of refugees fleeing the fighting in the Tigray region of Ethiopia between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and forces of the Ethiopian federal government. The images and emotions of sixty years ago came flooding back fresh and raw. The questions in the years that followed also returned. Why does this have to happen? And to ordinary people? Is human suffering on such a scale invisible to those who cause it or to their friends and allies? Or perhaps the pursuit of power and authority numbs their human feelings and sense of morality. There are no satisfactory answers, only that it has been and will continue to be like this. In the meantime, the fighting in Ethiopia will go on until there is a victor or exhaustion forces a stalemate. It is not even guaranteed that victory will definitively resolve the conflict. It will postpone it only for it to break out another day. Or as usually happens, the world’s diplomats will make efforts to mediate, usually delayed or half-hearted. In the present instance even that is not happening. In any case, by the time that happens many lives have been lost, a lot of infrastructure destroyed and the country’s development set back many decades. I wonder, if at the end of it all, the belligerents ask themselves whether it was really worth it, whether the cost was not too high, and if another way could not have been found. For there is always another way. All the while, refugees will continue to flow across the border. They will try to eke out a living in their camps in the desert or scrubland (it is always such a place) and somehow survive. Their humanity will withstand dislocation, suffering and deprivation, and they will still harbour the hope that someday it will all end and life return to normal. The views expressed in this article are of the writer.
