What's in a Name?

Like many of you, I've seen the photos of the camps. Acres of dingy grey tents that line up like grave markers in row upon row, all housing the most vulnerable humans on the planet, those who have been traumatised in the worst possible ways by the horrors of war. In those tents reside families like yours and mine who have been left with no choice but to live in a tent with millions of others, destined to live there until a solution can be found for their plight by others because they do not have the ability to do anything but try to survive until that happens.

When people in the developed nations have hard times..and there are poor among us, it is our neighbours to whom we turn to for assistance. In this province we feed each other and care for each other. In a refugee camp your neighbours are as helpless as you. There is nowhere to turn for aid.  In addition there is no purpose or direction, no room for ambition or improvement and all of this creates a feeling of hopelessness that permeates the canvas tents and pierces the hearts of all who inhabit these hectares of despair.

It is all too easy for us in the developed world to turn our heads and turn off the television. We can click the little x in the corner of the story on our Social media with a sad sigh knowing we simply can't help. Some of us can even justify not doing anything by exclaiming we must help our own first.

Our own? Who are our own? Those who are related to us? Those who look like us? Perhaps our own are those who pray the same as us or who think, like us, that the problem is not ours, it's theirs.  We'll help our own we say..and we do. And there is no fault in this. Helping people is a good thing.

But what if you are not the poor who have neighbours to help? That's a different kind of poverty. The kind with no government supports, with no neighbours with the financial means to provide assistance or extra food to offer a meal.

But what of our responsibility? What of our compassion?

Compassion doesn't have borders, it doesn't see skin colour or religious persuasion. Compassion is a soul feeling not a physical action.

It is though, so easy for humans to not see humanity. It is easy to be blind to the plight of those we do not know simply because we do not know them.  They're nameless and faceless and therefore not human like those who live across the street or down the road.

Every single person in those miles and miles of tents is a person with a life, an experience and a story. And one family at least in those miles and miles now has something new. They have hope.

Mohammed and Fatima will have learned by now that a sponsor group in Lewisporte Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada will be welcoming them to their tiny little town.  Canada!  yes, that miracle of a country  where opportunity is a natural resource and success is only impeded by lack of ambition. Such a dream, our country is. We should see it that way more...look at it through the eyes of the world and that opportunity will be arriving in the form of a family who will arrive here from Syria with that Canada in their hearts and minds. And it will be nothing like they dreamed and so much more!

They will likely have explained this brave move to their children, nine year old Rayane and seven year old Moussa.   All will be nervous about this.  They've been through so much and now to move away once again from all they know. They will have made connections in the camp, formed friendships. There will be more loss as they choose to do what they need to for their own family. It will be emotional.  They have no family in the country and they don't speak the language. I have imagined the call and wondered how they reacted. I know our committee cried when we learned we had a family we   could help. We all cried again when we learned their names.

We are strangers to them. We will be their only support and the responsibility is daunting if I think about it. I don't. I just do what I've committed to do..everything that I can to help. Company's coming and we have to get ready!

So far I really like these people.  Mohammed, Fatima, Rayane and Moussa.  Their names are an introduction, they identify them as people not just abstract and anonymous ideas of people.

We now know their names and it makes all the difference.