EVERYBODY'S CHALLENGE - Jesuit Refugee Service | USA

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Ban Vinai William Yeomans SJ Ban Vinai is 11 years old. I have been here for 16 months. I am a newcomer. I have not grown up from infancy to boyhood or girlhood, to manhood or womanhood in Ban Vinai, like those who arrived here at the age of nine, 10, 11, 12. They are bred of Ban Vinai. I am a foreigner. I live outside the camp. Therefore, I speak not from knowledge but from ignorance. I do not know what it means to be a grown man used to a hard life of work in a tiny mountain village and who now, after years of enforced idleness, has lost the habit and taste for work. A man whose moral fibre has been sapped because he has nothing to do, whose children have never seen him work! I do not know what it means to be an old woman of 60 or more who spends her day in her hut weeping for a homeland and a life from which she has been brutally torn. I am not a former responsible village leader who now finds his position and prestige disintegrating among his own people, and so turns to degrading subservience to those who can provide privileges and status symbols. I am not a Hmong forced to live in a situation that can neither support nor nourish my culture, where there is no stimulus for creativity because life is secure, sheltered, unvaried, dull. All this, and so much more I do not know, here in the heart, the only home of true knowledge. I do not speak the language of the refugees on any level: linguistic, psychological, social, spiritual. I have never walked in their shoes. What then is the life of the refugees in Ban Vinai? Is material security, guaranteed food, housing, medical care, education (up to a point), a life? Is being deprived of the dignity of work a life? Is procreating children for an unknown or illusory future a life? Is education without purpose a life? Can life be found in an opium pipe? What is life for those who have been born of the soil and who now are without land, like the native Americans without their great plains? And what are the needs of the refugees in Ban Vinai? Materially theirs is not a life of material hardship. It cannot be compared with 144
the starving destitute of Africa or of the barrios of central and south America. But we have our poor for whom life is hard and rations just about sufficient. But for all refugees it is a life of deprivation: the deprivation of physical liberty that in all but the strongest erodes psychological and spiritual liberty; deprivation of a reasonably predictable future and consequently deprivation of those realistic hopes that can inspire the human heart to engage itself gladly in the tasks to be done, be they ever so laborious and tiring. The refugees of Ban Vinai are deprived by an alien power of that soil out of which their culture and character grew. As a result, what roots they have are withering and in a few years will surely die. The real needs of the people of Ban Vinai may be discerned in the syndromes characteristic of long confinement. They can eventually come to accept camp life not merely as normal but even as desirable. Their horizons are limited to the perimeter of the camp, not by their own choice, but because of an induced apathy to what happens in the inaccessible and therefore irrelevant world outside. By dint of having everything provided they can lose healthy independence and self-reliance and become unashamed to beg (the infamous gimme syndrome). They can become a prey to fear of leaving the security of the camp for an unknown third country; a fear heightened by discouraging letters and cassettes from jobless and disillusioned relatives struggling to live in the supposed Eldorado. Their contact with educated and affluent foreigners, like myself, whose backyard is the world, can sow bitter seeds of resentment and make them feel ignorant and ashamed of their own culture. These feelings are nourished by what they see on television and videos and in the movies. The young especially are all too prone to accept the world portrayed there as normative. And what of the 20,000 aged 15 and under, either born in the camp or brought there at an early age, whose memories of Laos would be an entry into a strange land and a totally unfamiliar way of life. What too, of the young women, accustomed to a comparatively easy life in the camp, who have never known the hard toil of the Hmong woman in Laos where the burden of farm work was carried largely by the women? As I said, I am a newcomer, an outsider. Hence my view is superficial and inadequate. Only a Pere Bertrais who knew the Hmong so 145
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EVERYBODY’S CHALLENGE Essential D
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Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) is an
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Mark Raper SJ/JRS Liberia 2000 JRS
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in this service. As one JRS group r
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Mario Almeida SJ/JRS Albania 1999 T
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20 years of JRS Letter sent by Fr G
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I wish all the courage and strength
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new 3 , the 33rd General Congregati
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esponsibility. The 34th General Con
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5. JRS gives priority to accompanim
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c. A written understanding or a par
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lies with the Provincial or Confere
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JRS communications to the Province,
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Michael Campbell-Johnston SJ in El
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The Society of Jesus and the refuge
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It is not intended that the JRS bec
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August 6 was the Feast of the Trans
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Now it is time to consider the kind
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egions outside Thailand; for the bi
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Pedro Arrupe SJ (seated, left) at C
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What Don Pedro had in mind when he
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land. Fr Mark Raper of the Asian Bu
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the local church had to be involved
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Review of the Jesuit Refugee Servic
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vegetables and firewood. At night t
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cution, as understood in the releva
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In the local context, the role of t
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through learning packets containing
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Mark Raper SJ/JRS Rwanda 1998 The m
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The history of JRS begins with the
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ment to Vietnamese refugees had dec
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After the end of Russian hegemony i
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2. A changed world for refugees Whi
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Kuangchi Program Service/JRS Thaila
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A more personal approach Dieter B.
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A vision for JRS At the end of thei
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structures that guarantee their wea
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advocates actions for justice and f
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The mandate given for Jesuits enter
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JRS must be flexible: closing down
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Jenny Cafiso/JRS Tanzania 1996 Radi
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William Yeomans SJ Waiting in joyfu
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Pastoral accompaniment among refuge
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former role, whatever it was, of ho
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decisions concerning their lives. W
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and frequent communication among me
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nity among them to serve all their
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Page 100 and 101: Mark Raper SJ/JRS India 1996 JRS So
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Page 114 and 115: Virgin’s feet in the chapel at Mo
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Page 118 and 119: Put simply, JRS is a network of pro
Page 120 and 121: Mark Raper SJ/JRS Nepal 1999 Around
Page 122 and 123: Peter Balleis SJ/JRS Angola 1996 Th
Page 124 and 125: Displacement now Mark Raper SJ Extr
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Page 130 and 131: New scenarios for old: populations
Page 132 and 133: nal, national and personal security
Page 134 and 135: Christian reflections and responses
Page 136 and 137: Elena Marioni/JRS Albania 1999 When
Page 138 and 139: The causes of forced displacement:
Page 140 and 141: Many valid reasons for flight fail
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Page 144 and 145: Jenny Cafiso/JRS Zambia 1999 Attend
Page 148 and 149: Jan Cooney/JRS Thailand 1987 Gettin
Page 150 and 151: Each of us spoke of our own work, s
Page 152 and 153: Quentin Dingham/JRS India 1996 A Sr
Page 154 and 155: The personal story of refugees is o
Page 156 and 157: Stephen Power SJ/JRS Nathaniel at a
Page 158: Mark Raper SJ/JRS Timor 1999 A joyf
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