NOVEMBER 2017

The power of storytelling
BY STEPHEN JONES
Most think of Greece as a
utopia in southeastern Europe.
On the southern end
of the Balkan Peninsula, it is the
convergence point of Europe, Asia
and Africa. Tens of millions of tourists
visit Greece each year to bask in
its beauty or trace the fingerprints of
its rich history. Christina Salem, a
senior at Oakland University studying
journalism, was well aware of the
splendor of Greece. However, when
she visited the country for herself,
she met some of its citizens and heard
some of its untold stories.
Salem was one of 12 students
that went on a trip to Greece to
cover its economic and refugee crisis.
She spent a month learning about
Greece’s difficulties and connecting
with refugees of religious violence.
She quickly realized that the camps
in which those refugees were housed
was very different from the wonderland
that she’d heard about coming
into the trip.
“The living situations are terrible,”
Salem said. “It’s filthy, it’s uncomfortable,
they live in tin boxes
basically the size of a parking space.
It’s not like anything you would ever
think of when you think of Greece.
When you think of Greece, you
think of paradise, but this was not
paradise.”
When Salem spoke to refugees,
she heard the story of a more peaceful
time that was driven off the rails
by divisive religious tactics from terror
organizations such as the Islamic
State group.
“The information that I gathered
was that Muslims and Christians
lived together like brothers and sisters
before ISIS took over and created
the division between them,”
Salem explained. “They had a large
force manipulating the population,
and pinning one against the other,
and that’s how the division was created.”
Salem’s specific focus was the
phenomenon of Christians hiding
their faith within the refugee camps.
As a member of the Chaldean community,
this topic hit Salem very
close to home.
“I spent a month there gathering
information on the Christian minority
population within these refugee
camps,” Salem said. “After venturing
in and out of refugee camps for the
first two weeks of July, it struck me
that most of these people withheld
their identity as an effort to protect
themselves from an impending persecution
from their fellow neighbors
within these camps.”
Salem describes the trip as a humbling
and eye-opening experience.
Although the trip was emotionally
taxing because of the living conditions
she witnessed in the camp,
Salem was encouraged by the leadership
in the camps and the dialogue
that took place.
“They had people in charge of
them who were giving them an opportunity
to express themselves in a
way that doesn’t harm others,” Salem
said. “It goes back to them just acknowledging
that we’re all under one
God, and that’s what they’re promoting,
it’s the peace and the unity
among different cultures.”
Salem says the trip encouraged
her to do everything in her power to
promote unity. Salem believes the
Greece trip made her a more complete
person.
“I was super inspired” Salem said. “I
just felt like I was constantly shedding
layers of myself onto the world until
all I had was this raw form, and in that
form I had to be the bravest version of
myself, and that was hard. It really inspired
me to conquer a lot fears that I
had. I think I grew a lot from it.”
Some of Salem’s goals for the future
include pursuing other humanitarian
efforts and having her own
talk show to spotlight some of the
world’s most challenging issues.
Salem took a lot away from her
trip across the world. She was able
to develop personally and professionally.
The study abroad program
gave her an opportunity to research
an issue, visit the location where the
issue is taking place and have conversations
with the individuals most
effected. All of these things add up to
an extremely valuable experience for
an aspiring journalist. Upon returning
home, she wrote a feature story
for Oakland University’s OU Refugee
Report website titled Hidden
Christians.
In her feature, Salem asks her audience
to put themselves in the shoes
of a refugee fleeing from persecution.
Salem feels a deep sense of empathy
for the people in the camps and
wants to shed light on the issues they
face. The trip caused Salem to view
the world around her differently,
and at the end of it one message was
clearer than ever before.
“It’s our differences that we
should celebrate rather than having
our differences divide us.”
34 CHALDEAN NEWS NOVEMBER 2017