I can go home, why can’t they?

Last year I was given the incredible opportunity to work on World Vision’s Syria crisis response in the Middle East. At that time, the crisis had already been going for over four years and there were almost four million refugees. Now, as my time working on the Syria crisis response comes to a close, the number of refugees is nearly five million and the crisis has continued for over half a decade. Lately, as I prepare to head home to Australia, I’ve been reflecting on the heartbreaking stories I’ve heard, the experiences I’ve had and the people I’ve met; and struggling with the notion that I can just pack up my things and return home to a safe country, but they can’t.  

Over the past year I’ve met so many families facing enormous daily struggles. One father I met in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley had lost 20 kilograms from worry and insufficient food since fleeing Syria and his young children had dark, haunting circles beneath their eyes; I met displaced families living in an unfinished building in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq where winter had just begun and they had months ahead of enduring the bitter cold; and, in Turkey, I met families living near the Syrian border, who had fled the violence just weeks earlier, uncertain of what the future might hold.

I’ve also been thinking back on the inspirational people I’ve met like the World Vision staff who risk their own lives by working in Syria to help their people; the teacher with a passion for education, who is herself a refugee, teaching children displaced by the conflict in Iraq and the budding young Syrian artist I met in a community centre in Turkey who created a painting to depict the suffering of children in Syria.

There have also been many lovely, fun moments, like the time the Syrian mother playfully ordered me to ‘have another cup of tea or sing!’; the children who taught me to count to 10 in Arabic when I first arrived in Jordan; the pure joy on the faces of the Syrian family with the twin girls who told me they’d been selected to re-locate to France; the young Iraqi girl showing me her hoola hoop skills and the Syrian girls in Jordan elated to be playing football for the very first time.

The sights, sounds and senses will also stay with me, like the rows and rows of white shelters arranged in the desert at Azraq Refugee Camp in Jordan, the sound of bombs exploding across the mountains in Syria, the stifling heat inside tents housing refugees in summer and the bone-chilling cold in winter.

These stories, faces and experiences will stay with me, and some may even haunt me, forever. As I prepare to return to my family, friends and home in Australia, and as we mark another World Refugee Day, the question I keep asking myself is, I can go home, why can’t they?

World Vision is on the front lines of the global refugee crisis. Learn more about our approaches on our World Refugee Day special coverage section. Click here.