Will

On "shit countries." The very first refugee I interviewed during my time in Nairobi with the @JesuitRefugee Service was a Somali man named Ali. This was in 1992, at the beginning of my two-year stay, and I was helping at a UN intake center that was processing asylum applications. Later I would meet and work with many Somali refugees, who had fled the war that had recently consumed their country. At first, I assumed Ali was some sort of nomad or perhaps a poor farmer, because of his dissheveled appearance and his ragged clothes. I saw him as a "typical refugee," though I had little understanding of what that meant. At the time I had already learned a little Swahili so I asked him, rather pompously, what language he would like to speak in. He replied in perfect English, "I can speak in Swahili of course, but also English, French, Italian and," he paused, "Latin." Ali had been a professor of philosopy at the University of Mogadishu who had received his doctorate at the University of Florence. He had fled violence in his country, along with his family, and ended up in Nairobi. (I tell his story at length, which I transcribed from a tape, in my book "This Our Exile.") "I have five children, all small," he said. "We just want peace now." It is easy to call countries "shit countries," especially if you've not spent much time there or don't know many people from that country. Most migrants and refugees would much prefer to stay home, but war, violence or famine prevents that. And they do exactly what we would do: flee to a safe place to protect their families and themselves. I will always remember Ali, and how he challenged my idea of what a refugee is. Basically, they are us.