How volunteering to help Syrian refugees changed my view on life

When the opportunity came to work with the Syrian refugees arriving in my country, Brazil, I knew it was the time to try and offer some kind of relief and support for my community. I helped organize a Christmas event for the children where there would be food, drinks, games, presents, clothes, grooming and  necessary toiletries for each child. But even with all this planning I never thought that this experience would remodel me and my values to such an extent

We have all seen appalling and inhumane acts of wars and terrorism, whether it concerns Paris, Lebanon or New York. We all read it in the newspaper, grieved together and been hurt by the sight of more people having to flee for their own life. So with such viciousness happening I decided that it was my duty to serve my community by offering a helping hand. Now I look back and see how ignorant it was to believe that I would be the one adding to their lives when, at the end of the day, I was the one who gained the most out of the experience.

When I arrived at the school we were hosting the event in, I was ushered to a room where we were to set the food on the table. As I was placing the sweets I felt someone poking my leg. I turned around and found this little girl with deep green eyes and black eyebrows, swaying her body from side to side gesturing that she wanted candy. I smiled and gave her the candy, and she left beaming and skipping. I followed her as she led me to the rest of her family and watched as she  proudly showed her parents all the sugar she was eating. I tried talking to them and was surprised that her dad was already speaking Portuguese. He told me he learned while immigrating to Brazil and laughingly mentioned, “I speak the language to defend my stories”.

At first I did not understand what he meant by that,  because of the broken Portuguese I thought I  maybe misunderstood him. But for some reason I kept on reflecting on what he had said: Stories were all they had left of the country that is now being bombarded and destroyed. Their country and childhood remains in the past but as long as they keep on telling stories, somehow they can save the memory of the beautiful days they once knew.

Atrocities like what happened in Paris last year cast a shadow upon the positive contributions the majority of people I worked with have to their community and the delightful stories they have to tell. We must remember to universalize these stories in order to stop it from becoming a single story: a story that portrays terrorism and cruelty alone.

We forget that terrorist organizations are a common enemy of all countries. I now see how important it is to remember that just because people have the same religion doesn’t mean they have the same values. That is why the man told me he must “defend” his stories: “defend” from the prejudicial judgements. We have to remember we are all people, and our experiences are universal, experiences like seeing children’s eyes shining when they see candy and the purity of their smile when  Santa Claus appears, a father wanting to keep his family safe and a love of a mother towards her children.

As Nelson Mandela once said: “Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom”. I believe we should always seek to  respect cultures and care for our fellow humans, despite ethnicity, language or culture.  We are all sharing the same planet and sharing the same resources. We all have our differences but we are all men, women, children, mothers, fathers, daughters, sons or brothers. We are different from each other, but we are all people sharing the gift of life with bravery, so it is only after we open our hearts and unite, that these differences won’t matter anymore.

With language and storytelling comes empathy towards each other and only then will we be able to combat the prejudice that exists in our world and learn how to accept each other. Ethical differences do not justify unequal treatment and hostility, everyone is equal in dignity and rights. There is a bigger issue that needs to be addressed: we must learn how to completely support each other, not as foreigners, but as fellow human beings in need of a friendly hand. If we embrace language and storytelling, we will be able to explore reality through many lenses. Humans have the power of compassion, that is what distinguishes us from other animals, so through stories we dive into new experiences and therefore create identities with each other. It is only after we identify  that such hatred and antipathy will be beaten and people from all over the world will be able to happily function in society as one.