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Arts Community and Culture News Updates

Ten Reasons for the Arts in Refugee Camps

By Awet Andemicael
awet@post.harvard.edu

Last year, I conducted research for UNHCR (available online at www.unhcr.org/4def858a9.html), which suggests that artistic activity often plays a powerful positive role in the lives of refugees living in camps, and can help them survive and even thrive emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

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Arts

Poem: Tortoise in the Storm

Volume 1, Issue 5-6 / May-June 2009

TORTOISE IN THE STORM.

Tortoise in the storm

From Darfur to Kivu, from the Ogaden to Kasai

From Mogadishu to Gulu, from Oromo to Bujumbura

From Tigris to Kigali.

Blistered souls moving in all directions

But in no direction

Peripatetic and in uncaring for horizon, for all is

Horizon with dark spiteful cloud

Grappling with sour memories of roaring guns,

Thundering bombs, mutilations, destructions

Tortures and massacres

Crawling on rough paths and treading through rugged terrains with cold misty nights

In isolation and quietude, uncertainty and pain

For home is no place for comparison, its distant obscene

Makes its presence more real in its unreality

As the silent night comes to console the laddered soul

But there is hope, hope for the living

The meandering river at last collapses on the bosom of the sea

The prodigal clouds return to the fold of its waves

A bright light glows at the end of the tunnel

If you and I can shelter the real people, with real needs

From the torrents of the storm

Lets care for the living, real people, real needs!

By Jumbwike Sam Aggrey.

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Arts

Poem: Lost

Volume 1, Issue 5-6 / May-June 2009

LOST.

Head down, as I watch my feet hit the ground

I close my eyes, where am I heading.

I do not know

Everything around me stands still

As if, I am in a bad dream

And I am unable to wake up

And then I realize, am not dreaming

That’s my life, am actually living it

Not dreaming it

Everything that I hear am sure nobody else does

Everything that I see, nobody else sees

All the sadness, all the wailing

I wish I could close my eyes and ears

So that I would never have to see or hear

There is no place to hide

I have to face life head on

I just have to, like others have.

All decisions are made for me

It is like I am mindless

Any suggestion I give

Is not good enough

I am a living dead

Only I can’t be buried alive

I always wonder where the dead go

When you die, you are no longer a refugee

I do not want to feel hopeless

But I have bee made to feel that way

By powers that be!

My time will come.