The One about the Refugee Camp
Sombor, Serbia
3.22.18
Friday, March 16th, I handed the man 50 Serbian dinar to stow my big pack under the bus, walked up the steps to bus seating, and found my seat in the front row with a window stretching across the front of the bus allowing me to view the open road as we were driving from Belgrade to Sombor. I put in my headphones and enjoyed my first solo ride that lasted for the next 4 hours. When I arrived at the Sombor bus station, I was greeted within minutes by Jaivie, the team leader for team Table Turners, and their Serbian host, Zoli. The team had just finished their weekly visit to the local refugee camp and scooped me up on the way back to the church they were staying at and that Zoli is pastoring. Not much was mentioned about the refugee camp at this point, but I was a bit curious about it simply because I had never been to one before. We get back to the church, settled in and I jumped right into everything going on with the ministry here.
There are actually two teams here in Sombor with Zoli, and they have several ministries going on all at the same time. World racers are coaching softball, teaching photography classes, coordinating a women’s retreat, building relationships at the local gym, teaching about American cooking, using marketing skills for the church ministry, doing evangelism in coffee shops, and participating in prayer walks in the mornings. He has really allowed racers here to use the gifts they have and things they love to make their own ministry, which is really cool. Along with this and building relationships throughout normal daily things, the coffee shop on the first floor of the church is opened from 8-10pm everyday for people to come over, play games, chat, play ping pong, play chess, and have a cup of coffee or tea. These teams are busy to say the least, but it’s been a lot of fun being here and meeting people with them.
The first night here, when it came time to have people over from 8-10, I met a man named Hakim. Hakim is a really nice guy who works at the refugee camp that the teams had visited earlier that day. He is from Morocco and speaks somewhere around 5 or 6 languages. Our encounter was brief that night, but I was still curious about the refugee camp. The next day, Hakim ended up inviting a few of us over to watch tv at his apartment next door, so we accepted the invitation and ordered a pizza. Throughout our many conversations that evening, I learned that there are people from the following countries at the refugee camp:
– Pakistan
– Iran
– Iran
– Palestine
– Afghanistan
Besides this, I learned that Hakim is there because he helps translate among other things, but I still didn’t learn that much about the camp itself. Also, I should add that at this point, I didn’t think I was going to be able to go with the team the next time they went. I was pretty bummed, but then schedules changed and we ended up going on Thursday instead of Friday.
So here we are, Thursday night, and I had my first experience at a refugee camp earlier this afternoon. I only spent an hour and half one day at a refugee camp and I still don’t know much about why they were fleeing their countries, how long they will stay or what life will look like after this period in their lives, but I am forever grateful for the time I spent with some little girls today.
We were greeted by two sweet little girls who recognized some of the women on our teams from previous visits. They came slowly wandered over and stole some hugs from my squad-mates before we started walking towards the building we were going to. Before entering, a small dark haired, beautiful girl walked through the doorway and looked at me. I gave her a big smile as we made eye contact and she ran into my arms like we had known each other for a long time. [ I’m not sure if she thought I was someone else, or if it was a sweet little gift from the Lord. ] That’s when I realized that despite my plans to do manicures with the women, I would be doing crafts with these beautiful little faces.
Hakim led us into a room where we would proceed to do some crafts with the kids and manicures for the women. I started off helping with the crafts, but once the tables were set up for the women to come in and get manicures, all the girls doing crafts flocked to the nail polishes and stations being set up. Somehow I transitioned to that table with a group of about 4 small girls, and I think in about an hour I gave 5 manicures to girls between the ages of 5 to 12. Some spoke English and told me who their sisters were and which country they were from. We smiled and giggled together as the sticky sugar scrub between our hands was a new strange feeling to them. With each child I’d follow them to the sink around the corner and we would laugh as we washed off the scrub with icy cold water. They would patiently wait as I painted each fingernail and study my facial expressions. As I looked up every few moments, I would see the most beautiful dark brown eyes with long black eyelashes looking back at me. I will never know what they were thinking as I held their hands in mine, but I know what I was thinking.
“What have these children seen? What kinds of war have they witnesses? Has there been consistency in their lives or have they been bouncing from one home to another with a bunch of strangers? Was it unsafe where they were before? How long have they been here? What does school look like for them at a refugee camp? What food do they eat? What do they think of this random white lady painting their nails? Do they wonder why I am here? How often do they get one on one attention?”
Wow, they are such beautiful girls. They’re real faces and real people to my precepts about middle eastern countries and people. I’m not going to lie, I was confronted with a lot of thoughts in my head I didn’t want to believe. I grew up in America and America hasn’t painted a very beautiful picture of people/culture from the Middle East. The picture that the media painted in my youth was of terrorists and radical Islamic men with bombs. I mean I went to school with peers from a variety of different backgrounds and had families from the all over the world, so I saw that there was more to the culture than that. Even so, when I really think about it, my family didn’t have any close friends that were from a different culture. I think that we were a little close minded to cultures different than ours and just deemed a lot of things as “weird,” instead of seeing the beauty in the differences. If I am completely honest, I think I subconsciously had a lot of stereotypes and predispositions towards people from this part of the world-maybe because they were different from me, I never took the time to get to know anyone beyond a surface level relationship, or because of the stigma that was created after 9/11. I really don’t know. I never harbored hate in my heart towards anyone, but sadly there was a prejudice, or preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.
For the first time, at that small refugee camp in Sombor, Serbia, God opened my eyes to some of the ugliness in my mind by putting some of His beautiful creations’ hands directly in my hands. He showed me that the same innocence and beauty I see in my niece is in the little girl in front of me. He sweetly called me out of lies I’d believed and gifted me with truth. He loved them too much and He loved me too much to let me believe that people are anything other than His beloved creations. Man, there are so many things I could say about this, that I just don’t think I could put words to, but I will remember this day forever, mostly because of those precious little girls and what a joy it was to just spend an hour with them let them feel special.
I pray that I never forget how I felt this day or those sweet faces. I pray for those families and children and that God provides for their every need. I pray Jesus would visit them in their dreams and that they would experience the freedom, love, joy and peace found in Him and Him alone. I pray against the spirit of prejudice, division, racism, or hatred that has breed itself in the minds of people around the world, and that we could see one another as someone God created and is especially fond of.
Thank you for reading all the way through this. Nothing flashy happened at the refugee camp, but it undoubtedly was not time wasted.
