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RSSEarths Restless Wanderers
by The Rev. Barbara Cawthorne Crafton
6/19/2005
When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next... -- Matthew 10:23
How many war refugees are there in the world today? Nobody knows for sure. But there are at least 23 million who have fled their countries -- Liberia, Congo, Burundi. And there are at least 27 million more who have been displaced within their own borders -- in Sudan, for instance and, in our own hemisphere, in Haiti.
Life in all these places was hard before the wars began. In short order, it became unsustainable -- no water, no food, no medicine, no power. Armed invaders in the night, sweeping through villages, murdering entire families. Make for the surrounding hills, find the caves in the rock that the marauders don't know about, and huddle there in the dark until they are gone.
And when you return to your house, you can't find it. The place where it was is a smouldering patch of ash. Your furniture and your clothing, all your food. Here and there in the rubble you see a metal pot, recognizable but black with soot; the charred skeleton of a baby goat who couldn't keep up with you with you when you ran; you had been saving it for your daughter's wedding feast, but that's not going to happen now, not after what happened to her the night the soldiers came. Here and there, something even worse: not everyone got out. There they are, what is left of them: blackened, silent.
If you try to rebuild here, they'll be back. There is nothing left to do but to take whatever you managed to carry out and hit the road, find a camp. There they will give you a tent, blankets, food. There will be a doctor or a nurse who will examine your daughter. Perhaps she will talk to them; she has not spoken since that night, not even to her mother.
A refugee camp is not a place anyone would ever choose to live. But war refugees don't choose: they just run for their lives. We have the duty and privilege of being with them, from our safe homes on the other side of the world, through the presence of Episcopal Relief and Development, our wise and experienced partner in service to people we will never meet.
By yourself, there's not much you can do about human suffering but read about it in the paper and feel helpless. Together with ERD, though, we change things for the better every day, giving those left with nothing a way to hang on, recover and rebuild, when it is finally safe to do so.
