Today I want to take you on a little journey. Stretch your imagination a bit if I may. Imagine—and this may not be too hard to do as it is something the world is currently experiencing—that the world is in a state of panic with an uncontrollable virus rampantly wreaking havoc everywhere it passes through, forcing countries to shut their borders and go on varying degrees of lockdown in order to battle this indiscriminate pathogen.
Now imagine—and this is where you might have to stretch your imagination a bit—during this time of chaos and crisis, you are trapped in a foreign land miles away from your own home.
Far away from your family, from your comfort zone, far away from everything and everyone you should be with at a time when it is uncertain if or when the world will be able to return to some level of normalcy. Let’s go a bit further.
Imagine that in this foreign land that you’ve found yourself stranded in, you’re accommodated in a small room shared with another person and that the constant temperature in that room is in the 40s with little to no relief given by a single ceiling fan. You and the other person are left to sweat it out in this sweltering heat everyday. You try to quench your unending thirst but there’s only contaminated water flowing from the taps.
A shopkeeper extends his services to you and offers to deliver water to your place of dwelling, but you soon realise that he has more than doubled the price of said water. Still, what can you do? You need to drink, so you pay up. You are thankful that you’re being provided with food, but every time you eat it, you get sick. The only thing you can stomach is the breakfast. Most days that is your sole meal.
You reach out to your embassy thinking they will surely help get you home. That is why they’re here after all, to give you some peace of mind knowing that your countrymen are always here to help should you ever find yourself in a stressful situation in a foreign land. But—and here’s a bit of a plot twist—they respond telling you that you have to sacrifice and bear the difficulties you are facing.
You offer them options of ways they can work to get you and others like you back to your home country, but they shut you down. They refuse to explore those options and tell you to shelter in place. You see other foreigners in your situation getting help from their embassy. They tell you stories of how hard their embassy is working to get them home. And soon enough, you have to tell them goodbye, because their embassy’s hard work paid off and they’re going home.
You try to reach out to your countrymen back home, but you’re saddened by their cold and heartless responses to stay where you are, that you deserve to suffer, that you should have never gone abroad to study in the first place. Your heart breaks to know that this is what the people of your own homeland believe. You cry, you agonise, but you find the strength to get up and keep trying because you know that it doesn’t have to be like this. You grew up with the philosophy that “God helps those who help themselves” drilled into your psyche so you forge on.
Letters to authorities back home start stacking up, but all remain unanswered. Finally, after weeks of outlining in detail all the hardships you’ve been enduring, a response finally comes. Hope blossoms in your heart when you see a new email, the first you’ve ever received, from a minister in the government. Surely this is it. He has read everything. His heart has been moved by your suffering and he is writing to tell you “child, it’s time to come home.” Your fingers tremble as you click the email open.
Within seconds your heart plummets. Yet again, you’ve been shut down. Yet again, you’ve been told to stay and suffer some more. However long it takes, to stay where you are and suffer some more. You are crushed.
You cry, you wail, you scream, you start thinking that if everyone is of the opinion that you deserve to suffer then maybe that is true. Maybe you’re not worth anyone’s effort or time. Maybe you don’t even deserve this life you have. No. You dismiss that thought from your mind immediately. Your parents raised you better, stronger. And there are so many people at home fighting for you to come home, so you can’t give up now. Not on them, not on yourself.
Again the media gives you a platform to share your story and once again ask the authorities back home to step in and do something. While highlighting your issues you give an insight into your present living arrangement as it is. No frills no lies. Enter victimisation. How dare you tell the world what’s really going on here? Now you’ve really done it. When it rains it pours right?
On that same day the victimisation starts. Your SIM card is disconnected by the cellular provider because, according to your visa, you’re not supposed to be here anymore. So now you’re completely disconnected from the world and in a hostile environment where anytime you attempt to stand up for yourself you’re scolded for it.
And you will probably have to stay in said hostile environment with barely any way of contacting friends and family back home because your government is not interested in exploring any of the options you keep presenting them for getting you home. What would you do in this situation?
Now bring your mind back from that long imaginary journey.
Sounds crazy, right? Farfetched and not something that happens in the real world, right? Things like that don’t happen to real people. Surely not to people like you.
But here’s one bit of truth I’ll leave you with: I am a real person. I am just like you. And for me, that story is not imaginary, that is my current reality.