01 September 2015

At the risk of coming across all melodramatic and absolutely irrational, after all it's raining heavily (and there is a damp patch in the basement that worries me still regardless of the reassuring statement of our clever builder friend) and my balance organs, those tiny spirals inside my inner ears, are throbbing with the effort of keeping my world at a somewhat even keel, there is a tiny light at the end of one of the dark tunnels I have been staring into. Or have been staring at me? Anyway, it's really all down to maths. If 800,000 people fleeing war and persecution and poverty and hopelessness or whatever are coming to Germany, that's 1% more in a country with a population of 80 million wealthy people. Get that in your head you scaremongering xenophobes.

I would love to embed a beautiful video but I fail, so please click here to watch. This video was made by a Syrian refugee arriving with a busload of other Syrians in a small (and very conservative) German town where they have been given initial shelter. See what I mean? Yes, we can.

The music video is an extra.




4 comments:

Ms. Moon said...

If everyone in the world had a heart as big as yours, it would be such a beautiful world.

Anonymous said...

Love the video of the refugees arriving to such a warm welcome. That's really lovely. I will never understand why we humans have chosen to be divided rather than connected as one species, but we have. It's been the source of so much war, anguish, and brutality. The video is very hopeful.

Ellena said...

The "How are you" video brings tears to my eyes.
Xenophobia needs to be fought each time it shows up in our surroundings be it amongst family, friends, acquaintances, in actions or in words. We are all looking for the same thing: peace and security.
I remember feeling it (xeno), age 8, when our family looked for refuge in an other region in our own country. A region where no bombs were known to fall and a space to live was all we were looking for.
Wir waren die "Reingeschmeckten".

Steve Reed said...

Those numbers DO help put it all into perspective.