And past two days made me realise again, that meeting people sometimes becomes the most important way to know about something you were the most ignored about.
I knew about Western Sahara and Morocco issue before coming here, but just that Morocco had occupied Western Sahara, and nothing more. And I'm being honest about my ignorance, not proudly though.
Yesterday, I had time to talk to B. I had met him earlier and spoken little, but did not know as much as I got to know yesterday. He's an FK participant and comes from Western Sahara. He is from the Refugee camp in Algeria for the Saharawi's from Western Sahara who could not stay in their homeland because of the occupation by Morocco and the discrimination by them against the Saharawis. His experiences were something I might remember all the time.
He was born there, and this camp is there for the past 33 years. The refugee camp is one of the most well organised camps in the whole world, but people live in mud/sand houses. The temperature in that desert is commonly 55 degree celcius and during rainy seasons, they have no homes, as most of it is taken away by rain. There have also been instances of people dying due to the collapsing of the house when they were inside it. There is only a primary school there, so if anyone wants to pursue higher education, he/she should leave their family and go to Spain, Algeria, Morocco, Cuba as most of these countries provide nearly full scholorship to Saharawis, but not Morocco. He left home when he was 12, and has been studying in Algeria since then. Saharawis are discriminated in Morocco when they are there for education. They are even tortured, physically.
And here he was talking and having presentations in order to make more people aware and join the campaign to get saharawis the right to self determination. UN does not have a mandate again.
Yesterday, I was off, with the United nations class, to a place which was once Concentration camp during 1941-45. Loads of thoughts came into my head, loads of questions and loads of chill. It was weird being in some of the rooms in that building, which is now a memorial and a research centre. We had a very interesting orientation session and then had a pretty interesting discussion on Human Rights. I wish to write more of this, but I plan to do something with regard to this later, so I'll put up more experiences later. But one thing I can never forget, is the chill I experienced walking in the forest which was nearby, which was once the burial ground of all the innocent lives which was taken during the Nazi period here.
They were two great days and now I'm happily occupied doing my project work (note: I'm happy doing it). And I'm looking forward to Tuesday on meeting people who are going to give us a little more insight about Sri Lanka.
