Daily Archives: June 19, 2016

Refugee Survival

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Dear diary,

I am safe, I made it to land. Although I got to this place a year ago, I haven’t even thought about writing about my journey here.

I arrived to this refugee camp on a stormy day. I was greeted by an angry guard who couldn’t seem to stop yelling at everyone. He showed me to my room, which is actually more like a jail cell. The only two things that I have here is a hard, uncomfortable bed and a rusty, old toilet. I take showers in this big room with other refugees. I also eat dinner in a cafeteria-like room with everyone else. I knew that this place was going to suck.

I don’t know what has happened to any of my family and friends. I’m not sure if they’re safe, or even alive. I don’t think they know if I’m safe or not either.

Everyone has told me that it’s not safe to go home right now, but I desperately want to. Here they feed me so poorly. I feel as weak as a new born kitten. People are telling me that I should be grateful for where I am right now, but I’m not. I feel as though I am breathing, but I’m not alive. I do nothing all day. My existence is pointless. I am a statue; I am stuck in this place.

I miss everything from home. I miss my family and friends. I miss the amazing food that I used to eat. I miss the weather and the land. I miss absolutely everything.

I don’t feel safe here. I have nightmares every night about when I had to leave home. I have also heard about other nearby refugees getting kicked out of their camps. I’m scared that that’s going to happen to me.

I hope I get out of this place soon and get to live freely. I can’t stand another day here.

Refugee Survival

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Dear family,

I made it. It has been over a year and I am still here in this unfamiliar strange country. I feel like a penguin in the desert.

I want to go back to my old life, be back at home. Everyone is saying it is still too dangerous to go back home, I don’t want to believe them but I know it’s true. People expect me to be grateful for where I am. How am I supposed to be grateful for this life, this life were they do not respect me? I have been watching the media reports saying that we are not welcome anymore.  I don’t think they understand. Have you seen them?

I don’t know what has happened to you, are you safe? What about Sally, is she safe? I need to know what is happening at home. I am safe, not happy, but safe. I need to know that you are too, I am on the outside.

Food here is disgusting. They feed me beans and rice, it taste like play dough. It is like poo compared to your cooking, I miss that. Pizza, fish, pasta, curry, lasagne, all of your home made cooking and love. They don’t educate me; they say I’m not worth it. There is no connection and that’s what I miss about school, here no one cares for me. Does this mean I will never finish grade two? I should be in grade three. I miss my friends especially Sally, I want to see her. I miss everything about home. There is no point in living here because I’m not living, my existence is pointless.

I am a lone wolf, separated from my pack. I’m not sure if I am safe, I don’t feel safe. My nightmares are getting worse. I keep reliving the moment I had to leave and every time it is worse. I have been hearing stories about the village being attacked by Turkey and other countries that see Asia as being weak. I hope you are okay. I am worried for myself I don’t think I am allowed to stay any longer and I will be put in danger. Hopefully they will let me stay.

Bad Place, Newplace

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Dear family,

It has been quite a while since I have heard from you guys, I really miss you guys. It has been very harsh lately and I think that we are probably in about our 20th day and we have about a week or a bit more to go, we have limited water and food.

We have been attacked by pirates three times already, that was three of the scariest things that has ever happened to me but luckily they only took our charms and precious items and not our water and food otherwise we would have had no chance of survival “but I really thought that we were going to die” I am not afraid of dying, but dying in that manner would be just awful!

On board our boat there are about 30 people on a 12.5 meter boat but we deal with it. We sing each other songs every night and play games with the young ones, its rather fun but very sad at the same time, there is one baby about a year old that doesn’t stop crying all night and all day long so it’s hard to get to sleep at night or to relax in the day.

The food is pretty harsh, we get 2 bowls of rice a day, at least it feeds us and I’m thankful for that we even get any food. One day I went without eating only because maybe one day I might need some food.

I want to go home but people say that it is too dangerous and really scary, I miss all my family and friends but soon I will be getting off this boat to a peaceful country or camp with a better future and a good lifestyle but my main worry is getting put in a detention centre with outlaw people and I don’t like getting locked up because when I was a kid I got locked up for stealing bread and milk from the local dairy shop and got sentenced to 3 years in a juvenile prison and I thought that it was a stupid punishment like I would rather be picking up rubbish for three years than that.

7 Days Later- we made the trip, The thing we have been waiting for the 27 days on the ocean, we have landed at New Zealand about 945 km east of Australia and been put in a camp for a while. Thank god! I will never do that again!

Love Bodee

7/6/16

Refugee Diary Entry

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Griffyn McWhirter’s Diary,

19-6-2017. At the camp right now. Alone.

So, this is probably the last entry. Why? Because today, I’m leaving the camp and I’m going home. I have to go back.

I know- people say that I should be grateful, and how I should be thanking them for ‘saving’ me from the dangers of my home. The whole town was bombed; the house I lived in is probably gone. But it’s been a year. A whole year. I have to check; shops might be rebuilt, houses might have been made.

It might be better now. I need to get back. I need to live again.

(-)

I have heard it, for sure this time. Refugees are becoming more and more unwelcome here; there are even attacks. Maybe going home would be safer than here. And anyway- my family might be there. My brothers… Mum and dad… Everyone. I haven’t seen them for months. I don’t even have photos. I never got the chance to bring any.

I wonder if my family is okay. They might’ve been kicked out of a camp already, or lost at sea, or…

I’ll just leave it there. I hope they’re safe.

(-)

Okay. I’ve got food and water. It’s nearly night I won’t be sleeping this time- the nightmares are too great. I have to start leaving soon. I will attempt to return with a boat. Several Australians are coming with me. We’re going home, or we’ll die trying. Or we can die here, anyway. Almost irony.

Alright. This is the last bit. Because of what I’ve written, I’m probably gone by the time you’ve read this. I’ll either be home or at sea. If any friends or family read this, I want you to return with me. I will see you there.

Griffyn McWhirter.

Homework Post #4

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On the first day of the weekend it was cold and absolutely pouring down with rain. There was also the Cray and Canoe Carnival and a home game for Northampton against Railways. I went to the game, well there were actually three games, there was the colts game, the reserves game and the league game. Mum was organising the food all day and dad and I had to help out. Sonny wasn’t there most of the time though as he had to go to a birthday party.

We arrived at the sport and rec at about ten in the morning, it was already pretty busy and only got busier. Dad had to work on the barbecue and I was stuck with doing nothing. Mum made it a big deal that I would have to help but then once I actually got there, they didn’t need me. So I just watched the first game, didn’t do too much, helped out every now and then, but not much.

The colts game then finished and I had to do boundary umpire which is, in my opinion, the worst job on the field, but I didn’t have much choice as I had already said that I’d do it. I could have done the first game as well, they even asked me if I’d do it. However I said no as I thought that I would be helping out in the kitchen, but that didn’t happen.

But I got paid thirty dollars to do it so it wasn’t too bad. Ben and Bodee were doing it also and I had swapped with Eli who did it previous to me. It was a lot more complicated than it needed to be, there were all these different things you had to do as well and all the older blokes were making such a big deal about it. There was a bit of a fight between Kane Perkins and some other guy from railways and that was pretty cool. The guy from Railways got yellow carded off though.

Not much happened after the reserves game, I helped Zac with scoreboard, got paid and then went to the beach with Patrice, Eli and Tayla at half time.

My long weekend

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On Friday the 3rd I drove down to Geraldton with my family to go shopping and stay with a friend. When we got to Geraldton we went straight to my friend’s house to pick her up. When we picked her up we went to Coles and did the food shopping. We all had a list to do like it was a race, one group did fruit and vegetables, another group did meat and dairy and the last group did the rest like (pet food, toiletries, etc).

After we finished shopping mum dropped my friend and I back at her house because I was staying with her for the long weekend. We got to her house, got out of the car mum gave me a hug and said goodbye. We waited for mum to go before we went inside.

After half an hour or less we decided to go for a walk.My friend wanted to go to the beach so we walked down to the foreshore where Dome is down near the water and she went for a swim. I waited for her on the beach taking photo of the sunset and the beach.

After she finished swimming we were pretty hungry so we went to Dome and had lunch. It was amazing lunch I love going to Dome. I had fish and chips and she had waffles with ice cream,maple syrup and banana.

After lunch we just walked around the shops for a bit but then it started to get dark so we walked back to her house and her mum was home so we talked to her for a bit then they had some friends around the corner that were up from Perth that we went and saw for the rest of the night didn’t get home till about 11pm or something like that and went straight to bed.

 

The big storm

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The rain started Monday night just after a few friends and I had a big day out. For a while it was just rain and it continued on for a long time. As the sun set further and further down, the storm started to get worse and worse. It was a hard night to sleep through due to thunder and lightning but I got through it for a while.

That was until about 4:30 in the morning where I heard a load BANG! which shook all the house windows. My dogs started barking and were concerned about what had happened and so was I for a while till I realised it was thunder. The dogs continued to bark so I decided to get up and have a look around. I walked to mum and dad‘s room to see if they were awake. As I walked in I asked them if that hit our house but they said no. They told me to go back to bed. I was walking back to my bed and wondering how close it was. Due to how loud the noise was and our windows shaking I figured it was either out the front, on our house or on a house nearby. I went back to sleep and I was fine for another hour.

That was until another loud bang happened to interrupt my sleep. Another strike had hit around the neighborhood. This bang wasn’t quite as loud as the other one but it was still very close by. As I got up once again to stop the dogs from barking I checked the time and realised it was 5:30 in the morning. I knew that now I had only 2 hours till i had to wake up so I made the most of it and went back to sleep as fast as I possibly could.

The morning came around and it was freezing. The rain was still here and still coming down heavily on the roof. As I woke from my bed and moved out from under the nice and warm doona I didn’t want to get up. I continued to face the cold and got dressed ready for school and put 2 of my warmest jumpers on. I walked out of my room and went to have breakfast where i had warm eggs on warm toast. After this mum dropped me at school and left me to freeze to death.

School was now over and the rain had stopped for a little while and I walked to the front of the school where mum was picking me up. I got in the car and waited a while for my brother to get to the car where he told me that a house 3 houses up was the one that got struck by lightning which now has no power. Luckily our house wasn’t the one to get hit and luckily the house that was hit didn’t catch fire.

my story

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Dear family

I have to leave our house because it is in ruins and in flames.

I am in a refugee camp and I have been gone for about a year now and I really want to return home but I can’t because someone says it is still too dangerous to return home.

I really miss the good food like pizza and spaghetti and most of all I miss my friends and I really miss Jacques beach but here there is no beach and I don’t know anyone here.

I don’t have hardly anything but the things I found were a knife and a back-pack and some bananas.

The way I got to this refugee camp was on a refugee boat. I don’t know where here is but it is somewhere far away from our house and it is better to live in.

I got on the boat and I said to the driver “where are we going?” and he said “we are going somewhere else but not here” and I said “OK” then we travelled overseas for about 3 days then we had our only encounter with the pirates.

The pirates stopped next to our boat. I tried to hide my knife as hard as I could. The pirates came on board and stole everyone’s belongings but when a person refused to the pirate so the pirate pulled out his sword then stabbed the man in the stomach and then the man fell to the ground. The pirate took his stuff and then said “anyone else want to refuse?” then no one spoke.

Then the pirates left then I got my knife out and put it in my pocket. Then the next day we ran out of water and food but luckily we found the refugee camp and now I have been here for a year.

 

I hopefully am coming home soon.

 

Love from Harrison

refugee diary

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Dear Diary

Month 1: I can feel this year is going to be a great year. I feel happy as Larry. We finally settled into our house, we got our life what feels like on track.

Month 2: Today it happened everything turned upside down it was really bad I still cannot believe it.

Month 3: We have left been now going to some place I don’t know but mum said that it is for the best. I just hope that we all make it there together. Mum and dad said “we had to choose three things to take with us” we all chose to take a photo of one another and some personal items also, mum chose water and our family documents, dad got food and blankets to keep us warm, My brother chose water and food, I choose my hair brush and water.

Month 4: The travel is taking for what feels like forever but I know we will get there some day. Dad is sick I hope he makes it.

Month 5: We’re here, finally made it. Dad went to some big hospital but I believe he will be fine, but it is hard not knowing.

Month 6: We’re finally settling in, Dad is back healthier and better than ever.  We’re all together and living in a place called China we had heard of it before but I never thought it would be like this.

Month 7: We have been told that we are moving to a different camp so I have to stop writing.

Refugee Experience

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Dear journal
I’m not really sure what I’m doing but one of the people I’m sailing with told me to do this. Basically I’m a refugee, I never in my deepest thoughts that I would be a refugee. But I am. Over the last couple of years I heard on the news that our country started   (war?)  and then our country Australia was bankrupt. As soon as that was announced the riots started and then our country started going nuts, there were mass murders, bombings and fires.
Over the last year my family has been hiding in a small shelter with a small amount food and resources. Over the last couple of weeks we overheard that there was a boat leaving to South America.
When we were getting on the boat there were two or three cars that had intimidating people on it who had guns and other weapons.  Before we could even properly see them they had already started shooting at us.  As my sister and I were getting on the boat she got shot, my sister was shot.  I had no time to weep.  Before I knew it I saw my family getting gunned down and slaughtered, I was petrified scared as I watched my family laying on the floor dead.
No matter how hard I tried yelling out to go back, all that I achieved was annoying the people I was sailing with. I kept screaming out to go back and pilot said “shut up, they’ll start shooting at us”.
After 3 weeks of sailing we saw land, but there was a boat in-between us and the land. We were scared we didn’t know what we were going to do.  We had nothing to fight back with, no guns no knives, no nothing. We were scared we didn’t know what to do we had no idea if they were dangerous or not for all we knew we were as good as dead…