Wednesday, January 15, 2020
La Haye
The Humanité House
Wednesday afternoon, we went to the humanity house in La Haye.
It’s a museum founded by the dutch red cross in 2010.
We met Mohamed who work there. The humanity house proposes a journey tracing the route of migrants with dangers, doubts, difficult choices to make to arrive in a safer country or to join his family.
Mohamed himself a refugee, left Irak at the age of 6 with his family. They took more than 2 months before arriving in the Netherlands and they had to wait a long time before they could have papers. They had to make a perilous journey : they were very numerous in a very little car, they were abandoned by their smuggler, during his travel he lost his shoes and he walked with frozen feet without realizing it… He was never able to retourn to his country of origin.
Mohamed asked us about migrants and refugees and asked us what choices we would make in certain situations if we were refugees.
Then we did the route. We were given identity papers in our name, then we traveled in different rooms. We were in the shoes of a refugee and so we were asking ourselves the same questions : Do you feel safe ? Do you decide to stay here or is it time to leave ? Whould you leave even if you’re not sure your friends and family are safe ? How do you escape ? How does it feel to escape? Am I still the same person? Would I lie to be allowed to cross borders? How does it feel to run? Am I still the same person? Would I lie to be allowed to cross borders?
This experience has allowed us to become aware of the long, difficult and dangerous journey that refugees undertake to be safe. We felt the emotions they too can feel : fear, sadness, anguish, hope…
We saw pictures and testimonials of real refugees at the end of the journey with interactive videos such as Bruce Cerew’s or Shaza Manla’s. After the route, we found Mohamed with whom we talked about our feelings. He told us his story. He explained to us that what had helped him a lot was that his mother had taken pictures when she left, to know and remember her family. It was a very emotional and touching moment.
Article by : Elsa & Noémie