Ciao della Bella Roma

It seems that I have not done a blog since Christmas Day. I am reminded of this yet again by my niece Carmel who remains my most avid follower. Well, Carmel, what is my excuse? Despite the call of Pope Benedict XVI to all priests to take up blogging, I call upon the oldest of excuses - I have been too busy.

Now I am in Rome for a meeting of my Order's Justice and Peace Secretariat of which I am a member. I come for a two day meeting and I see it as a good opportunity to escape the intensity and the pace of a Bangkok. It is not just that I am busy these days but that life is very intense living in a city where you are continually confronted by so many different and extreme realities of life. It is an experience of living life in the extreme with reality smack in your face all the time. So I saw my trip to Rome as a time to re-ground and reconnect myself.

What has the busy-ness of my life been about? From the beginning of the year, I began my new role atb the Bangkok Refugee Centre (BRC) as Coordinator of Asylum Seeker Services and as Volunteer Coordinator. That alone provides for an intense week. The BRC is a UNHCR facility in the centre of Bangkok for what are termed urban refugees. These are the ones who come to Bangkok having fled the Sri Lankas, the Congos, the Somalias of the world. They end up in Bnagkok as it is a hub city and has a UNHCR office. Thailand also has very easy tourist entry regulations as they want tourism and its money. They are left here by people smugglers or come on their own accord. They then seek refugee status and a new life from Bangkok. However that is not the end of the story but the beginning of another one.

Thailand is not a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees. So here in Bangkok, while struggling with UN bureaucracy and trying to get refugee status, they also have to deal with a most hostile environment where they have no rights and no security as they are pure and simple illegal aliens in an alien land. They find themselves with no support while waiting interminably for UNHCR recognition, if it comes. So how do these asylum seekers survive? They depend on the goodwill and charity of a very few NGOs working on their behalf. Their needs are huge, they become desperate people and the available help that they deserve is minimal. They deserve better. So you can see my role.

Maybe I have not just been busy but exhausted by it all. Still I do this because I choose and because in a funny way I love the work as it enlivens me and gives me a real sense of purpose and meaning in facing the challenges of my day. In another way, it is about living my faith. So I don't complain. I continue my other roles with Caritas Thailand where I still work on the agriculture project and with the National Catholic Commission on Migration. I continue to love Thailand and its many fascinations while continually questioning what I see and experience in what is called 'Amazing Thailand'.

Carmel also asked me about Ahmed, the Somali fellow I have befriended and help in Bangkok. Ahmed continues to survive. Even much more, he has thrived in his own way as I have noticed lately that he is looking much healthier and that his smile is growing. His English is also improving as he studies English each day at a school. All this despite his remaining in a 'No Man's Land' as he just stays in Bangkok with no great hope of being able to go anywhere else, while not able to return home to Somalia. His one hope is that he gets to Australia. I hope he does but who knows. Still he has become a bit of a hero for me as I just sit and wonder how he keeps going so strongly. Maybe he listens to me as I advise him along the way to do just that. Maybe I should listen more to my own advice. Well, Carmel, that is Ahmed and me for now.

Ciao!