From suicidal to a Serbian refugee camp in two weeks: An illustrated journey
This is the story of a journey. My journey. A journey from a farm in Ireland to a refugee camp on the Serbian/Hungarian border. It’s the story of why I decided to set off on such a journey and what I saw, felt and learned presented to you largely through the drawings that I created every step of the way.
It’s a journey that was green lit in a counselling session and 4 days later had me jumping in the car and driving across Europe. After 3 days and 3,000km I arrived in a refugee camp in Kelebija, Serbia on the Hungarian border where some friends had established a small humanitarian organisation.
Interestingly, it turned out that the distance from Cork to Subotica where I was staying was about the same distance from Syria to Subotica.
But I’m getting ahead of myself a little.
Let me put it all in a bit more context.
After the fact it is tempting to frame it all as some well thought out adventure but the reality is that the number one driver for leaving was to get away from reality for a while.
Life has been pretty shitty for a while and it has gotten a lot worse this year. As my physical health continued to fall apart my mental health like a obedient, if slightly docile dog dutifully followed. With our second child on the way I needed to get away. The counselling session I alluded to above was at Pieta House a charity that deals with suicide and self harm. So that offers as much context as is needed as to where I was at.
I had the backing of my wife to get away and initially I was going to head to somewhere hot and sunny and just sit and drink beers by the side of the pool, but this just didn’t feel right. I then had the idea to go to Serbia the day before I was to have a meeting with the counsellor at Pieta House. There were only two conditions my wife put on me going:
Condition #1
As long as the counsellor didn’t think it was a bad idea.
So we discussed the idea and my need to put my circumstances into context, the need for an ‘existential slap in the face’. Speak to anyone who is depressed and suicidal but who would appear from the outside to have a very happy life and this is something they will undoubtedly wrestle with at some point.
Why am I feeling so shit when I have nothing to complain about?
We chatted about all the intricacies of the situation but he very quickly understood where I was coming from. In fact he admitted at the time to being jealous of the adventure I was about to set off on.
Condition #2
I don’t spend any time in large European cities.
At the time it seemed that every other day another city was being terrorised. While my natural reaction was ‘we can’ let ourselves be terrorised!’ after 5 years of marriage I have learned when to fight and when to surrender and this was a situation for appeasement.
Don’t tell her but she may have had a point.
The morning before I left I sat drawing this picture of a German armed police officer from an article in the paper reflecting back on the ‘worst 5 weeks of summer’.
There was one final condition I placed on myself.
I would draw the whole journey.
So after getting all the logistics sorted I got to packing my art supplies.
I didn’t realise it at the time but my drawing skills that I’d been honing over the past 6–9 months were desperate to get out there and show their real worth and be challenged.
While the refugee crisis remained a huge problem it was no longer a sexy topic for the Press. Stories of the plights of refugees had given way to stories of terrorism across Europe that echoed civil unrest in the US. As this happened and the link between refugees and terrorism were drawn, public sentiment towards refugees was waning. Interestingly, it was this that solidified my decision to draw the journey.
It was an opportunity to bring back to the minds of people the on-going struggle of people in the camps in a slightly different way.
But I was still not convinced. I still had doubts.
I’d witnessed the power of drawing and ‘visual thinking’ in the business world. I’d sat across the table from the VP of a multi-billion dollar company in Amsterdam and scribbled on a piece of paper with a Sharpie to help her think through how she’d position a problem with the Board of Directors. I’ve helped many companies improve their communication both with their employees and clients through visual thinking. Though as I set off on this trip I still lacked the full confidence of its ability to bring about and any change in such a desperate humanitarian situation. Could drawing really have any impact on the individual people or the overall perception of the situation to those who weren’t there? Or, more accurately, did I have the skills to do it justice?
My own personal insecurities
I was visiting friends who were feverishly working in the blistering heat to build structures in the refugee camps to ultimately bring a little more comfort and dignity to the lives of those who are being forced to survive in this desperate situation. Now I would have loved to have got stuck in and help but I was just not physically up for it. And that made me feel rather shit. While they had gone out to build shelters I had gone out to draw.
But that’s enough about me and the background…
Let’s get on with the show…
I found a seat up at the front of the ferry looking out over Dublin port as we waited to set sail I couldn’t help but notice that I was looking at the things around me in a different way. I had been on many a ferry but I was not looking at these things through the eyes of the refugees and the lens of the refugee crisis..
The first thing that caught my attention was the lorry containers lined up side by side on the dock. Usually I wouldn’t pay them much attention but I knew that these, maybe these exact ones had been used by human traffickers and refugees to cross borders and seas. I managed to sketch them quickly before we set sail. It turned out that these containers and the lorries that carried them were to follow me through the whole trip.This one drawing which seemed rather insignificant at the time went on to provide a beautiful bridge between myself and a Kurdish refugee from Iraq in the Dunkirk camp, but I’m getting ahead of myself, I’ll get to that in a minute. (I just wish I’d taken a snap of the drawing prior to it being painted!)
As the boat took off I wandered out on to the deck and sat down at the feet of the smokers and my attention was drawn to the bright orange life ring attached to the railing directly in front of me. As I sat drawing my mind swirled with thoughts, emotions and images of the families who risk their lives in ill-equipped dinghies in the treacherous seas around Europe.
By the time I had finished the drawing we are out at sea and the last of the evening light was disappearing. As I looked out in every direction I could see nothing, not where we’d come from or where we were going. Even on this large ferry surrounded with people I felt lonely. I felt deeply for those parents who were forced into making a decision on whether to go by sea or land to the promised land of Europe.
Interestingly, as my journey continued and I spoke to more and more people I came to understand that many of these people who brave the seas are not acting out of fear as we often assume but rather out of deep hope.
As it got late I sat down and drew my final drawing of the ferry trip. For some reason I picked up my UK passport and started drawing. It occurred to me that it has taken to the age of 32 for me to really go on a road trip across Europe and avail of the right to free movement, just at the time that the UK decides it no longer wants to be a member of the EU. [job number 1 when I get back home to Cork: Apply for an Irish passport]
I arrived into in Liverpool late and sat in my hotel room at 2am sipping a cold beer, as it was now technically my birthday and they’d fucked up my room so it was on the house! The one thing that was in my head? To remove these doubts about the value of drawing and to commit 100%.
This was prompted by a conversation I had on the deck of the ferry with one of a number of people who sparked up a conversation when he saw me drawing. I told him my plans and his reaction was that it was a selfless act. I let this settle but I was adamant that it wasn’t a selfless act. I was going out to help myself through some issues as much as I was going to help others. I knew this would be a didactic process where those that I met would help me as much if not more than anything I could do for them.
After stocking up on art supplies at Cass Art in Liverpool I set off for Dover. I arrived at Dover hoping to see the graffiti that had been scrawled across the White Cliffs of Dover reading ‘Refugees Welcome’ in response to local right-wing protests. However, after searching the cliffs and seeing no sign of them I had to conclude that the paint which had been described as being permanent in the UK tabloids was no longer there. That didn’t stop me doing a quick sketch as the ferry left the port:
As I sat on the ferry looking out at the busiest Channel in the world I felt awful that people felt that crossing this albeit short but perilous journey in ill-equipped vehicles was the best option they had. You may be able to see the UK from France but 500–600 boats pass through every day.
While the situation in the Channel is not as dire as that in the Mediterranean Sea it is getting worse. As security at the ports increases and drones are being deployed into the Eurotunnel refugees are increasingly turning to the seas.
Mainland Europe
Inside the camp
I’m glad the girls gave me directions to the camp or else I would never have found the place. After a rather heated conversation with some American volunteer at the entrance to the camp I arrived at the camp.
The Dunkirk camp is the only refugee camp in Europe to meet minimumhumanitarian standards. The camp which compromises 500 wooden shelters to accommodate a maximum of 1500 people and a number of communal areas was build by Medicine Sans Frontier (MSF) at a cost of €3.2million in March. While it wasn’t a nice place to be, it wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined.
As I walked down the main pathway that carves through the middle of the camps the only experience I had to compare it to was a caravan site, a really shitty caravan site. During a family trip camping around Scotland as a young boy one summer we arrived in a caravan and camp site in Bettyhill, in the very North of Scotland. It is still remembered by the family as the most miserable, depressing place we’d been and that was the feeling I had. There is something about the impermanence of a caravan site that engenders a certain attitude in people. For those who choose it as a holiday it can offer freedom and flexibility and a cheery disposition. Here the impermanence was, understandably causing tension and stress that you could see in the eyes of the people. As I walked through the camp my smiles were often returned with a hundred yard stare. I could tell in their eyes that hope was fading from them.
Everyone I spoke to in the camp told admitted that it is an improvement on the vermin, disease ridden camp that existed in Dunkirk previously. Though many of them still described it as like living in a prison. I could understand that. It occurred to me was how much the ‘houses’ reminded me of the Ai Weiwei’s installation S.A.C.R.E.D that I had seen at the Royal Academy in London which consisted of half size models of the prison that WeiWei was illegally detained in for 81 days.
This was the first drawing in the camp I drew. The little boy was out playing in the rain. I wish I knew his name and his story but his parents were nowhere to be seen.
Thankfully this girl was only playing in an abandoned wheelchair but it remained a powerful image nonetheless.
The previous night while chatting over beers with the volunteers I had been told that I had to meet the camps artist, a man named Peshawa. I was pointed in the direction of his house but he wasn’t there. While I was standing drawing the pictures of the kids above a man approached me with a soft smile. His English wasn’t great so we struggled to talk but I immediately recognised him as Peshawa. I was honoured that he invited me in to his ‘house’ to get out of the rain and to see some of his art. He was keen to look through my albeit rather empty sketchbook at this point.
We entered the wooden structure through a small door with a wooden pallet as a doorstep where we left our shoes and he offered me a cigarette. The house was a windowless wooden box with a plywood floor covered in a thin layer of foam and some blankets with a sleeping bag in the corner. I was told later that a lot of the houses actually never even got a plywood floor and the wooden structure just sat on the dirt and stones which meant that every time it rained their belongings were soaked.
So little light penetrated the wooden box that it was hard to focus on anything when I entered and it was hard to see it as a home. As I’ve said they are often compared to prisons but the overriding feeling I had was the same feeling I got whenever I’d stumbled across a homeless person who had been living somewhere hidden from plain sight for a long time.
The one ray of hope was the box of paints and the canvas and easel in the corner. The hopelessness of the situation, and the creativity continued outside the wooden structures.
No matter how much effort you put into making a place like this feel homely there is only so much you can do. It inevitably still looks like a prison. Actually it was worse than Ai WeiWei’s prison, at least he had a toilet and shower:
As he sat flicking through my drawings he was attracted to the sketch of the containers at Dublin ferry and I asked him if he would like to finish of the drawing with some paint. So we cracked out the watercolours and while he painted I sat drawing him:
Just in case you forgot, this is the picture that Peshawa was painting while I drew him:
While there was a lot of sadness and despair surrounding everything he did as soon as he picked up the paintbrush he started to radiate a gentle yet pervasive glow that was personified in the delicate handling of the paintbrush.
I have always known that drawing sparks conversations, every time I have sat drawing outdoors it has attracted some attention and invariably someone comes up looks over your shoulder and starts chatting. But, this was the first time that drawing had really broken down a language barrier and offered the space to connect and communicate at a deep level, and quicker.
This was the interaction that convinced me beyond any doubt that the simple act of drawing can offer value in such a situation.
After we had finished drawing he showed me a series of sketches in biro that were so full of energy but also so dark and layered with anger:
It turns out that they were drawn while he was locked up in Hungarian prison for 2 months on his journey to France.
After our drawing session, we headed across to the Children’s centre where my new friends were volunteering.
Throughout the whole trip there was always a lot of politics around volunteering and the impact, both positive and negative, that people can have parachuting in and out of these situations.
However, the one thing I can say definitively beyond any intellectualisation of the topic is that everywhere I looked were volunteers who radiated unconditional love and care.
Below is a picture of mother and daughter Mille and Lindsay sitting in the Children’s Centre in Dunkirk giving the kids some cuddles and attention:
The thing that struck me on entering was how quickly the young children jumped on you to give you a cuddle. While it is lovely, it was also a little concerning from a child protection point of view. I know that there is no chance my 3 year old son is going anywhere near a strange man or lady unless I am there and he feels comfortable.
This short experience in Dunkirk re-enforced the idea that often one of the biggest things we can give another person, whether a refugee or not, isn’t money or things but our undivided attention. I left Dunkirk with a renewed energy for using drawing not just as ‘reportage illustration’ but to provide a space in which to connect with people, if even just for a short period. To let them know they are seen and heard.
While I was in the Education Centre one of the Dad’s was drawing people’s names in Kurdish graffiti, so I decided to draw him while he wrote my name:
The most excitement and joy I witnessed when I was there was during a game the kids made up of balancing one of these balancing bird toys on various parts of their body:
This is a very quick gestural drawing, drawn from a selection of the kids balancing the bird on their toe.
While there was a lot of visible joy and happiness in the room there was also a lot of underlying sadness that you could see and feel in the quiet moments. I watched this young boy quietly play with the train set on his own and he had a distant look in his eye that I had seen in many of the adults since entering the camp.
After I drew this picture I was told by one of the volunteers that whenever a plane goes by over head this boy drops to the floor and covers his head with his hands.
Such a burden for such small shoulders
Towards the end of the day one of the young girls started to show signs of a fever and I caught this moment as one of the volunteers consoling her as she sat crying with her head in her hands.
I found out later that evening that the girl wouldn’t tell her parents that she was ill. In the camp medicine can only be given to children with the parents consent. It turned out that earlier that week her Mum had tried to commit suicide and the girl didn’t want to worry her anymore. This was such a burden for an 9 year old girl to carry on her shoulders.
As I was leaving I grabbed a kebab from the makeshift shop at the entrance to the camp. I lifted my head to look for somewhere to sit down and eat and for a moment I was convinced I’d seen my friend Wasim standing in the distance talking on a phone. This startled me and even after I quickly realised it wasn’t him the experience stayed with me for a long time. It was at that point that the whole situation became personal and connected with me at a deeper level. It is one thing to experience something like this through strangers but to think, if even for a moment, that someone close to you, someone you care for could be going through this changes you. It shook me deeply to my core and instantaneously changed how I viewed the whole situation.
Back on the road for a couple of days
I left Dunkirk in the car and set off on the journey to Subotica in Serbia on the Hungarian border where my friends were busy building temporary structures for the refugees.
All the way across Europe the sight of the lorries and their containers followed me always.
Kelebija, Serbia
I finally arrived in Serbia late on a Saturday night and while I was exhausted I was also excited to get up in the morning and get to the refugee camp.
The following morning I drove out the long straight dusty road that leads out of Serbia and into Hungary and just before I came to the border I stopped in the little border town of Kelebija.
Before leaving on the trip I had very little idea about the specifics of what my friends at The Timber Project were doing on the ground in Serbia. I had thought that they were working in the camps but it turns out that NGO’s are seriously restricted in the camps in Serbia and no permanent structures, no matter how temporary, were allowed in the camps. NGO’s that wanted to help had to do so carefully, sneaking in to distribute supplies. Otherwise they operated on the fringes of the camps.
The first day I arrived I was finding my feet and getting a feel for the situation. I had naively thought that I would be able to wander into the camp to speak to people and draw the situation but access to the camp was restricted. I was told it was because the camp was ‘in a transit zone’. I heard this a lot from volunteers but no one could tell me what it meant. It required a little more digging on my part and as my knowledge start to build I started to map out the area in my head (and sketchbook).
I was advised strongly not to go in to the camp. I had been told that recently a volunteer had been caught in the camp without their passport and was thrown out of the country. But this just made me more resolved to go in. I would just wait until towards the end of the trip incase things went sideways.
I was aware that I wouldn’t be able to move freely about the camp and sit drawing (as it simply attracted far too much attention) but I still wanted to go in. I wanted to learn more about the situation and see it with my own eyes.
Until then there was a lot to explore in the surrounding area.
For the time being I was a little disconnected as I was struggling to get beyond the language barriers to have any meaningful conversations but that didn’t stop me drawing as I was confident that it was through drawing that I would break down these barriers and connect with people.
The second morning I was there early as I just couldn’t sleep and it gave me an opportunity to explore a little as well as to sketch the area in preparation for the people waking.
The previous day I had seen the caravan down a side road nestled in the shelter provided from the sun by the trees. I had been told that this was where the refugees were able to charge their phones and gain access to wi-fi. The electricity was provided by a long extension cable coming from the local restaurant.
So by the time everyone was starting to rise I had the outline of this drawing sketched. And when I saw someone coming out of the caravan I went over to say hello and to show them my sketch and explain what I was up to.
This was my first introduction to the fantastic Tarek and Khaled from I Am Human Organisation (iHo) and they invited me over for some early morning coffee.
This is when I started to get a better understanding of the situation.
The first thing refugees are looking for when they arrive is power and connectivity. Connection and access to information. At first this surprised me a little but I quickly understood. They wanted to remain connected to the people they have left behind at home, to stay informed on the situation at home, many have been split up from their loved ones, and for many Google Maps was an essential tool in navigating the Balkan pass.
Inside the caravan there are phones charging everywhere.
I know that if Mark Zuckerburg was to see the the impact that Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram is having in keeping refugees connected he’d be a very happy billionaire.
Not only for staying connected with old friends but also new ones. Facebook groups are often the primary source of information and advice that refugees turn to.
And please, let’s all stop being surprised that refugees have phones.
At first glance it looks like the most important thing these guys provide is technological connectivity. However, after ten minutes of sitting with them I realise that the biggest benefit they provide is a connection to the local community and beyond the camp. Being Serbians who speak Arabic they are able to provide guidance and advice as well as run errands for. As Tarek told me “There are always good hearted people at the borders willing to help.” and it is his job to find them and work with them to bring about some relief for the refugees.
Kelebija (or the other camp at Horgos) was as far as people can come freely and they come up against the border with Hungary and the shiny new razor wire fence that runs the length of the border with Serbia. The Hungarian authorities entrust one refugee with the list of all the refugees who have requested asylum and at 7:30 every morning 15 people are told they will cross the border.
For the rest it is a waiting game.
Every day in Kelebija I’d see refugees coming and going on the bus. When I spoke to a young guy who was waiting at the bus stop he told me he would come up to the camp at the border and stick it out as long as he could in the hope of being one of the lucky 15. Someone, later told me that the reality was that 14 family members were accepted and only one single male per day. However, he told me it was tough and that he could only stomach it for so long before he had to go back to Subotica, the local town. Though he knew that if he returned to one of the ‘official’ camps that there was no chance of him moving forward in his journey. He simply didn’t have enough money to eat properly and relied on the tin of tuna fish and bottle of water that were provided by the authorities every day though some times he’d wake up to find no food around. For those like himself these trips back and forward made a dent in their already depleting resources.
A Human Connection
The real connection started happening when more of my attention was focused on drawing people. While it could have all happened quicker with an official translator I am happy that it happened organically.
This is Jodie from Syria, he was the first child I drew in Kelebija. As was often the case I was just starting a drawing when he ran up and started shouting “do me, do me!” and I was happy to oblige. Though it is always a little intimidating having the person standing in front of you while you try to capture them but children are always a great subject.
Two days after I drew this he told me that he was passing through to Hungary with his family. I have never been so happy not to see a child again.
As I finished the drawing he pulled out a ball and tied a string around his finger, it turned out that this was the only toy this boy had and he was delighted with it. Up until this point I had been intending to buy my 3 year old son some toys to take home but after this experience I decided to stick to what he had asked me for — a lollipop.
One of the biggest problems for me was still the language barrier. Without someone to interpret, my understanding of the situation would remain limited.
Later on that day I sat down to draw this picture when a young lad called Diar insisted on being my next model.
This prompted a consistent request for me to draw everyone gathered around the iHo caravan and Diar became my translator. Thus began a bit of a drawing marathon.
As was often the case I started off drawing Ahmed on the left when his friend Ato came along and I just incorporated him into the drawing.
The same thing happened with this drawing where the younger guys encouraged me to draw the older fella lying down, thankfully when he woke he found it very funny. I had almost finished an initial lay in with pencil when the guy who had started it off decided he wanted to be in the drawing as well.
Basel was keen to look ‘cool’ as he wanted to post the picture on his Facebook account. That meant no smiling :)
This afternoon was the first time I had seen women and children out in Kelebija, prior to that it had just been too hot for them to be out.
As a father who was expecting our second child soon I found the sight of new born babies in the camps heartbreaking and deeply moving.
This was when I realised just how much joy the people were getting from the drawing. When I was speaking to one of the refugees he told me it was simply a welcomed distraction from the monotony of waiting. He told me that the waiting was hard and he battled the boredom every day. With an empty stomach and little sleep…and his mind being all consumed with worry and problems left little room for anything else. None of the people I drew had ever been drawn before, in fact it has been my experience wherever I go. It is an intimate experience, it really requires the person drawing you to look very closely at you. To really absorb the shape of your eyes, the curve of your cheek and how your lips curl up when you smile.
Connecting with people at a deep individual level not only offers value in the moment to the people involved but I believe that out of this comes a very specific and unique artistic output. A softer, more personal capturing of people and the situation they are experiencing. The drawing offered the space for this to emerge in a way that photography wouldn’t have. Whereas a photograph captures a snapshot in time, a drawing emerges over an extended period of time.
Drawing on the side of the road
I was sitting by the side of the dusty, dirty road drawing one afternoon when all of a sudden I was surrounded by young children who all wanted to join in.
This young boy ran away and came back a couple of minutes later proudly beaming and showing me his own pens and started drawing me.
We swapped drawings:
The problem was that it was very hot that afternoon and there was no shelter from the sun so I had to wrap things up early. Not to mention that they had used up all the paper I’d brought along for the afternoon.
Just as I was leaving The Timber Project had finished building the structure of the Education Centre and iHo were busy filling it with everything needed. I am sad that I wasn’t there to see it open but I am very happy that the kids now have a nice safe place to play and learn.
The official camp in Subotica
The following day I decided to visit the official one stop camp on the edge of Subotica.
I didn’t get far in my sketching as I was quickly and rudely ejected from the camp by the Commissariat officer under a barrage of questions yelled at me in Serbian.
As you can imagine he wasn’t too happy for me to stand outside the camp and draw him while he yelled at me in Serbian.
I spoke to a number of people on the way to and from the camp. This family from Syria were walking back to the bus station where many refugees congregated as NGO’s are able to operate more freely.
They had decided to leave the official camp as it was overcrowded and dangerous. The previous night there had been violence and fighting among Afghan and Moroccan refugees.
I was again left with an uneasy feeling at being denied access to a camp.
When so much barbed wire is used to keep people in and others out we are sending a message and it is not a message I felt comfortable with.
This watchtower on the Serbian/Hungarian border, a relic from the Cold War re-enforced the uneasy feeling in my stomach.
The more I got to know the situation on the ground and the more I connected with the people the more I was haunted by the words of Viktor Frankl. I was listening to the audiobook of Man’s Search for Meaning and I couldn’t get over how much of what he was saying about his experience of the Holocaust resonated with the situation in the the refugee camps.
Going into the camp
Towards the end of the trip I put my hood up, my head down and walked confidently into the camp. I didn’t end up having any trouble but I also didn’t draw or take any pictures. I just observed.
A sprawling makeshift village of shelters rises from the barren dusty land all along the high razor wire fence separating the border. What space exists between shelters is taken up mostly with rubbish. While the refugees are given bottled water every day it doesn’t appear as if anyone has responsibility for cleaning them up. Two taps with running water, some portaloos and a big container of water to wash your hands. Family’s hang there children’s clothes on the barbed wire to dry in the sun. It is definitely a place you wouldn’t choose to hang around in any longer than you had to.
I watched as a man spoke to his cousin through the barbed wire. His cousin was being processed for asylum by the Hungarian authorities and was currently being kept in a portakabin prison that backed on to the border fence. He had been in there for 16 days so far, they are legally allowed to keep them for 28 days.
There are no shower units in the camp. The local restaurant owner provided a hose to allow people to wash themselves but it isn’t enough. Many of the refugees refused to shake my hand as they were ashamed of the dirt. One refugee told me that he hadn’t had a shower in two weeks and was most affected by the lack of dignity as he was by the smell.
The one thing that surprised me and I guess shouldn’t have is that there are real visible divides between the haves and the have nots in the camp. You can see that while some of the refugees are surviving almost exclusively on the tinned tuna that is handed out daily there are those cooking up meals on little stoves and barbecues. As you walk around you can see the difference in quality between the shelters people have. Some family’s are living in shelters that consist of nothing more that sticks and some blankets while others have large tents.
The following night there was heavy rain shower and while ponchos were handed out many of the refugees shelters were flooded and some of the smaller, less sturdy ones were destroyed.
This was a stark reminder of the winter that would be descending soon. Many of the people here are simply not prepared for the cold wet spell that is coming.
This is definitely not a place you want to hang around any longer than you have to.
Within a few hours drive of Subotica you have passed through Hungary and are soon in the beautiful lush land of Austria and it can be easy to quickly forget that there was such atrocities happening so close by.
However, the lovely warm welcome we received at Calais ferry port reminded me of the deep systemic problems that continue to plague the world.
I fear we will look back on this time in humanity’s existence with shame and regret. Shame that we let it happen on our doorstep and regret that we didn’t do enough to stop it.
Reflection Eternal
As I sat on the ferry from Holyhead in Wales to Dublin I sat down and reflected on the journey.
So much had happened in such a short period of time that I knew that much of the meaning and personal transformation would only actually emerge as I got home and was really able to sit with and digest everything that had happened. The difficult bit about this is keeping everything in perspective. It is too easy to romanticise such an experience. When looking back at the experience it is easy to convince myself and others in conversation that everything was great and deeply moving and profound. However, I think it is also important from a personal point of view to remember that in the moment as I was experiencing it there were highs and lows. It is worth remembering the joy that a drawing session brought to everyone who was part of the experience but harder to remember, and admit, the physical and emotional toll that a lot of it took on me. To remember all the good in the people and the situation but not to forget the violence and aggression that constantly surrounded the situation.
The hard bit as I return home is in holding all of it in my head as the time passes and the memories slip. As I return back to daily life it is all too easy to get caught up in my own problems. Out of sight out of mind.
I set out trying to achieve too much from an artistic point of view. I thought that I would be able to both draw drawings that could be worthy of exhibiting. I am in conversations with The Irish Refugee Council exploring interesting ways to share the drawings here in Ireland. But I also thought that I might be able to carve out an interesting visual narrative beyond this simple linear narrative of my journey.
Man who draw two rabbits draws neither.
It’s not that the two are mutually exclusive but to really do them justice I needed to be better prepared and to focus my attention fully on achieving these goals. At a number of key points throughout the trip I made conscious decisions to follow my gut and to help people rather than putting in the research and exploration required to build up the material for a story.
As with many of the nice clean theoretical ideas concocted in my head while sitting in my cosy house in front of a computer or notebook, once this came into contact with reality the nice clean delineated borders broke down and everything stopped being black and white and became more grey….or should I say brown. But this is good. Sterile and clean is boring. The interesting things in life always happen in the brown area between boxes
Did I get the slap in the face I needed?
No, but that’s ok.
It’s not one of these revelationary tales whereby my experience has woken me up to all the beauty inherent in life. I’m not all of a sudden walking in the country feeling every blade of grass under my feet like some Zen monk.
For me it wasn’t about a deep Aha moment that revealed itself and the infinite beauty of all life to me. I am still sad and suicidal thoughts still visit me at night. What did emerge was a deep mindset shift in how I look at myself and the world. I had been looking for an end-point, the cessation of these thoughts but what I got was a change in perspective, a turning point. What I am learning now is to accept that just because I have glimpsed this alternative world view that the negative, habitual thoughts and actions will not occur again.
I know that this experience will both expand in my consciousness as well as fold in to a wider story, a denser story of personal struggle, turmoil and ultimately growth.
So what now?
Ultimately it will fold in to the greater narrative that I was planning before I left about my personal struggle with Elhers Danlos Syndrome in a graphic memoir. As such this experience will become as much about my personal journey as it will be about any individual refugees or the wider crisis.
This mindset shift has awoken me to the suffering that is going on in my own backyard. I spent so much time chatting with people who are struggling to make the journey to the UK & Ireland. I want to go out with my pens and paper and explore the situation of refugees who make it to the Ireland. One of the politically controversial direct provision centres is just 30km from my house in Cork. So I plan on heading there with pen and paper in hand. I want to go and speak to the refugees who have been in these temporary centres for a decade.
