Drawing a better future
Ali Reza just wants a better life for himself and his beloved family, a life where he and his brother can go to school without fear
- Available in:
- Bosanski/Hrvatski/Srpski
- English
In mid-October 2020, a visibly underaged boy knocked on the door of the CWS container in Lipa camp. On his way from Sarajevo to Bihać, he found himself in Lipa, camp designated for the accommodation of adult men. Those days the police restricted the movement of refugees and migrants from Lipa to Bihać, so he was accompanied by the police into the camp. This brave and resourceful boy asked the camp residents for information on who could help him to be placed in an adequate place for his age. CWS legal guardians were regularly identifying unaccompanied children and providing support in Lipa camp.
On that rainy day, the boy came to the CWS container accompanied by two adult men. He seemed eager to meet the CWS guardian. At the first glance and smile, it was clear that this was a special boy who, upon his arrival in the CWS container, managed to impress the guardian with his intelligence and talent. The procedure of securing a place in one of the camps for unaccompanied children took a long time, and in order to make the boy safe he stayed in the CWS container waiting for approval for accommodation and transport. In addition to hot tea, the boy was offered a drawing board and papers. Seemingly unrelated elements that he drew began to line up, and each drawn character showed that this fifteen-year-old boy was incredibly talented and dedicated painter. While drawing, the boy talked to his guardian about his life, about the journey from Afghanistan to Bihac and about his brother with whom he started his journey from Afghanistan a year ago. The boy looked frightened and kept mentioning his brother. He was separated from his brother the night before arriving in Lipa when the police caught them in an abandoned house and took *Ali Reza to Lipa. He kept saying he didn't know how to find him because he didn't have a phone. While trying to secure accommodation for Ali Reza, the guardian, in communication with other guardians in the field, received the information that made everyone happy, especially the boy. While Ali Reza was staying in the CWS container in Lipa, another CWS guardian at the Service for Foreigners’ Affairs attended his brother's statement and accommodation was found for both of them in the Sedra camp. Ali Reza, although separated from his brother only one night, was looking forward to meeting him at the Sedra camp, and he left a trace of his stay in Lipa, beautiful drawings.
Five months later, Ali Reza is still with his one-year-older brother at Camp Sedra. A very talkative and intelligent, he helps other boys with translation and actively participates in the social life of camp. He plays football, draws and paints, plays cricket, runs in the morning, is interested in table tennis and learns foreign languages and cooking. He also regularly goes to school in Ostrozac with other children from the camp. He has been appointed with CWS guardian in Sedra. He says about life in Afghanistan and the reason for going to the game: “We lived in Baghlan province which is located in the north of Afghanistan and almost all of Baghlan is under Taliban control. The Taliban are against our education and normal life and normal living conditions, and they want us to join their Jihad which they think is right, and take up arms to fight with them against our government and America. Our government could not give us a chance for a normal life, it did not manage to provide even the minimum security”. Ali Reza just wanted a better life for himself and his beloved family, a life where he and his brother can go to school without fear. “My brother and I started a journey that I later learned was called a game, and our game is really a difficult life experience that is very hard to describe in words and that I don’t like to talk about. Sometimes the police caught and beat us, sometimes we couldn't sleep because we didn't have anything to eat and there was no food anywhere, sometimes we were thirsty while sometimes we couldn't sleep because of the extreme cold. Lots of bad memories and few good ones!” Ali Reza has good memories of Greece, of nice climate there and the Greek people that did not call migrants bad names. In Greece, he spent 10 months, and there he met a family from India who helped him improve his artistic abilities. After Greece, he and his brother spent 3 weeks in Serbia. When he had just crossed the border into Bosnia, one family gave him a jacket because he had nothing but an undershirt on. He will never forget that. Before Bihać, Ali Reza and his brother have stayed in camps in Sarajevo, and in October the previous year, they came to Bihać. On their way, they saw numerous fights, thefts, and all those bad situations from which they escaped from their home country - Afghanistan.
The support provided to Church World Service is part of the wider support, for the project/intervention “EU special measures to Support the Response to the Refugee and Migrant Situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)” in partnership with UNICEF BIH and funded by the EU. Ali Reza is grateful to the guardians of CWS for finding him accommodation in Sedra and transferring him from Lipa which is definitely not a camp for unaccompanied children. “In Sedra I draw and paint, not so well but I try very hard to one day become a professional painter. I play football and run in the morning, learn foreign languages, learning how to cook and I play table tennis in which I am not bad and I am very sad that we don't have a table tennis table. One day I will become a professional footballer and I want to keep drawing and painting until I become a top artist. Maybe my dreams will come true.”
