Last night a terrible fire ruined a house in our block. Luckily nobody died or ended up in hospital. I thought of how easily life can change in just a minute. In our block, most houses are built of wood and a fire would easily spread between houses, hadn’t the fire guards been there to fight the fire. Our life is depending on others in many ways…

Last year a major fire kept a region of Sweden in a constant terror for a couple of weeks. Some people lost their homes and had to flee for their lives. Others tried in vain to protect their homes, but in the end they had to obey authorities who demanded everyone in the area to evaquate. Now, a year after the fire, the landscape reminds me of scenes from Tolkien…

This year has been a year of migration and many people have moved on to a safer place. On TV we have followed dangerous voyages at sea, fights between guards and refugees, hungry children pleading for food and desperate parents fighting for their children’s right to a meal. We have also had a chance to watch border control preventing people from passing the border of Hungary and other European states. News on TV show interviews and reports from refugee camps all over Europe, try to show who that typical refugee may be…

I think of the many Swedes who only one hundred years ago, urged to leave our country because they had no chance to lead the life they wanted to. Most of them moved to the USA, some to South America and a few to Russia. This very moment, my two daughters watch ”Kristina från Duvelmåla” which is a musical by Bjorn and Benny (ABBA). The musical is based on a novel by the Swedish author Wilhelm Moberg, who wrote four novels about the Swedish emigration to America in the late 19th century. Moberg’s books are available in English and very interesting to read if you don’t know anything about the Swedish people who moved to mainly Minnesota in the USA. The musical however, is mainly dealing with a certain family and what happened to them during their struggle to find a new life ”over there”. The music is catching and the lyrics makes you want to sing along, but underneath is a message to everyone in this world; We only live once. If our lives aren’t good enough, we’re the ones who need to make that change!

I meet them every day in my professional life as a teacher of Swedish as a Second Language, the refugees… I don’t think there is any reason at all for us, you and me, to say no to those who leave wars and famine, poverty and lack of work in order to make a living here.

We ought to help out as much as we can. We need to turn to ourselves with the thought; wouldn’t we move if everything we cherished in life was taken away from us? Wouldn’t we move if our home wasn’t a safe place anymore? I think for myself that if I met a completely unfamiliar place where I knew nobody, a friend would be a welcomed feature in my new life. I try to be that friend and wish for myself that I never will have to leave everything behind for another country. Be the friend in someone’s life! ❤