Saturday, February 13, 2016

#289 Marie-Ange’s Ginen- Marilene Phipps


#289 Marie-Ange’s Ginen- Marilene Phipps

Immigration politics has often been blind to horrible realities. Imagine leaving your home, your family, your culture, leaving your whole life behind. You crowd into a leaky, rickety boat with no money and little food. Your chance of survival is equal to that of an awful death. Now imagine what life must be like to think this path is a better option.

“Each one of us here had paid our fare with all we had left that we could call our own. In some ways, we had also paid with the whole of our lives and of our parents’ lives before us, because it took the slow unfolding of all these life stories in order for fate to have brought us to that point, that day, to go up to that boat.”

The only you have left in the world is hope. Hope of making it across the sea, hope of not dying, hope of finding something that is actually worth making this trip for.

“There was silence among us, because we were beyond questioning, beyond speech. We were without chains, yet unable to rise. Rising would have only exposed our complete impotence.”

Notable Passage: “The winds have arms that don’t let go, that howl at their extremities, and that will bleed all night for this catch if they have to.”



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