# ENTRY 9

 

This has been a project that has enriched me a lot, not only due to the academic information that I have acknowledged, but also because I got immersed in a topic that I didn't know much about.. Regarding academic writing I started paying more attention to the structure of my pieces of writing , I used to pay more attention to the content rather than the structure of it, and I realized both things are equally important. In connection to the topic chosen for this project, I found it really interesting and the best thing of all, I think that many peoplewereable to empathise and understand better their situation, The most important thing , in my opinion, was that nobody lives in bad conditions because they are happy and they like living like that, and this is extensive to refugees as well as other people who do not have the same opportunities  that we have.

We Refugees

BY Benjamin Zephaniah

I come from a musical place
Where they shoot me for my song
And my brother has been tortured
By my brother in my land.

I come from a beautiful place
Where they hate my shade of skin
They don’t like the way I pray
And they ban free poetry.

I come from a beautiful place
Where girls cannot go to school
There you are told what to believe
And even young boys must grow beards.

I come from a great old forest
I think it is now a field
And the people I once knew
Are not there now.

We can all be refugees
Nobody is safe,
All it takes is a mad leader
Or no rain to bring forth food,
We can all be refugees
We can all be told to go,
We can be hated by someone
For being someone.

I come from a beautiful place
Where the valley floods each year
And each year the hurricane tells us
That we must keep moving on.

I come from an ancient place
All my family were born there
And I would like to go there
But I really want to live.

I come from a sunny, sandy place
Where tourists go to darken skin
And dealers like to sell guns there
I just can’t tell you what’s the price.

I am told I have no country now
I am told I am a lie
I am told that modern history books
May forget my name.

We can all be refugees
Sometimes it only takes a day,
Sometimes it only takes a handshake
Or a paper that is signed.
We all came from refugees
Nobody simply just appeared,
Nobody’s here without a struggle,
And why should we live in fear
Of the weather or the troubles?
We all came here from somewhere.

In my opinion, Benjamin Zephaniah’s poem ”We Refugees” tries to raise awareness about the reasons why people become refugees and emphasizes the fact that any person can be forced to end up being one.  An interesting point is that  the author makes reference to the place where they come from with positive adjectives such as musical, beautiful or great, but, right after this, it makes the contrast with a negative aspect that has driven people to leave that land. Zephaniah also mentions the responsibles for this problem,apart from natural hazards,  he mentions “mad leaders' ' meaning powerful people who sign a paper or shake hands with a treaty or arrangement that,in many cases, result in money and power in a few hands and suffering for a whole community. It is important to understand that nobody is free from becoming a refugee, any of us in any place of the world ant any time can be affected by those who should serve their people.

REFUGEES

By Brian Bilston

They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way

In this poem,Bilston allows two antagonist points of view to coexist depending on the direction you read the poemWhen we read the poem for the first time we find a segregating and derogatory perspective towards refugees. It was hard to read it without the feeling of anger arising from me.Another possibility is reading the poem bottom- up, in this case the meaning changes and we get the opposite idea. There is an intention to understand the way refugees feel and what should everybody do so as to make them feel better, to create empathy towards those people that were forced to take an extreme  decision. I do Agree with this last approach, it is already too hard to leave everything behind so as to face indifference and mistreatment from the people of the place they went looking for a better living escaping from death and hunger. We have one poem and two different possitions twards the theme, I have taken my position, what about you?

Paragraph Essay Structure