Coming home trying to describe what I felt there, I can only say that this place is hell and the people staying here come from places even worse. But this is the only hell where angels live.

Here, living in the middle of trash, sleeping in tents that weren’t made to resist the -2 degrees that February brought, I met the nicest, warmest, most open and conscious people I have met in my life. In between the shivers and waiting, you could find the biggest smiles, the most thankful faces, helping hands and open hearts. 

I took with me two stories that gave me hope and made me promise myself I will come back. And until I do, I will find ways for the world to know what is happening there, so we start forcing the policy changes that are so needed.

The first person I met offered me something that I have been looking for since I left my country. He gave me hope and left me with a sense of resilience. Because in the end, like he said: “it won’t last forever, nothing in life lasts forever, especially the bad things”. He tells me this after the horrible journey trying to get here, living in the inhumane conditions being here and having just heard that his interview for asylum has been postponed for another 9 extra months. 9 EXTRA MONTHS. And still, he tells me with pain in his voice, “it’s unfair, but it's fine, cause it won’t last forever.” He also tells me that while it lasts he will keep teaching English to his friends and volunteer as an interpreter. He is everything that’s good in the world, living in a place that portrays our biggest flaws as society: the lack of empathy, fear of differences, money valued more than life, the unknown history, the single story and so on. He is an example of the fight that a good heart does, in a hard environment. 

We can all be good people no matter the reality we live in. We just have to learn to put us before me.

After this, I met a man with a limping leg and thankful heart. We met him while we were picking trash. He came to tell us he couldn’t help cleaning but that he was so thankful for our job there. We ask him what happened to his leg. Apparently he has a metal prosthesis and the -2 degrees of the night before left him in so much pain he could barely walk. But in here that is not optional: either you walk to pick up your daily ration or you don’t eat. He took me back to the time when my dad got surgery on his knee. Even though he was in a warm house under the loving care of my mom applying heat to his wounds, he was still in pain. I just couldn’t imagine how this guy survived the cold night and still has so much warmed in his heart thanking us for picking trash like we were doing so much. 

He left me thinking how much he is like my parents, how I could be one of the shivering kids if it wasn’t for the fact that I was lucky enough to be born in another country and mostly in my family. This means that the only thing that differs us “the lucky ones'' from them, is whatever decisions were made by the universe right before we were born that sent us to a whole different reality. So keep that in mind: it could’ve been you, your family, a friend. So let's start treating these people as if they are. Let's fight for policy changes like it was our sister whose rights were being violated. Let's open our hands to welcome them, as if it were our parents or kids coming home after a long time. Let's understand that they are as human as us. That way, no human right can be called a right until it protects us all. Until then, human rights are just the privilege of “The lucky ones”.