Jada Riley
Home is a place where you can be yourself unapologetically. It is somewhere that makes you feel loved, valued, and respected. Unfortunately, war, religious persecution, political turmoil, and natural disasters have forcibly displaced 80 million people, leaving them without a place to call home. As can be seen in The Girl Who Smiled Beads, not having a home is detrimental to one’s physical and psychological well-being. In the memoir, Wamariya recalls how physically demanding homelessness was on her body. She describes losing all of her toenails and catching lice at age six, then nearly dying of malaria at age ten. Wamariya also details an ongoing battle with hunger, malnourishment, and dehydration. She describes waiting in line for five hours to receive maize, which was impossible to cook and often led to constipation. Wamariya also describes the two-hour trek to the water pump and the hour-long wait to get to the front of the line. Like Wamariya, asylum seekers from all over the world must survive the wear and tear that being on the run places on their bodies. Nourishing the body and protecting it against disease, rape, attack, and death is an overwhelming burden that refugees have little help in bearing.
As if enduring physical trauma isn’t difficult enough, refugees must also try to overcome many of the psychological traumas we have discussed in class—PTSD, depression, and anxiety, to name a few. In The Girl Who Smiled Beads, Wamariya explains that living as a refugee caused her to grow “callous and cynical,” believing that all acts of kindness came with a price (35). She became numb to violence, uncomfortable with affection, and fearful of abandonment. Wamariya also lost parts of her humanity and identity. On page 42 of her memoir, she reduces herself to “a negative, a receptacle of need.” Later on the author also says, “When you’re traumatized, your sense of self, your individuality, is beaten up. Your skin color, your background, your pain, your hope, your gender, your faith, it’s all defiled. Those essential pieces of yourself are stolen” (220). These quotes suggest that while her physical wounds may have healed, Wamariya’s psychological wounds were fresh. Asylum alone could not suture up psychological wounds that cut six years deep. Luckily, Wamariya was able to find a new home. She regained the pieces of herself that were lost, and discovered new pieces in the process. Most importantly, Wamariya was able to make peace with her past, allowing her to blossom into the joyful woman she is today.