Coming To America

Somali refugees, like other refugees in Africa, were dying for going to developed countries like America and Europe. Because we were refugees living in camps, with no enough food and water, we all had a high ambition of getting a better life somewhere else in the world. Living in a refugee camp was nothing just a matter of life and death.
We were all aware that North America and Europe were the only places on earth that we could get a better life and a lasting peace. We spent most of our time thinking and competing how to travel to those above mentioned countries. We were in a bitter compitition, because we all became sick and got a fake disease called "Buufis".

The term Buufis, as we call it, wasn't part of the Somali language before the outbreak of the Somali civil war. Buufis. which means mind occupy, was a new word that only Somali refugees, especially the young, use every day and night. No one really knows how that new word entered into our language, but since we wern't actually mentally sick.

Most of us beleive that Buufis was the proper word to use in this case. I,among of those Somali refugees living in Kenya, spent most of my time and energy to find a way, before my friends do, to travel to America or Europe. I wasn't actually consumed with jealousy when I said I wanted to leave before my pals do, but that was a life.

I wanted to make sure that everything will go well for me and that I would, no matter how, win the competition. All of my friends, some living with me and some living in other camps, were on the same boat, but it wasn't easy for all of us to make our dreams come true. We were just poor refugees who were struggling to get our daily bread, and yet we were going head to head with each other and we were wishing everyone else to be left behind.

After living in trials and tribulations for a long time in Kenya, where life was in dire straits, my parents got an opportunity to go to America, the land for the free. It was actually my grandmother who came to my parents rescue and helped them out from Utanga, a refugee camp near Mombasa.

Now I'm here, so are most of my families, and I wish good luck for those left behind. Sorry, I wasn't actually mean but I was one of those who got the so-called Buufis disease. The Buufis is gone now but I got a true disease called a homesick. I wish we will all go back home one day and help build our beloved country.