Saying goodbye

And then it was all over.

Even though it felt to me like no time at all had passed, I was going home. I was leaving the little rows of sand houses, the sight of colorful mehefas making their way up and down the streets, and the goats that seem to eat everything they find lying around (including Coca Cola boxes). But what hurt the most was the thought of leaving the people who had for four months opened their hearts to me, and let me think of one of the world`s most inhospitable places as home.

Before I left my house in the small village of Klæbu in the center of Norway, four months seemed to stretch out in front of me like eternity. I kept asking myself the same questions over and over. Was this the right thing to do? Did I really want to spend almost half a year isolated in the world’s biggest desert? Even as the car was driving us away from the Tindouf airport I felt a tight knot in the middle of my stomach as I looked out into the black desert night.

And my nervousness was perhaps in its place. Our stay in the camps was by no means a vacation. We were met by problems and challenges on a daily basis, both due to the harsh desert climate and the fact that we were living in an unfamiliar situation. Everything was strange and different; the culture, the language, even the daily routines.

Despite this, as time passed, I became more and more certain I had made the right choice in coming to the camps. The problems and challenges did not disappear, but as time passed and we understood more about the people and the culture around us, daily challenges became easier to overcome. Today I feel a great admiration of the people living in the refugee camps. Even though they are living in a harsh climate in a forgotten conflict, their sense of humor and strength made a big impression on me.

So time continued to pass, and each day I felt like I was learning something new, until all of a sudden (and a lot sooner than I had expected) our time in the camps was over.

The only thing left for me to do was to say goodbye. But how do you say goodbye when you know you are about to go back to a different reality, a different world. How do you say goodbye to a friend who has walked for an hour just to talk to you for 15 minutes one last time? Or a grandmother who points her finger between you and her grandchild and says “kif-kif – You are the same to me”. How do you leave to go home, when you know you are leaving a homeless people behind?

For me it was a hard thing to do, but I felt better known I was going home with a purpose. In Norway hardly anyone knows about the conflict in Western Sahara. Even though I was leaving the camps, I was taking with me the voices of all the people we had met, and I will try to use the months and years to come telling their stories.

Saying goodbye to our last host-family!

Me, Andrea2, Dæhaba and Momna