My name is André Liohn. I’m a third generation Brazilian citizen that has been living in Norway for the past 10 years.
As a grandson of European immigrants I always have wandered how I would be received in Europe if I one day had decided to leave Brazil and move to the land of my ancestors.
My ancestors had no romantic reasons to leave Europe. In reality they and millions of other fellow European had no other choice. It was a question of surviving. At their time Europe was a very different place than today. The term “Homeland” had a different importance in the life of people like my ancestors. Citizens from almost every European corner were forced to leave their birthplaces escaping if not from wars and ethnical persecution or even from poverty and unemployment, they needed to leave behind all the social ignorance and the human depression that covered the old continent.
The Americas in need of cheap labor and with the project of increasing their countries “white” populations saw it as an opportunity and welcomed the so called European Immigrants. But in reality their were not immigrants, they were refugees! My ancestors were people leaving Europe driven by necessity and not by romantic dreams like those adventurous souls from so many films about the European exodus.
I remember the day I arrived in Norway for the first time. I was 23 and I had a job in a very small place called Jassåsen, about 700 km north from the capital Oslo. I was tired and I had no money to travel so I was hitchhiking to that place all from Switzerland.
The first person that I meet was a truck driver that accepted to take me with him. He asked about the reason I had to go to a such small place that even he had never heard about and for how long I pretended to stay there. I was going there just because I needed that job and that job had organized me a precious work permit and I had no plans about how long I would stay there. I was open for everything and I just wanted to see what would happen in the future.
During our short time together he told me some things about Norway. He told me with proud and enthusiasm about his relatives in the United States. He explained to me how almost 500 thousand Norwegians left the country in the last century, to create Nordic settlements in the north regions of the United States of America. He was proud of it.
I remember that this conversation made a great impression on me. I was happy for many reasons; j was close to my destination after a lounge and exhaustive travel. I was in a new country, the weather and the nature was beautiful and most of all, I was happy because I could find my self in the story that I just had been told. I could fantasize how well I would be received in Norway. After all, the people from that country knew how it was to be an immigrant and they were proud of it. I couldn’t wait to arrive and start to know the people from that country.
After 10 years living in Norway, I can’t remember how many times the same story was and still is repeated to me. I saw and still I see so many people with the same expression of enthusiasm talking about how the immigrants from that small country, made influence over the North American society and history. Yes, the Norwegians are and most be proud about it.
What I haven’t seen is the same level of enthusiasm from people when they talk about the influence that people like me can do to the Norwegian society. Sometimes I feel like there is no proud about being an immigrant.
I think if my ancestors would need to find a new place to call home today the world would not be so generous and the walls separating their dreams of future from their reality of life would be much higher.
My ancestors got the unique chance to move forward and leave suffering behind. They found a new land. Another man’s land that they were aloud to call home. In Brazil they found means and opportunities to grow their family… my family…
So are many modern immigrants or might we call them refugees trying to do today. They need the same chance to move forward, but It doesn’t seams that the same Europe that for so short time ago produced maybe the major exodus in human history are interested to give that people the same chance that my ancestors got from Brazil.
If we would compare, the conditions that Europe has today, are far more stabile than any other country in the Americas had for a century ago.
Even with all its deficiencies, The European Union is a state of the art achievement in diplomacy. The community is represented in all possible sphere and people have the right and the means to expose their opinions.
It is not strange that with time, Europe has turned to be a target destination for people like myself, interested to come back to the land of my ancestors but also Europe’s poor neighbors coming from the east and from the old European colonies in Africa. We are all trying to find a place here. Why? Because we today have the exactly same reasons that my ancestors had. I think the reason is as simple as so.
I’m happy with the life I have. I have a beautiful little family; my wife, my daughter and me. My carrier as a photographer gives me the opportunity to come close and to know places and people that I normally wouldn’t know with any other carrier. And I know, much of the good I have today was made possible because I have conquested the rights to make use of the opportunities from the European social development.
I have now decided to come closer and to know other people trying to conquest the same. But this people for many reasons do not have the same conditions that I had to start from.
They come from the old Italian / British colony Somalia. Most of them can’t just take a plane to Europe as I did. The people from Somalia is suffering with long-lasting civil war that the rest of the world are not talking much about it.
With no conditions to make their lives better in their own country and with no hope to get a legal consent to immigrate to Europe, they put their lives in risk and start a journey heading the dream of a better life. Illegally they cross many countries in Africa before arriving in Libya risking to be captured by local authorities or killed if not by the same authorities or by the diverse criminals along the way than possibly to end as other thousands that dies every year as they try to cross the Mediterranean Sea in rusty boats.
My goals are;
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to meet these people in their country (Somalia) and know their motivations;
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follow one individual through this voyage where they put their own lives in risk;
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Create a video documentary and expose it to the public to promote awareness about the Somali exodus;
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Encourage public to fight against the discrimination of refugees in Europe;
I will use this blog as a diary and I will update it as often as possible.
See you in Europe!
Cheerio!
Andre
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