There Is More Than One Way of Dying, Essay Example

What role can art play in effecting social change?

Art, as a medium for human expression, is something that identifies the capacity of humans to think and present their ideas through visual mediums that basically allow them to see things clearly through distinct presentations that affect others. In the process of interpreting such art, the audiences are able to formulate their own ideas about the piece, hence, interpreting not only its value but its capacity to represent the situations happening in the society during the time when the art pieces were created.

In the case of historical insistence on the values of different arts, it could not be denied how historians saw the value of digging deeper into the biographical detail of the creator, hence aiming to understand not only the piece created but also that of the person behind the said creation. Most often than not, artists represent their ideas basing on how they are motivated to work on an art that is closely related to their perceptions about the society and how the society is likely to advance forward towards the most compelling changes that humans want to take into account especially in adjusting their lifestyles to the aspect of modernization that strongly implicate transformation not only on their living condition but also on their behavior towards life.

Usually, the way artists share their ideas through the pieces that they create identify well with the assumption of how much they are able to affect the thoughts of those living around them. This is why the existence of revolutionists often comes from groups of individuals who are inspired by a particular work of art that directly created a connection between them and the desire to push for insisting on what they want to happen and making a move towards such desire. This is how artists themselves become fully equipped with the power to identify well with the way they are supposedly making a definite change on the thinking of the people surrounding them, thus gradually changing human history at the same time.

What can students, academics, policy makers, and activists learn from testimonies of individuals who live(ed) in refugee camps?

Refugee camps often present the least comfortable situations that any individual could be subjected to. Nevertheless, since the desire to survive is clear, individuals subjected to such situation learn how to adapt to the system. The desire for survival is much stronger than that of the desire to live in a fully-supported life that is most often than not the common ground where humans often find themselves evaluating their lifestyle and questioning their ideas behind the implicative effects of development and how such thoughts directly give them a better option of understanding life fully.

Refugee camps present distinct challenges that are most often than not considered to be essential in testing the survival skills of the people trying to live in it beyond the existence of meager conditions. From this point, students, academics, policy makers as well as activists would learn so much from it in a way that would define their understanding of what good intentions are about and how they would be able to improve the ways of living of those who are experiencing points of oppression and depression in the society.

Seeing how people tend to survive amidst the emergence of such conditions in their lives shall provide the society’s authorities and supposedly powerful individuals to take note on how they can make life better through imposing policies, rules and systems of living that could help not only those who are in refugee camps, but all those living in the society as a whole especially that their capacity to survive life is evident on the desire that they have towards enjoying life’s most important sources of happiness and satisfaction.

What was the psychological and social impact of camp life on refugees in Kakuma? What was the impact on gender relations?

Men and women ought to be complementary individuals who are supposed to use their skills and strengths to compensate for each other’s weaknesses. Relatively, with the need to survive, men and women in refugee camps entail to take responsibility over matters that they can have control over. It could be understood that the emergence of such instinct allows men and women to survive even in the most adverse conditions that they have to face. Considerably, this is how the people in the refugee camps in Kakuma survived. Learning from their plight and how they have become adaptive towards the situation they were in directly allowed them to become a compensation for their counterpart’s weaknesses. In a way, it could be recognized that it is through this that the refugees were able to see the worth of each other in the survival that they hope to attain, thus making it easier for them to hope for a better future that awaits them.

Refugee camps do provide distinct sets of challenges to people being subjected to the survival lifestyle it offers. Since the people are taking refuge, they do not have any other choice but to get off from their comfort zones and become more extensively involved on how they are likely to become more connected to the assumption of what good living is about and how assumptive survival is able to create a definite turn of situations that would push people to welcome the options of growth, development and progress accordingly from the mere desire of surviving everyday life.

Works Cited

Feyissa, Abebe with Rebecca Horn. 2008. There is More than One Way of Dying: An Ethiopian Perspective on the Effects of Long-Term Stays in Refugee Camps. In Hollenbach (ed.) Refugee Rights: Ethics, Advocacy and Africa. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.

W.H. Auden. Refugee Blues. Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 by WH Auden published by Faber.http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/poetry/poetry_against1.html/ Retrieved on January 22, 2015.

Adichie, Chimamanda. 2009. The American Embassy. In C. Adichie, The Thing Around Your Neck (short stories) London: Fourth Estate.

Hollenbach, David. 2008. Introduction: Human Rights as an Ethical Framework for Advocacy. In Hollenbach (ed.) Refugee Rights: Ethics, Advocacy and Africa. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press.