"A bundle of belongings isn't the only thing that refugees bring to a country’, this is a famous quote by Nobel Prize winning physicist Albert Einstein.
Kenya is among many countries that have had a long history of welcoming people from neighbouring states, fleeing war and persecution. Developed countries have also put in place policies that welcome refugees and those seeking asylum.
The world celebrates the strength and courage of people who have been forced to flee their home countries on June 20 of every year.
According to the UN, every minute 20 people leave everything behind to escape war, persecution or terror. These are quite alarming statistics, but despite this, many of those refugees, especially those that end up in developed nations, have gone to make huge contributions to those countries that give them a second chance.
As Africans, we collectively need to thank countries, which have taken in our fellow brothers and sisters from war-torn countries and given them a second chance.
On a train ride in between towns in Sweden, I sat next to a gentleman who looked mixed race to me, and he seemed very eager to strike a conversation with me. You see in countries where Africans are not as many, there is this sense of joy and brotherhood that you feel when you meet a fellow African-looking person.
So after a little small talk, we went deep in conversation, the moment he got to know I was from Nairobi. He seemed very excited, and mentioned that he had this dream of relocating back to his motherland in Somalia to use some of the skills he had acquired in Sweden.
Both his parents arrived in Sweden, running away from war in Somalia in the early 1990s, so he was born in Sweden, and had only heard about Somalia and had never been there.
I assumed the parents still had trauma of what they had gone through and that is why they never wanted to take him back home. I was impressed by his urge to go back to Somalia, but after a slight stay in Kenya. I was also quite impressed when he told me what he did for a living.
He told me he had a master's degree in software development. On this particular day we happened to meet, he was on his way for a new job, something he termed to be a promotion of some sort in his industry.
The gentleman, who looked like he was in his mid 20s seemed very ambitious. He said he was giving himself like a year in the new company, then look for ways to work remotely and eventually relocate to Nairobi, as it is closer home to him.
This is just but one of the very many success stories of refugees and their relatives in developed countries. While some struggle to assimilate, some refugees do very well by learning the languages of the societies they settle into, as well as the culture.
They even get very decent education and end up being absorbed into different business, or the even start their own. In Nairobi, word on the streets has it that many high-rise buildings and high-end businesses are owned by non-Kenyan Somalis — partly by returnees or their kin — who have made it big elsewhere.
On this World Refugee Day, let us celebrate such refugees and their relatives who have dared that great step of leaving unstable societies and gone to establish themselves elsewhere economically and have that well deserved peace of mind.
While at that, those hosted should remember that they need to maintain the culture and abide by the ethics and laws of the societies that host them, devoid of any type of violence as seen in some nations, brought about by those same refugees.
Nations that host refugees should ideally also treat them with the dignity they deserve. And finally let us hope for more peaceful and just societies, especially in Africa.
Part-time lecturer and a communications researcher