Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: asylum seeker

  • Department of Honour

    I just acquired the most beautiful new German word. We are discussing privilege and a new acquaintance says he has to do something ehrenamtlich – oh, how divine, can ‘ehrenamtlich’ mean ‘voluntary’? An ‘Amt’ is a bureau, government department or office. But ‘Ehre’ means honour.

    Germany is overrun with Amts. Ordinarily they sound faintly menacing: the Ordnungsamt, Department of Order, takes care of ticketing people’s unlicensed dogs, illegal parking &c: a histrionic graffito in the local drug park screeches, in orange, Ordungsamt = Terror!!. Online I find a website called Ehrenamt Deutschland, which offers a definition: honourable offices can be anything which is performed “freiwillig, gemeinwohlorientiert und unentgeltlich,” that is, anything that is pursued of one’s own free will, is oriented towards the common good, and is unpaid. The formality makes it sound almost stultifying but there is all this generosity and warmth beating away underneath.

    As Australia turns itself into a vast gulag for imprisoning children, and other countries up and down the escape corridor into Europe close and razor wire their borders, Berliners are opening refugee cafes, holding garage sales and donating food, organising ‘Asylum Seeker Airbnb’ to help match people’s spare rooms with exhausted new arrivals. I find it so moving to think that by teaching German once a week in the giant refugee camp that was once the old Tempelhof airport, this Berliner becomes part of the Department of Honour.

  • if I ruled the world

    If I ruled the world for one day: to do list

    1. make leafblowers illegal.

    These waste fossil fuel and create pollution & noise pollution. They’re useless and they encourage blame-shifting. Communities who can afford the use of leafblowers invariably need more physical activity. Raking leaves is peaceful and calming.

    2. all toilet paper to be made from post-consumer recycled paper.

    There aren’t enough trees left for us to be cutting them down to wipe our bums. Anyway it’s softer: it’s been pulped twice.

    3. refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants shall be placed in whichever country best suits their character and can benefit from their presence, as judged by a panel of Indigenous elders and trauma psychologists. First priority: safety and escape from crisis. Second priority: they can go anywhere they want so long as they demonstrate to the panel’s satisfaction that they can make a contribution whether social, culinary, cultural, artistic, educational, spiritual or economic. The only proviso is that after five years’ citizenship every new arrival is required to make a report of their commitment to the new country with examples of how they sustain their native culture and how they adopt the new, and how they struggle to make these two compatible. These testimonials are videoed and available in libraries and schools.

    I need a sabbatical. That was tiring.