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Through My Eyes

Through My Eyes

Author: Kasia Yoko
Date: 2013-10-25
Survival is one of those prodigious manifestations, we only know we possess when faced with a crisis.

Survival means so many different things to different people, as I found out this weekend while camping at Kosi Mouth. Ill equipped for the weather and the overall muddy conditions, I moved into survival mode and was amazed how little I truly needed in order to survive.

What I found out this weekend is that survival means different things to different people. I also found that in order to survive it is paramount to be in the company of survivors, because your life depends on teamwork, on how adaptable you are, how fit you are and how many attachments you possess to the material world.

While doing my survival bit at Kosy, I had a lot of time to think. I thought of my ancestors. What were they thinking when the bombers flew over their heads, sirens blaring, cold, vulnerable, scared and swallowed by darkness? I could imagine that their survival mode kicked in immediately. Their senses alerted, their vision sharpened, their hearing enhanced, their only concern, the survival of their children, 'getting out alive'.

While lying awake in my uncomfortable, wet and smelly space, listening to the rain, allowing the damp chill to seep to my bones. I thought about my parentsI understood what made them such powerful survivors and how their strength runs in my own DNA.

My thoughts took me to the people living along the Mekong River in Cambodia. I thought about their survival and how tough they really have to be to live in that environment. With those high temperatures, that intense dampness and the lack of basic infrastructure, not many babies there live to see their first birthday. I thought of those mothers' their survival instinct running through their veins is beyond me.

I thought about the people of Syria. Gosh! Not so long ago Syria was known as the Fertile Crescent of South West Asia. It's capital Damascus served as the seat of the Umayyad Empire and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Empire. Did you know that it was in the city of Ugarit where the oldest alphabet of the world is believed to have originated? 

So what happened in Syria? From peace and civilized existence to suicide bombings, poison gas attacks on innocent civilians and hundreds of thousand dead in such a relatively short space of time. Imagine the survival needs facing the mothers' tonight, while they are running away from the killing.

The famous words of celebrated philosopher George Santayana, that grace the gates into Auschwitz concentration camp echo in my mind, "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." 

Today I want to acknowledge the survival abilities of my ancestors and I believe in my own powers of survival. But I will never forget the gruesome bedtime stories told to me by my grandmother. I will never forget seeing my grandfather rot to death while gangrene took his limbs bit by bit and I pray that in my life my children will be spared the cruelty of war, poverty and hunger. What a camping trip that was.