Florence

It has become a trend for me to write on my blog for one month at the start of a new adventure in a new place (Dublin September 2007, Brussels October 2008, now Limerick August 2009), then proceed to make friends, get busy, and disappear. I cannot promise it will be any different this time, but here's something at least for now and we'll see where it leads.

Today I got up at 6:30, was dropped off at the airport by my daddy, said goodbye to my hunky boyfriend with a few secret tears once he could no longer see, walked around the airport with a ridiculously heavy piece of hand luggage stuffed with the world and its friend (including a hairdryer which looks a lot like a weapon but was not picked up on by the unsuspecting security guards) and got on my flight to Cork. I met some friendly Dutch people on the plane who asked if I had ever been to Ireland before...this, of course, made me feel extra good about my 'spotless' Dutch. We discussed the weather, which was good practice for them as it is topic numero uno here, only to be outdone occasionally by discussing which Irish motorway is Ireland's largest parking lot or 'the crisis'.

I arrived at Cork airport, and true to form there was no sign whatsoever as to where the bus I would take might stop, what time it comes or where to buy a ticket. I wandered back inside and (also true to form) a friendly guy came up and asked whether I needed help, and told me the bus always stops right over there next to that white van close to the zebra crossing. From then on everything went smoothly, a nice lady who I got to know via-via picked me up from the bus station in Limerick and brought me to my house and even bought me a salad and wrong coffee on the way. I settled into my room with my things, and then went to meet some other via-vias.

One of those people was Florence, whose young sad eyes and big smile removed and put to shame any trace of self-pity I may have been feeling of having had to 'leave my friends and family behind'.

Florence arrived last year, on a flight from Uganda. After walking and walking through the bush, leaving people behind who were too weak to keep going, she fled the Congo (DRC) with her family and managed to reach a refugee camp in western Uganda. The camp was attacked by bandits and she was seperated from her family. Florence has seven siblings, and does not know where any of them or her parents are. She described her arrival in Dublin as being 'sadder than sad', crying and crying. After a few months she moved to Limerick, where she now lives in an asylum seeker hostel. No guests are allowed into the hostel, so we had to wait downstairs for her as she collected her sweater. She said it would be nice to be able to invite a friend up to her room sometimes. I think she is roughly 18 years old.

I know its ok for me to be a little bit sad about leaving my home, but Florence really put feelings of missing others and being loved into perspective.

For more info on DRC (my professors would cringe if they saw me use this as a reference, but it looks like a useful article):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congo