Hi everybody,

I hope you’re enjoying the Swedish “summer”: you know, sunny in the morning, rainy in the afternoon and windy in the evening. Early this morning, I was sitting on the stairs that surround the hub of downtown Stockholm AKA Sergelstorg (Sergel’s square), where a lot happens all day and night and which has become a hotspot for tired tourists, bored youths, drug dealers & addicts, alcoholics, street sellers, demonstrators, artists, homeless people, rich & poor, young and old, men and women, straight and gay. So, it’s one of the few places in Stockholm where one could find both diverse demographics and events happening throughout the day/year and that’s why I like hanging out a lot there – to capture moments in real time.

Well, today was special. I usually go there early in the afternoon or in the evening, but I went there early in the morning to forward the recent rejection e-mail that I got from the Swedish Migration Board to local Asylum activists. A few moments after I sat there, a very pretty, young, tall brunette girl who was sporting skimpy jeans shorts, sandals, expensive designer-made outfits and accessories, sat on the second stair next to mine. From her looks I guessed that she is one of these sophisticated, tech-savvy, high-maintenance suburbanites with a very good taste for dear life. She was smoking while sipping something (most probably a coffee) from a paper cup and checking her friend’s status on Facebook or tweeting, reading news (I don’t know) on her iPhone. And then came this young African in his mid 20s or early 30s, unkempt hair, overgrown moustache and beard, untidy jeans and a sweater, worn out running shoes, carrying two small bags (one is stuffed with his clothes, the other maybe with some rejection papers from the Migration Board, his passports or his degrees, diplomas, awards, recommendation letters from previous employers etc. – my 1001 wild guesses). I saw him a couple of times walking alone in town and mumbling to himself. My guess is that he might be homeless and/or a mentally ill person, or both. He sat one row further from the pretty girl and started to smoke cigarette butts that were thrown away on the stair by other privileged smokers, including the beautiful girl that I was telling you about earlier. And a few minutes later, three people came and sat on the stair next to me. I think from their looks and accents, one was from my country Ethiopia or Eritrea, another from the former Soviet Union or some of the Balkan countries and the third was from Mongolia. They started eating sandwiches and throwing pieces of bread to the birds at the bottom of the stairs. It broke my heart to see the African guy hungrily watching every piece of the bread being thrown to the birds.

The pretty girl left after enjoying her cigarette, her coffee and the sun. And the nameless, faceless, invisible African guy got up after “enjoying” a few leftover cigarette butts and disappeared into the big crowd with his few belongings not even a millionth worth of just one of the pretty girl’s sandals. A few minutes later, a young man I guessed was Roman came and sat next to me and with a whisper asked me if I had hashish. Hmm, I wasn’t surprised at all; if you’re an African man or are of African descent, such questions are not unusual on the streets of Stockholm.

I went to the Kulturhuset (Stockholm’s Cultural House) because it opens at 9 o’clock in the morning. So, here I’m writing about these very contrasting episodes that happened in less than 15 minutes. Let me ask you, to which group of these people do you belong yourself? The young pretty girl, the poor seemingly homeless African man, the three friends, the Roman guy, or me? I just couldn’t stop thinking about the African man, not because we came from the same continent but because I’ve a feeling that this guy ended up like this not by choice but because of some circumstances that are beyond his control. Nobody knows or cares to know what kind of life he had, what type of a person he was, his profession, his schooling, his families.

Who knows, heaven forbid I might end up like him, if my situation continues like this. The Migration Board decided last May that it won’t reconsider my new application and requested me to go back to my country where my life would be in great danger. Ironically, one of my follower from Ethiopia expressed his enkuan adresh (congrats message) over the blockage of my blog in Ethiopia. Hmm, I am not shocked but I’m a bit surprised that Shimeles Kemal & co. tolerated my tiny-mini, shabby, messy “blog” this long provided that many of my visitors have been from Ethiopia. I checked the traffic to my blog at the beginning of June and I found out that my blog is officially blocked. According recent overview of the traffic to my blog, there were over 140 visitors from Ethiopia from May 3^rd 2012 till May 31^st 2012. There were only 14 visitors during the week and today there was only one visitor whom I guess was my informant who told me about the blockage and visited my blog via proxy websites. This follower got the following “error” message last week while trying to access my blog in Ethiopia:

The requested URL could not be retrieved

While trying to retrieve the URL: http://www.facebook.com/l/HAQEBMIL1AQG6vdD5h4p64gDcIwjBBV9OCBMk0sR2__mXww/irefugee.blogspot.com/2012/06/2012.html?spref=tw

The following error was encountered:
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Generated Tue, 05 Jun 2012 06:46:48 GMT

So far I have lived at eight different people’s places and three refugee camps over the last seven years and I’m very uncertain if I would be able to stay in the place that I’m staying at right now. The choice is between two evils: go back and join fellow Ethiopian and Swedish journalists at Kality prison or else with my suitcase in my hands accompany my nameless, faceless, homeless, African wanderer on the streets of Stockholm.

Thanks Sweden, thanks Ethiopia.

by Theodros Arega