Living in a Chicken-Breading Farm

What if one day you're family told you that you had to pack up your things, but only what you could carry. That you were leaving your home and there was a good chance you would never return. That if you didn't there was a good chance you wouldn't live. That you were going on a long journey to live in a chicken-breading farm. That after all your hardships you wouldn't even achieve national refugee status and therefore wouldn't be getting a lot of help. That after everything you lost, even your mail would no longer be private.

This is exactly what happened to the people who fled the Bihac pocket. They ended up living in Batnoga in a chicken-breading farm. There are twenty large farm buildings which each house about seven hundred displaced persons and there are even more who are housed in tents. They receive mail once a week from family and friends who stayed behind in the Bihac pocket. This mail is read by the local military, by Red Cross and others before it reaches the intended recipient.

Here in North America, people would be outraged to hear that other people had read their mail. It's a crime to read other people's mail! The picture from Salgado's book I was looking at was a picture of a large crowd of children surrounded by chicken wire. The picture got me to read the description. The description described all the things I talked about above, but the fact that their mail isn't even theirs is what really got me. It's interesting that it's the little things that generally affect people the most.


Works Cited

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. New York: Aperture, 2000. 124-125 Print.

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. (Pamphlet) New York: Aperture, 2000. 9 Print