“I don’t wish for any human being to experience what I passed through.”
With these harrowing words, Eritrean refugee Halofom Hagos began the story of his flight from the oppression of his home nation in 2008.
Speaking to the people gathered at St. Matthew’s Parish in Surrey for this year’s Mass celebrating the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, he told them about his journey across the Sahara Desert, crammed in the back of a Toyota truck with twenty other people. That first leg of his journey took him from Sudan to Egypt, where he eventually passed into Israel.
There, he experienced a freedom of movement that he had never known existed throughout his adult life.
“I was able to travel from one city to the other without requiring a special permit,” he said.
Without legal status, there were limitations, but all his children were born there. Unlike Canada or the US, they weren’t granted citizenship.
Through a series of fortunate events, they moved to Canada in 2018. He was overjoyed to receive the first passport of his life this year.
He was incredibly excited that his new life in Canada has allowed his family to travel uninhibited around the Lower Mainland and to the States for vacation.
There have been struggles. Hagos could not transfer his education as an accountant to Canada. Still, he is now working as a care aid, with ambitions to start training to be a nurse as soon as he has done the necessary prerequisites.
The annual event includes a Mass with music provided by a Korean choir, a multicultural buffet, and ethnic and cultural performances, including Korean, Filipino, and African music, with Polish, Vietnamese, Sri Lankan, and Korean dancing. Every year, people are encouraged to wear costumes and clothing from their culture of origin.
Mass was celebrated by St. Ann’s Parish in Abbotsford Pastor Father Richard Zanotti.
In his homily, he recounted an event from his many years of ministry with migrants and refugees in Northern California. He was calling to mind one encounter with a some migrants from Central America who came to his Los Angeles rectory asking for food.
He was frustrated and asked the man how he could travel such a great distance unprepared, not even knowing where they were going or where they were.
“They simply answered ‘God was accompanying them,’” he said. “That was a humbling experience for me.”
“Do I place such trust is God?” he asked. “They understood that God walks with his people.”
“Men, women and children risk their lives to escape war, oppression and yes even poverty. They seek a better life for themselves but mostly for their families, a life worthy of dignity,” he said.
As Christians, we should respond to this reality with a sincere belief that “God walks with his people,” he said. “We need to believe that we also walk together on this journey to the Lord or that we should be walking together.”
“We walk with strangers not just out of goodness but out of faith, the faith that we will encounter Jesus in the migrant, the refugee.”
