regugees

One of the major problems facing the world today is the large amount of refugees. Refugees are people, young and old, who flee their home, family, and valuable objects behind due to war or persecution in their country. Fleeing your home sounds bad enough, but the real obstacle is trying to find a new one. In the novel Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai, Ha and her family had to flee their home due to war in South Vietnam. During their journey of escaping, Ha has to ration her food very carefully, and entertain herself by writing on a notebook while sitting on a small mat the whole day. When Ha and her family finally reached safety at a refugee camp, their new obstacle was trying to get a sponsor. All of the refugees that ever walked on this Earth had to go through the same obstacles as Ha had to go through, therefore being a universal experience. Fleeing and finding a new home can easily turn a refugee’s life inside out and back again. When war comes to a country, most of its citizens try to flee, but it’s not that simple. In “Panic Rises in Saigon, but the Exits Are Few,” it clearly states how many people were desperate to flee Saigon when communists took over it. Most exits involved knowing or working for Americans, but to those who didn’t qualify, offered everything they had. One man “asked an American friend to marry his wife, who is three months pregnant, and take her to the United States with him, ‘I will pay you $10,000’” (Butterfield 1). In Inside Out and Back Again, the poem “Floating” shows how Ha and her family had to suffer in order to escape. It was hard for Ha when she was told “to sip water only when we must so our bodies can stop needing” (Lai 73) because she was “dying of thirst or demanding release” (Lai 73). Ha can’t handle living like this. At this point, she is desperate for real food and freedom from the ship she is on. Ha knows, and all refugees know, that they may never return back to their home country, and the thought is just