My Friend Jamal - why do people leave their homeland?

Diaspora
Diaspora literally means “a scattering of seeds”. The word is used to describe groups of people who have to leave their own homeland and move to other places.

Jamal was born in the UK, but his parents were born in Somalia. They had to leave their homeland because of a civil war there. They became refugees. People have to leave their homes for all sorts of reasons: wars, natural disasters, persecution...

Somali people had to leave their homes because of civil war. Americans had to leave New Orleans after the floods caused by Hurricane Katriona; Pakastanis had to leave following the earthquake; Asians had to leave after the Tsunami in XXX. People leave countries like Zimbabwe because of political or religious persecution. Sometimes people leave their countries because they find it impossible to make a living there - they move in search of a better life for their families. They are sometimes called ‘economic migrants’.

When people have to leave, some move to the nearest town or village and return later to rebuild their lives. Other travel to neighbouring countries and this sometimes causes problems there too. Some people have to move hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Large number of Somalis became refugees in other countries such as South Africa, the UK and Holland (in the book we can see Jamal’s relatives have moved to Holland and Canada. There are many people who have had to do this.) It is estimated 45% of the Somali population [link to graph] were forced to leave because of the violence.

Back to My friend Jamal page 1

Links
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6584671.stm
• www.somaliproject.org/index.html
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/club/your_reports/newsid_3088000/3088351.stm
• www.worldvision.org.uk/server.php?show=nav.1935