How do we find our purpose in life? Some find their purpose through trial and error, meandering through life until they find what it is that makes them tick. For others, however, their purpose is shaped by events in their early years, the effects of which drive them to become change makers and advocates for a cause. Smajo Beso OBE fits into the latter category.
Arrival in Newcastle
Smajo was born in Bosnia and spent his early childhood in the village of Barane. When war against Bosnia broke out in the 1990s, Smajo and his family were forced to flee, leaving the familiar behind and facing an uncertain future. It was Smajo’s father who was the first to arrive in the UK as part of a settlement programme. He arrived at Stansted airport on 19 January 1994 and to this day still has the plane ticket as a reminder. Luckily, the British Red Cross tracked Smajo and the rest of his family down, and a few months later he arrived in the UK to be with his father. A nine-year-old Smajo spent his first night in Newcastle in a reception centre in Gosforth, which was there to house fellow Bosnian refugees. Finally reunited with his father, he began having nightmares on his first night in Newcastle because his body was still in survival mode from what he had experienced in Bosnia. Sadly, Smajo’s Auntie Emina was killed by shelling from Bosnian-Croat forces. To this day, both he and his family have never had justice for her murder, and her killers remain at large. And yet it was her fighting spirit and lust for life which Smajo remembers so fondly.
I am because we are
Using his past experiences of genocide and displacement, Smajo founded the We Are project, an initiative which has been years in the making. The name comes from the Ubuntu philosophy of South Africa, where the adage ‘I am because we are’ describes the idea that everyone is interconnected. We thrive through our relationships with others and need each other to reach our full potential. The aim of the project is to educate future generations about the horrors of war by using the stories of those who have experienced it firsthand. The project involves producing education packs for schools in which they get allocated a particular story by a particular survivor. Schools then explore the survivor’s life and consider what this person has experienced. In addition to Smajo’s story, there are accounts from the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide. There are also stories from the North East, namely that of Smajo’s primary school teacher, who taught his class to sing a song in Bosnian to welcome him when he first started school in Newcastle, unable to speak a word of English. The project culminates in a Learning Day Conference, where the pupils from the schools involved reflect on their own stories and have the opportunity to discuss facts and myths around various themes, such as refugees, migration and fake news. The pupils also get to meet the person whose story they have been exploring.
Sometimes life gives us experiences because we are duty bound to use them to help others. Whilst it is important to commemorate the events of the past, perhaps the focus should be on education as opposed to commemoration. Commemoration allows us to remember and respect the events of the past, but it is education which allows us to help prevent a repeat of the same. Given Smajo’s passion to educate and inform the next generation, I would like to think that his Auntie Emina would be cheering him on, knowing that he is the embodiment of a future which she herself helped him to imagine. If I am because we are, he is because she was. And if we can, we should.
