The Esteem of a Friend

This is Jelena, our guide. 

Commissariat workers, like Jelena, dedicate everything to their jobs. Work doesn't stop after a 9-to-5 shift. Instead, their lives revolve around the people they are striving to help.

For the workers, it doesn't matter what they look like or what their personal lives entail. All that's important is the impact that the work they do can make.

This is Rashid Abdul, the oldest Krnjača
resident. He is 74 years-old and takes walks
around the centre daily. Rashid also loves to
drink tea with the other residents in his room.

As Jelena explained the asylum process,
Khalid (a Syrian refugee), came up to greet her and
tell her that his gf broke up with him. At which
point Jelena consoled him like an old friend.

I was honoured that so many people working in the Krnjača Centre were willing to set aside the time to answer all of my questions. Jelena and the rest of the staff humored my incessant prodding about the minutia of running the centre, in turn explaining every process and procedure in absolute detail.

The office Jelena shares with a colleague is full of paperwork.

They were even willing to accommodate my relentless picture-taking; stopping every few seconds in order to snap photos of just about everything visible.

My security taking a picture of me as I took a picture
of the board in front of the main offices of the camp.

This is the picture I was taking: the bulletin board
features announcements in English, Arabic, & Farsi.

In the few hours I spent with Jelena and her coworkers, I quickly came to understand the simple reason that all of the refugees in the centre are so fond of them: civility. Each refugee has a name, a family, a past, and (if they do their jobs correctly) a future.

No one is expendable or disposable because they are friends.

Despite language barriers and culture clashes, humanity is the same everywhere in the world.