A Christmas Island perspective

[IQS.RLOW]

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The accommodation was comfortable, the facilities amazing particularly the computers, gym, english language and arts centre. The internet bill on remote Christmas Island must be whopping, it's in the middle of nowhere and the asylum seekers absolutely hammer it unhindered by download limits.

We thought the food sounded great - two Iranian guys who confronted us did not. One of them said that he'd been there 2 years and he invited us in no uncertain terms to, "you tell Australian people, food here shit! Chicken, Beef, every day, Shit!!"

When I quizzed him as to why he'd been there so long he was evasive, eventually saying, "one day I go jungle, so what". I found out that meant he'd been one of the rioters who ripped the gates off the place, burnt a fair bit of it down and menaced the locals until recaptured.

UN asylum seeker camp in Ethopia

Just days earlier I'd walked with a young mum and her surviving children the last kilometer and a bit to her tent in a refugee camp in Ethiopia.
Bernie, the mum had buried her little boy on the trip to the camp.
The kids hadn't seen food in a while - they ate these bags of rice on the ground.
When Bernie was shown to her new tent, her face lit up with embarrassed delight - it might have been a Manhattan Penthouse for the beauty of her reaction.
It was 45 degrees, Bernie would have to cook and wash outside, hundreds of yards to water, no police, no electricity, no park, no fresh food, no bath, no shower. Here's the lunar landscape under the tent
Bernie received the loan of a hammer to help smash out the bigger lumps under their bed.
This willy willy was typical of the mini-tornadoes that whipped up the dust hundreds of times during the day we were there.

[AiA in Atlanta]

Facebook and smokes? Sounds like a sweet deal to me.