Between wanderlust and homesickness

A symbiotic dialectic – The story of refugee Ermias

Ermias fled to Germany from Eritrea across the Red Sea at the age of 15. He is doing well and is happy with us. Nevertheless, an unbridled ambivalent longing moves him within. He was driven by the feeling of wanderlust, which we all know. We then feel how the fever grips us. A little goosebumps surprises our arms, whilst we think with heavy hearts and deep sighs of golden-brown sandy beaches and light-blue waters. But Ermias did not think of beaches, but of mainland, where he would learn. Learning is his universal concept that he associates with wanderlust. "With learning," he says, "everything is possible. It opens the doors to the good world for you". What often seems to us Europeans like an endless hamster wheel and to schoolchildren like modern academic slavery, is for Ermias the feeling of independence and the unbridled number of opportunities for self-realisation. Now his longing for distant places is temporarily satisfied, but instead another painful wish ignites. Ermias is now trapped in the distance in homesickness. A vicious circle? It is not easy to balance these ambivalent feelings. In the following, his story will be explored and the ambivalence of the terms homesickness and wanderlust will be repeatedly addressed.

When an immigrant arrives in a new culture and it breaks over him like an oversized tidal wave, it is like a "honeymoon", describes Thomas W. Heinz in his article "Psychological Consequences of Uprooting". Everything is new, the wide eyes gleam. This longing veil that overlays the pupils with a glitter, I see it now too in Ermias. A rippling smile plays around his lips as he tells me that he dreamed of Germany even as a very small boy. Even though his German is not perfect, because the state has not yet financed him an extended language course at the adult education centre, I understand his words. He reports, almost a bit mischievously, how back then a European came to his primary school in Eritrea and advertised Great Britain. After his presentation, he handed the little Ermias a pencil on which "London" was emblazoned in large letters. He left the pencil unheeded. His wanderlust had a specific point of origin: Germany.

I ask him if he knows our wanderlust. He shakes his head. I ask him if he would like to travel aimlessly (that is, with the purpose of relaxation or typical sightseeing). He raises his eyebrows. "That costs money and a passport", he tells me and I nod knowingly. Then I roll the whole thing out on a larger scale. I do my best to coax a European melting away at the thought of a holiday (adventure, all-inclusive, package or individual holiday…) from him. "Okay, I'll give you a budget of 2000 euros and tomorrow I'll provide you with a private jet and a passport. Is there a travel destination, now that you're in Germany, that awakens wanderlust in you?", I ask enticingly and think that I finally have him on the hook. He too is in a positive mood and answers: "A private jet would be great" Then his eyes get that longing veil again, like at the beginning, when he thought of Germany as a little boy. "With that I would visit my family. I miss them very much". It becomes clear to me that wanderlust and homesickness lie damn close together. I understand him now. Ermias has no room for the wanderlust-luxury thinking of the well-to-do and well-fed people of the Western world in his emotional repertoire. I think that's an AHA moment. His wanderlust relates to the existential nature of humanity. To the integrity of his dignity and his body and to freedom, which pours itself into every human-made category (nutrition, education, profession, housing situation, opinion, love, sexuality…). His wanderlust brings us back to the ground of facts. His wanderlust is as complete and clear as a drop of resin that becomes amber. Our Western wanderlust is like a soap-smeared distorting mirror in which we aimlessly lose ourselves in trivialities. 

In the following, my co-author Christian Claessen will outline the course of Ermias's flight in a few sentences. During his flight, Ermias is constantly in so-called "non-places". The term "non-lieux" originating from Marc Augé refers to the liveliness of places that nevertheless seem dead. This is because the paths of many people meet there, but no relational relationships can form, which is a major stressor.

The boat plays a symbolically laden significance. "The media-disseminated image of the refugee ship becomes a topos of migration without actual arrival", knows Brucu Dogramaci. He further writes in his article "Come to Not Stay: Images of Arrival as Visual Representations of Migration" that departure, wanderlust and homesickness and experiences of strangeness lie close together. The harbour is thereby a striking image for the displacement of existence. And the harbour is the place where the journey begins for Ermias.

It was early 2014 when Ermias finally decided to leave his homeland. That it would be a long journey, he already knew from countless telephone calls with his father, who himself had fled to Saudi Arabia years before. But that on this day he would take one last look at the white sand dunes of his homeland Eritrea, that, says Ermias, he did not know. Leaving Eritrea, Ermias explains, is not an entirely risk-free undertaking, because the departure of citizens is officially considered high treason. On 1 May 2014, at the age of 15, Ermias left his grandparents, his sister and his homeland out of necessity to set out for a better life in Germany, free from repression, fear and torture. For Ermias it was the German Dream.

With a small group of ten men and women from the most diverse corners of the world, Ermias first crossed Sudan. "The people in Sudan", says Ermias, "are good people. They give you food and drink and a place to sleep". When there are conflicts, they usually originate in the different beliefs of the various people. In general, Ermias met many like himself. He tells us of an encounter with another Eritrean of the same age, whom he met in 2014 in Tripoli, the capital of Libya. "He was Christian like me and so I told him about God, Jesus and the Bible" says Ermias, before he falls briefly silent and pauses. He explains to us that the boy drowned in the Mediterranean Sea just a few days later together with countless others.

Libya is the key state for refugees from East Africa and so it is hardly surprising that human trafficking and the business of smugglers flourish here. However, anyone who wants to cross to Europe must first dig deep into their pockets. A ticket costs 3000€ according to Ermias, with which one is sent together with hundreds of other people on old dilapidated and far too small boats towards Europe. You don't have to be a maths whiz to understand that 3000€ represents a utopian sum given an annual per capita income of approximately 600 euros (in Eritrea). Ermias is lucky and his father transfers the amount from abroad to a contact man of the smugglers. Shortly after Christmas 2014, the time comes: As one of the last, Ermias boards a rusty old fishing boat, which then sets off towards Italy with approximately 300 people on board. For two days the boat drifts slowly and lost over the open sea until suddenly a cruiser of the Italian Navy discovers the boat. For six people, however, this help comes too late. They suffocate hours before on the lower decks of the ship. These thoughts still haunt Ermias to this day and probably for the rest of his life. Sometimes he wakes up at night with the feeling of still being at sea, Ermias tells us.

After several far more uneventful months in Rome and various unsuccessful attempts to cross the Italian border into Austria, Ermias has almost made it. Of his original ten travelling companions, only three remain and even from these last three, the paths now part, Ermias reports somewhat wistfully. He still has contact with some, but his friends are scattered across Europe from Great Britain to Finland.

One last time Ermias stands before a border. One last time he sets out. One last time he leaves behind what is familiar to him. His gaze always directed at his goal: Germany. In May 2015, exactly one year after the beginning of his flight, Ermias sets foot on German soil for the first time. We ask him how he felt and whether Germany was as he had imagined it. "Better than in my imagination" he replies. Even racist hostilities, to which he repeatedly finds himself exposed, are of no concern to him, because "idiots exist everywhere". Whilst he tells us his life vividly, we must constantly remind ourselves that here sits a mere 22-year-old who has experienced more than we can imagine from our sheltered vantage point. Wanderlust, we associate that with the feeling of escaping everyday life, of leaving the familiar behind for a moment and drawing from new sources of human experience. But wanderlust in our European understanding also includes the awareness that an ADAC rescue jet would also pick us up from the desert of Central America if we break our collarbone. Ermias had no choice and no safety net. Ermias fled from existentially-driven wanderlust from torture and war and would now return from emotionally-driven homesickness to torture and war, only to have his home, which his family forms, around him. But reason prevails and he stays here in Germany. His story shows us the alternative meaning that wanderlust can have.

Louisa Christa Patricia Volk, Christian Claessen