Josephine and the Dolphin: The Story and the Friendship Behind it

 

Once there was a brave and delightful girl,

Josephine was curious, pretty and very smart,

She had big chocolate brown eyes, dark brown skin,

And a truly enormous heart.

 

Moran Mekamel grew up in the north of Israel and arrived in Be’er Sheva in 2008 to study at Ben-Gurion University. Within a short time, she became a leading activist for asylum seekers’ rights who just started to pour into the southern border of Israel and Egypt.

One of the tens of thousands of asylum-seekers who arrived during these years was three months old Josephina Thomas Abdallah, who fled Sudan in 2008 with her family. Josefina’s mother and brother were separated from the family near the border on the Egyptian side.  The father and baby-girl managed to slip away and cross the border into Israel in the middle of the night, and start a new life, while the mother and brothers were left behind.

The encounter between an Israeli student and an African toddler who never knew her homeland, led to a special bond and one book that depicts Moran and Josephina’s shared experiences. Since the book was published, it has reached hundreds of homes across the country and the world. With the support of UNHCR Israel, the book was translated and printed in English and Arabic, and on the 2024 World Refugee Day, the translations were launched in a joyous multicultural celebration in the desert.

UNHCR Israel sat down with Moran to hear the story behind the book, how she unexpectedly found herself paralyzed with fear, just like the dolphin in her book, and what helped her overcome the situation.

 

How It All Started

Moran recalls the period when asylum-seekers from Sudan and Eritrea arrived in Israel, around 2008-2009, the atmosphere and discourse around the issue in Israel were very charged: “Anyone who helped refugees was being intimidated… there was a risk of being sent to prison, just for volunteering with them.” But the group of students at Be’er Sheva Ben-Gurion University were not deterred. They gathered for a reading of the “Anti-Infiltration Law” and quickly discovered many people who wanted to act. “From there it turned into grass-roots activity very quickly – no one thought of establishing an organization at the time, we thought it was very ad-hock.”

Moran approached the university with a very unconventional project proposal : “Provide humanitarian assistance to refugees” including language lessons, exercising rights, assessing needs, providing basic equipment, clothes, etc. Much to her joy, her proposal was accepted, and the university became an incubator, and provided more scholarships for more students to join Moran. The Department of Politics and Government, where Moran studied, helped make information accessible to volunteers and outreach. Over time, collaborations on campus developed with other departments such as the Africa Center department, Social Work, The faculty of Medicine, and more. And soon, it became an independent movement beyond the campus parameter, and evolved into a grassroots, community activity that integrates the residents of the Negev, from high-school students to retirees, integrated projects with civil society organizations and building a shared life with asylum- seekers in the south.

 “The first people we met were the men – the priest, the male leadership, and then we discovered the women leadership in the community, and once we met each other, we were inseparable”, Moran recounts.

Through the women, Moran and the local activists met with the more vulnerable parts of the community, assessed the needs and they learned about other complexities. One of those discoveries was a kindergarten for asylum seekers’ infants in the southern city of Arad. “Mariam’s Kindergarten” became a central part of our activities, we began to bring volunteers to the kindergartens to help with personal attention and cultural absorption, language mediation, and physical needs such as donations of toys.” Among the kindergarten children was two-year-old Josephina.

These were the first days of the fieldwork of the activist organization, founded by Moran, which grew and later became the “Negev Refugee Center”. An important cornerstone and very active player among the refugee community in the south to this day.

The connection between Moran and Josephina, who had lived in Israel only with her father, was immediate and powerful. Their relationship was never defined in many words, but their friendship grew closer, and they spent long days together while Josephina’s father worked round-the-clock shifts in nearby hotels.

“We had a few songs we regularly sang during bedtime, and if Josephina had trouble falling asleep we developed this guided meditation that became our routine.

“Where do you want to be today?

Do you want to be by sea or in the air?

Do you want wings or a tail…? ”

“And depending on what she chose, (In the sea, with a tail) we would say, then we would have continued with the imagination: Feel the sand… Or the shells”.

One of their many trips in Israel was to Eilat, and there, at the “Dolphin Reef”, they experienced significant and special moments that permeated their conversations, the guided imagery games, and finally the pages of the book.

About Plays, Books, and Band-Aids

The two became closer, and Josephina joined many weekends and holidays with Moran’s extended family.

“We became one big family.” When they didn’t go for a family visit to the north, or on camping trips, they enjoyed going to cultural activities such as plays and movies, painting and reading lots of books together and visiting art exhibitions.

“The time we spend together whether going on hikes or reading a book, was both exciting and educational,” says Moran. The relationship with Josephina exposed Moran to a new angle for looking at her familiar reality. ” When I brought the book “Mullu and Tsegai,” by Tamar Varta-Zehavi (about two Eritrean children who fled and underwent a long journey to Israel, D.R.), we read it together and she asked me if it was depicting her and her father. It was unusual for her to see or read about black people, especially as the main characters. “The need for identity, representation, for belonging was so strong that she immediately had to identify herself,” Moran said. As Josephina was growing up, more questions came up about her uniqueness. For example, her thick curly black her. Moran was searching for role models for the young girl and found resources overseas, such as the African American children’s book “Big Hair, Don’t Care”.

Not only in theater or literature, sometimes even while doing their errands, but a prosaic visit to the pharmacy also turned out to be a new experience. “Josephina wanted a Band-Aid and the box read ‘skin-color – but it wasn’t her skin color at all,” Moran recalls.

“I experienced with her, through her eyes, many moments of coping with the lack of belonging, and I became exposed to the lack of diversity in our landscape, on a daily basis.”

 

By Sea, by Air, and by Train to the Krayot

Moran chose to continue her studies and pursue a master’s degree in social work to further expand her professional knowledge and tooldbox. During one of the semester holidays,On one train ride north, back in 2014, to visit Moran’s family, as they often did on weekends and holidays, Moran reached a point where she needed to document all these moments, experiences and tools they created together. “I wrote a few things on a piece of paper, and Josephina was watching a video on my laptop computer. Suddenly I said: Can I have the computer? and the book came out, almost in the exact way it is now.”

The magical illustrations were created shortly thereafter by Shay Ifergan and brought the story to life weeks after the text was completed. But then, as a result of being exposed to a completely different stressful event that life had thrown at Moran, she experienced a crisis that brought her to a complete halt in her work and creativity.

“I left everything that was familiar to me, it felt like I left myself in a sense. It took a painful period of time dealing with the trauma and going through bureaucracy until I was diagnosed with PTSD.”

 

“Where do you find courage? Please help me find some too?”

Josephine smiled, “Sweet, funny, Dolphin-boo!

Courage is always there inside us, it isn’t something new”

 

The book she wrote had been laying in a drawer for almost five years. When she finally returned to it, Moran found in it a kind of prophecy about her situation, only she was the dolphin who forgot how to swim.

The rediscovery of the text, of her own toolbox, along with the meaningful connections she forged with good friends like Josephine, gave her the needed courage to jump into the water, to swim again. In 2022, Moran launched a crowdfunding campaign that reached its goal in just ten days.

 

 

Language as a Bridge

Thanks to a collaboration with UNHCR, the book has been translated from Hebrew to Arabic (Odeh Bisharat) and English (Gilah Kahn-Hoffmann) and now communicating the message of empowerment and compassion in three languages, conveying one universal message that emotions are the common language of all people.

Through the colorful and joyful illustrations and words, the book enables the development of a meaningful discourse on complex topics and encourages the use of imagination as a tool for developing mental resilience.  “I believe that in our world, words have power, languages have power, this is also the key to independence.”

Sharon Harel, director of external relations, public relations, and communications at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Israel shared “This is a story about refugees and friendships, a story about seeing the other and their fears, along with developing resilience and coping. In terms of UNHCR’s activities, there is great value in translating the book and raising awareness of issues of refugees, acquaintances and assistance, as well as raising awareness among readerships in Israel and abroad, through a single human story. We are intimately acquainted with Moran and her consistent advocacy for refugees, and she is an example and model worthy of admiration and emulation.

In the reprint in Hebrew and the English and Arabic translations, another page of explanation was added at the end of the book, about the characters and events that led to its writing.

“It was important for us that everyone who reads the book or reads the story to their children know the human story, beyond the moving pictorial story,” Sharon said.

 

“This is a story about refugees and friendships, a story about seeing the other and their fears, along with developing resilience and coping. In terms of UNHCR’s activities, there is great value in translating the book and raising awareness of issues of refugees, acquaintances and assistance, as well as raising awareness among readerships in Israel and abroad, through a single human story. We are intimately acquainted with Moran and her consistent advocacy for refugees, and she is an example and model worthy of admiration and emulation.

Since the book was launched, Moran has held many activities in a variety of places in Israel’s geographic and cultural periphery, with multilingual readings and educational activities that bring children, educators, and families closer together.

The readings events Moran holds for kids of all ages, often with “Josephine” dolls (an African girl doll that resembles the depiction in the book), to show children of all shades that there are both dolls and people who look different. In these meetings, they discuss issues of visibility and belonging, coping mechanism that helps overcome fear, through the story.

 

Sharon reaffirms this notion. “In Israel, you can hardly find any children’s literature about refugees and African children, and even less about an African heroine girl.”

Moran says that prophetically, the book she wrote many years ago became an anchor for her and an island of sanity and hope, its publication, as well as the activities she conducts today, are part of her recovery journey.

 

In 2017, Josephine and her father left Israel for the United States as part of the “Resettlement” program assisted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as part of promoting permanent solutions for refugees. Josephine is now an 11th grader, loves to play tennis, read books and cook, and dreams of opening a café where people come to eat, work and hang out together. At the launch event of the book, which took place in Be’er Sheva on International Refugee Day, which falls on June 20, 2024, a video was screened congratulating her to the participants of the event, in which she shared how much the character in the book echoes the connection between Moran and herself.

More content on Josephin and the Dolphin, the various activities and a virtual shop for purchasing the book in the different languages can be found on Moran’s website: https://www.moranmekamel.com/

 

—– 

At the center of the launch event of the book translations as part of the “Refugee Day 2024” event in Be’er- Sheva, Moran gave a speech that was another view into the story of Josefina and the Israeli refugee community, and refugee rights activists in Be’er Sheva, who over the years have become a cohesive and close group. We have chosen to quote some of Moran’s words as follows:

“… I came to the city (Be’er Sheva) in 2009 to study for a bachelor’s degree here and entered the university of life. At the Central Bus Station I encountered long lines of people from Africa, back then, I had no clue who they were and why they were there. They stood there bruised and exhausted with a one-way ticket to Tel Aviv.

We began to hear stories and testimonies and discover there are asylum seekers in our immediate vicinity as well, and we couldn’t remain indifferent to the situation. Together with other companies, we established a field initiative that mapped needs and created solutions. We didn’t have a plan, we thought we’d create something temporary, until someone else will take over. And in the meantime…

We exercised rights, accompanied to institutions, raised and mobilized donations, held language classes and professional courses, activities for children, and a youth club. We learned and deepened our understanding on the situation in Sudan and Eritrea – about dictatorship and persecution, dangers and oppression, genocide. We went out to demonstrations to demand rights, we gave tours and lectures, and information events for local and foreign audiences.

Leading an activist organization in the south of Israel is a unique challenge, we learned – the fringes of the margins. It requires thinking outside the box, creating something out of nothing, a strong belief in the path and most importantly the partners and partnerships, and these are what I have won big time.

We got to know more and more refugees, who were our neighbours as well as our partners and friends. We sat together, thought together, pondered together and acted together. And yes, we also held picnics, produced events, went on trips. I met the strongest, most special and inspiring people there are.

We established a human rights organization here, which has been dealing with the impossible, breaking grounds, building bridges, and moving mountains – the Negev Refugee Center.

When I started volunteering, I didn’t think that 15 years later, people I knew would still have no status in Israel, that the situation in Sudan and Eritrea would only get worse and that we would live ourselves in the shadow of a war that led to the displaced people in Israel. I hope and pray we have days of peace and friendship in Israel and all over the world”.

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