‘It’s a different life in the water’ – the Syrian refugee fulfilling Olympic dream

Media playback is not supported on this device

Team Refugee: Swimming for survival

There are those whose footsteps we would not want to follow, whose shoes we would not want to be in – yet we strive to have their character, their strength, their drive and their courage. It is from them we learn that the worst of humanity can bring out the best in humanity.

Yusra Mardini used to be a typical teenager. She would chew the fat with friends, smartphone in hand, laughing.

The middle of three daughters, she lived at home with her parents, attended a gymnastics club and loved swimming – she could potentially become a great swimmer – yet it was an ordinary life, not the sort of existence journalists would travel far to write about.

Then came Syria’s civil war, the callousness of conflict, with its bombs, its suffering, its death.

Cheerful chatter was no longer normal and as the years passed – one becoming two, three turning into four – home morphed into hell as her country was torn apart.

She was alive but not living. Her house came under fire, forcing the family to move. The roof of the swimming pool where she trained in the Syrian capital of Damascus was ripped open by bombs. She could see the water, but no longer be in it. It was torture.

Mardini knew of footballers who had died in an attack. “I could not take it any more,” says the 18-year-old.

This daughter of a swimming coach had two choices: exist in her homeland without hope, or escape for the freedom to dream.

“Maybe I’m going to die on the way,” she explains. “But I’m almost dead in my country. I can’t do anything.”

“You are stronger than you think,” says MardiniA journey into the unknown

It is 12 August, 2015, four and a half years since the civil war began. It is the day Mardini and her eldest sister, Sarah, will leave Syria with their father’s two cousins and other refugees.

They say farewell to their tearful parents and younger sister, who would follow their journey on GPS, and flee to Beirut, their first destination in what will become a 25-day slog.

This group of refugees know what they must do: follow the path taken by over four million of their compatriots.

No-one knows how many people have died in the war. The United Nations stopped collecting statistics in 2014 when the death toll was 250,000. More recent reports say the number is twice that – that 11.5% of the country’s population has been killed or injured, that life expectancy dropped from 70 in 2010 to 55.4 in 2015.

How many people are still in Syria? In March, it was estimated that 17.9 million people still lived in Syria – down from 24.5 million before the war broke out. The United Nations says 13.5 million in Syria are in need of humanitarian assistance, with 4.5 million of those in hard-to-reach and besieged areas.One in four schools have been damaged or destroyed.There are a million fewer school-age children in the country than there were in 2010.

“Of course I was scared for my life and my sister’s life,” Mardini tells BBC World Service. “I was also scared that I would make it, for example, and something would happen to my sister, or that something would happen to one of us and what it would do to my mum.”

Fears are heightened as they approach southern Turkey’s high peaks and deep valleys.

They spend four nights in a jungle, the habitat of gunmen lying low. There is no food, no water, and their futures are in the hands of armed smugglers, one of whom, after disputes and threats, will take them across the Mediterranean in a flimsy dinghy to Greece – but only for a considerable amount of cash.

“Refugees haven’t left their country because they’ve given up on it,” …

continue reading in source www.bbc.co.uk