You decide to wait patiently in line and be grateful to Romania for providing you shelter in the country, even if it is in a Refugee Camp. 

 

You are informed by a staff member that they have one room ready for you. Your brother-in-law asks, “One room for six people?” to which the person replies, “ Yes. It’s a camp, what did you expect?”

 

You are taken to a room on the second floor. The moment you have a look at the room, you are shook.

 

The room is tiny, dark, and dingy. The room has a very foul odour. The bunk beds have rusted metal, the floor is dirty, the walls have cracks and seepage, and there is not a single window. The weather in Romania is cold, and the room feels even colder. It feels like a prison. You try to keep calm but it is a hard reality to accept. You hear your sister say, “What did we do to deserve this?”

 

You are physically, mentally, and emotionally too exhausted to even think anymore. Everyone decides to go to sleep. 

 

“Get up”

You are woken up by your mother. The moment you open your eyes, you feel something crawling on your face. In a second you realize that your entire face and body are covered with bed bugs. You look at your hands and there are hundreds of them, crawling in and out of your shirt. You scream and jump out of the bed only to see that your brother-in-law who is sleeping on the upper bed has bugs crawling on his entire face. You wake him up. 

 

Everyone, except for your mother, has giant bug bites on their entire bodies. Your mother was saved because she did not sleep at all. She was still trying to process what happened with them and reach somewhere near acceptance. 

 

This is not how it was supposed to be. No one asked for this. You were promised to be taken somewhere safe. You feel suffocated in the room.