Blane, Eritrea

“The way my dad grew up was tough love. It didn’t come easy for his parents to be like, ‘I love you’ or ‘I miss you’, ‘I care for you’. It was more so how they do it. By providing food, by asking them what they need. Not more so physically or emotionally. I think the way my dad showed it to me was quite different- not only by what he provided, but also with his words. Though he was a bit tough as well. For me its quite different in how I would express it, maybe could also be because I am a woman. I don’t think I’m more so tough, maybe I’m more sensitive. Generation by generation it’s different and it keeps on evolving and changing. And given how it is back home, and it’s here, it also makes you change. There, it’s a bit more tough, I guess. Here, you’re told to express your emotions, you’re told to tell people I love you, express how you feel and stuff like that. So could not even be generational, but your circumstance also makes you change as to how you’re supposed to show love.”

Shiva, Bhutan

“My elders they taught me show respect, love respect and care, that’s the first thing. And the second thing is always show love, appreciation for others, whenever someone is coming as a guest, or somebody coming to your house, show them respect, offer them something. Yes that’s what he taught me. And the other thing my elders taught me about love is to be very friendly to others, show your kindness, always smiling.”

Hawa, Sierra Leone

“Love is important to say, but hard to describe. Growing up nobody actually told me ‘I love you’ from the mouth; what I knew was love was getting clothes, food and advice, respect. Especially your Elders- when they talk to you, you don’t look at them in your face, you give them your ear to show that you respect them, and that whatever they say, you’re listening. Even now in Canadian culture, I’m trying this everyday to tell my kids I love them. Although I hug them, cook for them, and just show the things that actually I love them, but don’t say it.”

Shant, Bhutan

“I was taught to treat others how you want to be treated, and treat them with respect”

Kancha, Bhutan

“My parents teach me to respect for the love. I’m loving to my kids and respecting them, and they respect to me. They show love by respecting me.”

Simran, Bhutan

“What my family has taught me is to help everyone in need, and they’ll help you back when you’re in need.”

Evenjellena, Bhutan

“My Elders taught me that love can come in a lot of ways, such as how you love your family, your friends. If you respect people, they can respect you back. The little things you do can make someone’s day. Whenever I see someone who is in need, I would help them in hopes that makes their day.”

Krishna, Bhutan

“My elders taught me about love is to create a cooperative environment to each other so that it creates peacefulness in a family. So that will create love also…to everybody else it will create love to each other. Need to respect each other, to cooperate in order to get love and give love to one another.”

Santosh, Bhutan

“My dad taught me how to respect other people, right, and even the younger ones. He always taught me one phrase: be nice to everyone, and then they will be nice to you. So if you act in a good way, then the result will be always positive.”

Tek, Bhutan

“The love that my parents teach me about is family respect -respect our families and share things with families, and share ideas with families.”

Hana Banana, Syria

“My parents taught me to love everybody no matter what they’re doing, no matter who they are.”

Rahaf, Iraq

“When I hear love, I think family. To be more specific, I think of my mom. Love is caring, and respecting others’ feelings. Sometimes love is not saying that you love the person, but doing something that reminds you of that person you love.”

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Justin, South Sudan

“Love back home appears physically being together, sit together, knowing that your neighbour is there when you eat dinner you’re together. Here love is materialistic; for them who live back home, they just have to be together to experience love. People here, you have to hug, give presents, you have to say it. Back home, it’s an understanding that it’s there and its not going away. It will never be shown explicitly, but here if it’s not shown explicitly, they’re going to question it.”

Reta, Iraq

“I did college, I took my diploma and I was looking for work- I was struggling. But my mum always helped me, I really appreciate that. This is her showing love to me. Oh my God, she bought me everything I needed, and whatever my son needed as well. She always got my back and that’s part of love, because she loves me, and she loves my son. She provided all of that for us. That’s how I got love from her, I see it as love, and that’s what it is all about.”

Rohit, Bhutan

“If someone gives me a hug when I’m distressed or gives me a pat, or sympathizes or empathizes with me. If I’m crying, if that person cries with me, it shows he’s expressing immense love towards me.”

Mina, South Sudan

“For the people back home, the struggle kinda made them love each other more, because they’re all going through a similar struggle, some might struggle less or more, but here everyone is more to themselves. I can see why there’s a difference for sure.”

Martha, Sierra Leone

“A way of showing love that I was taught back home is to welcome people in your home and prepare food for them, give them gifts. I remember my Grandmother used to cook all the time and save some food in the house. I remember one time there was an old man working in the streets, and my grandmother saw that he was sweating a lot, so she sends me, “go call that man, come”. So I went and called him, and said, “Oh, you are hungry, I know I see you are working a lot, you’re sweating. Have some food!” So she gave this person food, just by looking at him. For them, that’s how she shows love to the community- opening her house up and welcome any stranger with food and gifts.”

Abdul, Syria

“It’s always nice to gather and share the stuff that we like and that’s how we communicate with all cultures. In Canada there are so many races and cultures that well communicate with each other. It’s nice to share traditions and cultures and that’s how we share love, share value and that’s how we communicate.”

Tek, Bhutan

“Magic of hug. If you are having a bad time, and if your parents give you a tight hug, it gives you a big relief, someone is behind me, have my back.”

Esther, South Sudan

“I want [my kids] to always be close to us and get the meaning of the family and love of the person who cares for you. Back home, we don’t give flowers like here, ‘I love you flowers’ and giving something all the time, but real love is this – I may be living in one area and maybe I will travel across the city to visit a friend, family member, without even calling. I just go a long distance and not going by transportation, I just walk there – that’s love. You care for that person. You take the time to go all the way there. The person really means love and care.”

Abdul, Syria

“I think love is a form of respect, like if you love someone you show more respect and attention to them. And you give them a placement where you put them on top, or in like a better state. Love is not also just a feeling, it’s a real-life position where like if someone has lots of attention and love, then he’s someone who is important to the society or the individual.”

Krishna, Bhutan

“Respect is how we love each other. If someone comes, we say ‘namaste’ (hello, hi, welcome) – how we greet is how we love. If we don’t greet it means we are not loving in our hearts.”

Killa, South Sudan

“I want to talk about my mum’s side. My mum has two sisters and one brother. During the war, because of the war in South Sudan that started a long time ago in the 1950s, and my mum has four boys and one girl. And my uncle, he’s the youngest brother of my mum, has four girls. During the wartime there is no schools in South Sudan. My mum and her brother decided that my mum would take care of his daughters, and the brother would take my mum’s boys to Uganda to study. Then her brother took my brothers to Uganda to study, and left his daughters with mum to raise them inside the Sudan. And always they were very supportive and helped each other.”

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Shareen, Iraq

“In my opinion love is all the same across cultures and languages, it’s just different ways of expressing. The most important thing is you feel it and show it.”

Mina, South Sudan

“I wonder why is everyone leaving when we love our land so much? But I realized later, they had to create a better life. I knew it was in danger when people had to leave. There are so many cultures here that we can all engage in, sometimes you get lost in that because it’s new and interesting. Sometimes you create a culture. You don’t really see a lot of South Sudanese flags everywhere. Having a sense of where I was from helped out a lot. Being in this part of the world, how can you be connected to people who are always talking to you about a need, rather than love and appreciation about their land – it’s never something good. It’s hard to be connected to that.”

Shareen, Iraq

“There are some moments when you do feel your love to your land is at risk, when you feel that your family, your lovers are at risk or in danger. At that moment, you really want to flee- you want to run away with the one you love. But as soon as you feel peace, you remember that you do belong there, and that love will never ever change no matter what. As soon as you feel your land is going back to normal, or going back to its peace, you want to go back, to gain all your memories back, your love or your family. The survival is something very important, but the land is just like the blood in your veins, so you do go back, no matter what danger, uncomfortable you feel. You always go back.”

Tony, South Sudan

“I feel detached to my land; it’s irrelevant to me. In this time and place I’m blessed to be in Canada. This place is so structured, I’m not worried about where I am in the moment. I’m not worried about the land. Whenever I hear about ‘back home’ it’s always negative. There’s always something negative. It’s never so-and-so graduated or something, it’s always this person was in an accident and the like. I try to disassociate myself from the land my parents came from.
I don’t experience love of land.”

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Ammar, Syria

“It is endangered because I don’t really know what is going to happen for my country tomorrow. I have family, relatives in the land, I do really care about it all the time. Even the land itself, the next morning the land is taken away, my land is in danger. Yes. it is in danger yes.”

Abubaker, Iraq

“Iraq has not been well since 1956/ 1950s- a lot of emotions, a lot problems there, a lot sadness when it comes to the love of the country because it’s not doing really well. A lot of Iraqis, I feel, it’s not just me, they express their love with sadness and sad feelings to it because a lot of them are not being able to go because it’s dangerous, and a lot of them, for some reasons- had people die there. I feel like its different from a lot of countries.”

Justin, South Sudan

“The way it sounds when you hear about back home, you don’t hear anything good. There’s always this person passed away, this person is taken, this person is in power now. It sounds like it never gets better. Why would you want to be associated with that? Something that always digresses, it’s hard to be associated with that, because if you are, all you’re going to feel is loss. From what my elder’s experience to what I experience, there are no improvements really.”

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Reta, Iraq

“Belonging to the land in which you are born and raised. This is where belonging happens. How you were raised, with whom, your friends…family…”

Shareen, Iraq

“Land you grow up in is your root, you always look back. 23 years later, I feel like I left home yesterday. Good and bad memories. Without roots you are floating in the universe. We are like trees. We don’t have a future without land.”

Victoria, Iraq

“Our love for our land is forever in our heart. We will never forget our land. We will never forget our childhood. We will never forget our nice people that we lived with. We will never forget the nice times that we had in our land. Even if we had bad time, we have hard time, but still our land is in our hearts. We love it forever and ever.”

Reta, Iraq

“No matter what our land went through, like wars, disasters -we still love it and still belong to it. I know people went through a lot and suffered, but so many countries out there same thing happened to them but they still love their land – that’s why we still love our land. The memories beat that. It wasn’t like that all the time. It had its moments, and we had good times growing up. Our childhood was very cherished. It is planted in our hearts and we can never forget that. We really appreciate where we came from. We will always be proud of where we came from.”

Richard, South Sudan

“Yes, when I was younger because I didn’t really care for it. I thought that I wanted what is here and I don’t need to care about my land. But I realize it’s important to know where you come from. When I hear the stories of my dad and my mom, and my grandparents, I see it. It’s true there are negative stories young people hear, and you question why you need to worry about it and try to keep this other place alive. So as a child, my love was in danger, when I was young. But not as I’m older.”

Sabahat, Iraq

“I think when your land is at risk, you love it more…To keep the memory of that land beautiful, peaceful and belonging is more strong, because of the love. It’s the place you’re born and its that place of our dream. So it doesn’t matter how at risk or at war, you still love it everyday more and more. You keep the memory of this land full of beauty, dream of peace. And that is why, it doesn’t matter how, every land goes through war, but there is always a time for peace. Because of the people who love this land, and they want it to remain peaceful.”

Danda, Sierra Leone

“My love of land is soccer. Anytime the ball touches my feet, I feel like I’m at peace. When my love of land was endangered, it was due to depression and injuries.”