(English) A refugee tale: Daring to dream

Bright O Richards was a famous actor in Liberia before coming to the Netherlands as a refugee.
Utrecht, The Netherlands – When actor Bright O Richards came to Holland as a refugee of the Liberian civil war, he bought himself a pair of brightly coloured wooden shoes. He wore them everywhere he went.
As an African in clogs, he attracted a lot of attention. Everywhere he went, people would strike up a conversation with him.
“In a way, with those clogs, I secured myself a public again,” he says. “In Liberia, I was a celebrity. But as a refugee, I totally lost my identity. I was a nobody. But thanks to those clogs people couldn’t help noticing me.”
Nowadays, 45-year-old Richards runs an organisation called New Dutch Connections, which works to empower young refugees. He challenges them to dream of the future. And he teaches them how to build up a network of people that can help them get ahead in life.
Earlier this year, the Dutch king and queen awarded him a special prize for his successful social initiative.
‘It only takes one person to change, or even save, your life’
But Richards knows all about the loneliness and isolation that refugees face in the West. He was a popular actor with his own television show when he fled the Liberian civil war, narrowly escaping execution by Charles Taylor’s rebels.
“When I came to Holland in 1993, I thought I would never act again. I thought I would have to find a job in a factory, because that’s what most people in my situation were doing,” he explains.
While living in a refugee centre, he bought a camera and started to photograph fellow refugees. He portrayed them the way they wanted to been seen: smartly dressed, against a beautiful backdrop.
“I made the photos they would send home to show their family that things were just fine.”
With the money he made from taking the photographs, he organised a weekly entertainment event at the refugee centre, where anyone who wanted to sing or dance was welcome to perform.
A woman who worked there, saw what he was doing and introduced him to the management of a multicultural festival. At first, he was taken on as a doorman. A year later, he was announcing the artists – all while clad in traditional African dress with his clogs on his feet.
“All of a sudden I stood before an audience again. That’s when I started to believe I could find work as an actor in Holland after all. For the first time since I fled Liberia, people saw me for who I really was. That was so important to me. In my present work with refugees this has become my main focus: To help them to be seen for what they really are.”The woman who connected him to the festival instilled in Richards a deep faith in the role one human being can play in the life of another.
“I have experienced this once before, in Liberia,” he says. “When I was on the verge of being randomly executed by a rebel, his Kalashnikov already pointed at me, there was a man who recognised me as a television star and he begged him to let me go.”
“This man took a great risk in pleading for me. I don’t know who he was, but I owe him my life. So I know from experience that it only takes one person to totally change, even save, your life.”