Once there were some people who longed for a better lifestyle. Things were not so good for them, back home; so, they left. They didn’t exactly have permission to enter the country they were headed to, but they really wanted to be there, so they just went. These people looked, dressed, acted and smelled different from the people who lived in their new homeland. Some of these locals welcomed them, while others were decidedly hostile. The foreigners showed up a few at a time at first, then more and more, until eventually they started to outnumber the locals.
The newcomers brought strange food and weird customs; and despite claiming they were trying to get away from their native country, they resisted giving up their ties to it. One thing that ended up causing a lot of trouble was that most of them refused to learn the language in the new country. Many problems could have been prevented if they had tried a little harder in this area.
Some of the foreigners were gracious and courteous to their hosts. Others were jerks, taking advantage of every gift or benefit offered, then demanding more. Plenty of them sort of pretended that there were no problems, while they took advantage of the resources and goodwill of the locals. They weren’t all bad people; but they had lives to lead, and they needed what the locals had. The locals shared. Or they complained. Or they resisted. Or they sat back and watched until it was too late.
In the end, the tensions were never really resolved. Instead, the two groups separated themselves, mostly living in communities isolated from each other, clustering together with people more similar to themselves. However, some of the locals began to act more like the foreigners, who now outnumbered them. In fact, the foreigners weren’t really foreigners anymore. In fact, they mostly ran things now. Life was never the same for the people who used to be the locals.
The End.
(photo: Chris Seufert)