Iron Horse Brewery, partnered with the Central College of Arts and Humanities, hosted the Third Thursday Thinks forum last night at 7 p.m.

The featured speaker of the month was Geraldine O’Mahony, associate director of the Douglas Honors College, Her topic was “Ambiguous Identities: Distinguishing Who’s Who in a Refugee Camp in Eastern Africa.”

O’Mahony started off her talk by posing the question: how do we distinguish the good and the bad in a refugee camp?

She then went on to answer this question by talking about contemporary issues—describing how politicized refugees have become in light of the Paris attacks and the 2016 presidential election campaigns—and giving some background of her experience as a nurse in Tanzanian refugee camps in the late 1990s.

According to O’Mahony, there are many factors that make a refugee camp a place of not only strife but life.

“People do continue to live,” O’Mahony said. “Along with the difficulties I saw, people found ways of laughing, of having babies, of smiling […] of having life, of making life, of finding a way to continue forward. And that is something that we should focus on.”

Additionally, she said that there really is no way of dividing the good people from the bad in the camps.

In refugee camps, many suffer from not only physical infirmities, but mental and emotional ones as well. These ailments are just one aspect that makes picking the bad out from the good so difficult, because they unify those in the camp in suffering.

“There was no mechanism to separate out who the good and the bad was,” O’Mahony said. “I’m also very glad there wasn’t any mechanism for me to do anything about it. Because that wasn’t my job. As a nurse my job wasn’t to determine whether or not someone was entitled to the care I was there to give them. My job as a nurse was to give people care.”

O’Mahony summed up her talk with some last comments about how “we” as a global community need to think about who we ask to do this job of differentiating and by saying that we “can’t [distinguish who’s who] in a refugee camp, and we shouldn’t.”

After her speech, O’Mahony fielded questions from the audience.

The next Third Thursday Thinks will take place on May 19 at 7 p.m. and feature Dr. Jeff Snedeker, associate chair and professor of horn for the Central music department discussing the topic of “Advocating for Music: Why Bother?”.

For more information on upcoming Third Thursday Thinks events you can visit: http://business.kittitascountychamber.com/events/details/third-thursday-thinks-by-iron-horse-brewery-19064.