From one picture of one lifeless boy to another, an image is finally emerging of the realities and circumstances around migration, illegal, forced, or voluntary.  The monotone colour has assumed various hues and shades and we are able to see beyond first impressions towards the depths of the canvas and make out figures and faces and land in the distance.

We see also that the trail leads back to not just the great African continent but also the suffering towns and villages, in mountains and plains, some fertile some barren, some reduced to a pile of rocks and others barely standing.  Crops are gone, the ground is hard and where there were children playing in the streets, today we see blood on the walls and mounds of burial sites.  Animals have nowhere to graze and their skeletons lie in the dust.

I have not been to visit any of the African, Syrian or Iraqi towns, or the Yazidi communities, neither have I been to the tortuous and great Afghanistan but somehow these countries have become almost neighbours.  Indeed, for many European countries, the person next door is quite likely to be the same person who arrived from any of those places a year ago or a few days ago. 

In her article in the Washington Post, Constanze Stelzenmüller who is a Robert Bosch senior fellow at the Brookings Institution wrote:  “The Germany I was born into — white, and Catholic or Protestant — is a memory. More than 20 percent of its current inhabitants came to us as migrants, or are the children of migrants. My own extended tribe (lily-white and Lutheran for centuries), over two generations has acquired Swiss, American, Taiwanese, Jewish, Senegalese and Ghanaian-Slovene family members. Heck, some of us even married Catholics.”

Even before the migration crises of 2015, the world was already a different place with such movement of people and borderless countries, that stating your nationality was a rather futile affair because it was all too clear that your ancestry was from some other part of the world.

Those countries who are island states, such as Malta and even Great Britain, are likely to feel the change more acutely because, possibly, it takes longer for us to move and to receive, to adjust and to accept.  It is not so much a judgement or a racial issue, it is simply that the only security we could rely on in the past was our coherence, our nationality and the fact that we knew our neighbours and friends and our enemies too.

In order to survive as a community in a densely populated country such as Malta, certain boundaries and scepticism are mounted.  Suddenly I begin to feel like a foreigner in my own land.  Maybe it is a silly perception.  Maybe it is an instinct that survived the generations.  Possibly it is correct but a little less panic can help to calm the waters and bring better understanding and at the same time, create the space, physically, emotionally and mentally to make room for all.

As the season of crowded dinghies on water and rescue missions descends upon us again, especially with the diversion of routes drawn back to the Libyan coast and even the Egyptian deltas, the hardship and despair is once again evident around us.  This time, the ships are ready to pick up the corpses and the young mothers and orphaned children, the UN has given its mandate to operate as a deterrent to the traffickers, the refugee centres have their ink wet for the finger-printing and some plan is mapped out as to where the survivors will be sent to make a new application for asylum and possibly make a life. 

We know that there are different people fleeing for different reasons and we try to pick them out and label them so that they can be sorted and sent back home to where they came from, like letters at the post office – return to sender or deliver to such and such.  Others will be tolerated and fed.  Arrangements are made so that one country after another can avoid opening their door and hosting the men, women and children that have come looking for work and a life.  Some, too, may find welcome.

Just last week, the world's longest and deepest rail tunnel has officially opened in Switzerland, after almost two decades of construction work.  The 57km (35-mile) twin-bore Gotthard base tunnel will provide a high-speed rail link under the Swiss Alps between northern and southern Europe.

Switzerland says it will revolutionise European freight transport.  Whilst at Calais the camps are moved further away and the mud clogs the feet of children and stray dogs.  When British art curator Sue McAlpine first visited makeshift migrant camps in Calais on Frances's northern coast, the sight of families living in muddy tents and children wearing flip-flops in the middle of winter saddened and horrified her.

McAlpine visited the camps in February to see if she could commission art and collect stories from migrants living in Calais for an exhibition in London - an idea she had while watching and reading media reports about the situation there. McAlpine said sharing tea with migrant families inside their tents and hearing their stories cemented her decision to put together the London exhibition.

It is important to hear the stories.  One of the mysterious pleasures of the past was to tell stories, in epic poems or lusty tales. 

Master storyteller Ahmed Ezzarghani and apprentice Sara are fighting to keep the Moroccan storytelling tradition alive.  Oral storytelling has been an integral part of Moroccan culture for over a thousand years. But now the precious art form is disappearing, due to the availability of new forms of entertainment through modern technology.

Hajj Ahmed Ezzarghani has been telling stories for over five decades. Now in his 70s, the master storyteller has retired from the chaos of Marrakech's famous square, Jemaa el-Fna.  He finds new purpose in teaching young apprentices the skills of the ancient art form.

If we only could take time to listen a whole new world could open up for us.  Instead of catching airplanes and organising hotels and sorting out the babysitters, we could sit around a delicious tagine and hear all sorts of stories.  I believe that once the ordeal is recounted, soon other tales will surface and also dreams that have still to happen.

Meanwhile, as the focus of the developed world’s leaders turns to the emptying continents and regions, they are realising that instead of having people who can buy goods and produce food, they are having to compensate for the corruption, the war, the poverty and the globalisation that has tilted the balance and is causing so many to start walking away from no future to any future. 

We hear about bringing a Marshall plan to Africa.  The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, channelled over $13 billion to finance the economic recovery of Europe between 1948 and 1951.  But that plan had a historic reference, a foundation of an already formed and established semi- industrial nation.  It was re-building not creating.  Recovering not recreating. 

As for addressing the economic, social and other problems in these countries from which the migrants and refugees, originate, it may be fair to those who will be carrying the responsibility of investing and committing, to be honest and say that certain rulers have to be removed first and radical changes have to be implemented.  Those states mired in war must first find their peace and be willing to restore a civilisation and society that is about more than dollars and petrol.  Gaining independence for many countries should not mean that one corrupt ruler is going to have access to all the aid money and blood diamonds.  Before sending out the white farmers, it might have made sense to find a balance and give equality to the local farmers but not at the expense of what had been generating a livelihood over the centuries. 

Water is the most important need, above all.  Then there is democracy and international agencies that can help to organise a plan and provide health services and jobs in the community.  Re-populating the livestock, re-establishing the synergy between nature and man, and allowing natural progress and human activity to flourish.  Instead of plunder, there should be export and just like taxes should be paid in the country where the activity is produced, so too, taxes should be paid in those countries from where oil, coffee and other minerals are extracted.  Maybe the United Nations can look at a convention that will allow it to intervene and take over the running of failed states. 

The western countries know they need migrants to boost their workforce and the purchasing power of the market.  They will continue to maintain some influx of migrants, legal or illegal.  But it is reasonable to say that the human factor is more than ever a real factor that will continue to play an important part in our mind and heart on a personal and a global level and lead us to imagine a totally new reality for the future of the children and of the world.

As our Archbishop has said, the Pope is saying that we need to approach situations even if we are called to recognise that they may not bring us “tangible and immediate benefits”. It is up to the United Nations, the European Union, world leaders and every individual to come up with the response that can make the difference to a better world.