Oakland — You’re on an inflatable raft in the middle of the ocean for three days, fleeing the violent conflict in Syria and trying to get to safety in Europe. Smugglers demand $1,000 for the passage. Which of your most prized items will you part with — money? Cell phone? Water? They want another $200-$300 for a life vest that is in fact worthless; when it gets wet will get soaked and drag you under the waves.

Welcome to “Forced from Home,” the interactive exhibit created by the international medical charity Doctors Without Borders. The goal of the exhibit is to educate people about the plight of refugees by giving them a glimpse of what it’s like to be in the shoes of people who have been forced to flee their homes because of violent conflict. The 10,000-square foot national traveling exhibit arrived in Oakland Monday and is being staged in the parking lot of the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center. It will be in town until Nov. 5.

The exhibit includes a dome featuring images projected on a 360-degree screen. An orange raft crowded with people floats on the sea, so realistic that it could give you vertigo. There are tattered clothes hanging on a line. A voice says, “their houses have been burned to the ground and there is nothing left.”

For the duration of the one-hour tour, you are a refugee. At the exhibit entrance, each visitor is handed a “passport,” denoting his country of origin: Afghanistan, South Sudan, Burundi, Honduras and Syria. The tour leaders who are Doctors Without Borders aid workers, direct each visitor to a wall of plastic cards representing valuable items and cherished possessions such as prescription medications, water, jewelry, children’s toys, and the pet dog. They get 30 seconds to pick five cards before they have to flee their homes.

Throughout the tour, people visit different stations where they must part with prized possessions — forced to pay to continue on with their journey.

“It shows you the rough choices that people have to make, using different examples,” said Rachel Milkovich, Doctors Without Borders media coordinator. You get to see the personal stories and not just the data.”

There are more than 65 million people worldwide who have been forced to flee their homes, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner of Refugees. The exhibit sought to humanize them using a combination of personal testimonials, artifacts taken from refugee camps, Doctors Without Borders hospitals, and sea rescues. There were handmade children’s toys and cell phones.

Other exhibits included a makeshift latrine and a Doctors Without Borders hospital in the field where refugees were treated for malnutrition, cholera and malaria. At a virtual reality exhibit, refugees tell their harrowing stories.

“You can see they were people just like us, they had everything and then everything was taken away from them,” Doctors Without Borders nurse Tatiana Chiarella told a group of seventh-graders from Bentley School in Oakland. “They ended up in a place with nothing and they lost everything, including sometimes their family members.”

As the students struggled over which of their mock possessions to hang onto, Chiarella told them to hurry.

“When you’re forced to leave your home you don’t have any time to decide what to take,” said Chiarella, who has been deployed to Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Malawi and South Sudan. “You just have to take what’s important and go.”

Kristy Parsons-McClain, a seventh-grade teacher who brought her class from Bentley, didn’t part with her “dog” until the bitter end.

Prior to the visit, she said her class worked with MathAction, a non-profit that uses math to help students understand global challenges. The students created replicas of refugee tents.

“Today we were just able to put it altogether so they really got a personal connection,” Parsons-McClain said.

Adee Franbuch, 13, an eighth-grader at Contra Costa Jewish Day School in Lafayette, said the tour gave her a greater appreciation for what refugees go through.

“When they showed us the life jacket and said it was something that some real person drowned in, everyone in my class was silent,” Franbuch said. “You’re not just imagining it, but you’re seeing it and it’s real. You really get to see the experience of the people.”