Missing home
By James Kamira, Social Protection facilitator, World Vision South Sudan
Thirteen-year-old Mike lost most of the things that were dear to him when he and his family fled fighting in South Sudan for a refugee camp in northern Uganda. After two years, his dreams of becoming a doctor or mathematician are becoming increasingly unlikely.
Mike last saw his father over a year ago when his village came under attack. As gunfire rang out and pandemonium followed, his father told his family to run with the rest of the villagers. That was the last time Mike saw him. He and his mother, brother and five sisters are now struggling to support themselves in the camp.
“I still remember that evening. Everything happened so quickly,” Mike remembers. “The whole village was running in one direction. I last saw father telling us to run with the other people. We carried nothing except the clothes we had on. You could not stay in the house. The whole village was running."
Mike and his family fled across the border into northern Uganda where children now make up 64% of the refugee population. Mike and his six siblings live in one hut whilst his mother and other relatives live in two other huts nearby.
The teenager’s life now is very different from what it was before. In South Sudan Mike's family lived in a large home consisting of three permanent buildings roofed in iron and fenced with concrete. A generator provided electricity to the home, and the children had enough light to do their homework at night. There was running water and another water source nearby. Mike even had his own goat - a gift from his father for doing well at school. It was his proudest possession. The goat had kids and Mike found great joy in tending to them and other livestock in the fields.
But when his family ran Mike had to abandon his goats. He has not seen a light bulb in two years. The only water they have access to now is from a community well where they have to queue for hours to get just 20 litres.
Mike and his six siblings are now sleeping in cramped sleeping conditions. The seven of them are sharing two beds and during the rainy season the hut leaks. Summer winds can be so strong that they tear at the roofing. Still, this is better than when they first arrived, when the whole family had just two blankets between them.
There is less to do in the camp and it does not feel as safe as his village did, Mike says. “Home is not what it used to be. In the refugee settlement my family was given a piece of land to set up a house which left me and my siblings with a small stony compound to play on. We’ve had to improvise space for a local game which we play with our neighbours. Now all our balls are gone. We have no bicycles to ride any more,” he says.
“I hope one day we can all go back to our village.”
Mike, who is the second oldest, worries about his family, his future and his schooling. In South Sudan his school was a short walk away. Now he gets up early and often walks on an empty stomach for an hour to get to school.
"I never used to wake up early to go to school. My mum would always prepare us a meal and tea in the morning and put something for breakfast in the bags. But here I eat nothing in the morning except if we’ve kept part of our dinner meal," he says.
There are no meals at his new school, unlike his old one, and so Mike might go the whole day without anything to eat.
“There is no food at school. I have to study on an empty stomach until evening when I get back home. Sometimes I don’t find food at home, especially when there’s been a distribution because my mother has had to line up for several hours.”
Mike feels betrayed by his circumstances. Conflict has forced him and his family to live as refugees and has thrown his dreams of becoming a doctor or mathematician into doubt.
But he still hopes things will change so that he and his family can return home.
“Our neighbours and friends were killed. Everybody ran away. We could not stay. Our school was destroyed,” he says. “It’s as if they never wanted us to easily return home because our school and our homes were destroyed and the goats and cows stolen. We have nothing left of what we cherished about our village. If I had my goats, I would sell them to support us."
Mike’s mother also worries that her children will never complete their schooling like she had hoped, and worries about the struggle of raising them alone. Mike dreams of one day waking up in his old home and of playing inside his old compound. But he knows peace must come first.
Mike is a child peace ambassador in the South Sudan Refugee Peace Club where World Vision teaches children peacekeeping skills. Mike also attends a Child Friendly Space, set up by World Vision to give children a place to safely play and learn. In addition to our peace building projects and Child Friendly Spaces in South Sudan, World Vision has been working on programmes to keep young children healthy, distribute clothes and medicine, and works with the World Food Programme to distribute food. Since December 2013 it is estimated that some 550,000 people have fled from South Sudan, and around 1.5 million are displaced within the country. Families like Mike's have travelled to countries including Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda to seek safety.