Email
PrintThe reality of being a refugee
Former Sudanese refugee Mawien Kuol is volunteering as Logistics Coordinator for Oxfam Australia’s Refugee Realities project, which will give people a taste of life as a refugee. Photo: Mik Efford/OxfamAUS.
Imagine being forced to flee from war. How would you survive? Oxfam Australia is giving Australians the chance to experience the tough and perilous life of a refugee with its new Refugee Realities project.
In 1982, at the age of five, Mawien Kuol fled into the night with his mother when cattle raiders came and destroyed the village where they lived in Southern Sudan. They moved to Sudan’s capital Khartoum to start a new life, but in 1995 Mawien was forced to flee again after being wrongly accused of spying for the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army.
“I had to escape. My life was at risk,” Mawien explains “Along the border I met some friends from the south who had the same problem. We were told not to carry anything, no clothes or albums. I pretended to be a farmer and walked into Ethiopia.”
Once in Ethiopia, Mawien went to the Dima Refugee Camp where he stayed for one year, before again being forced to flee. This time it was because of his Dinka ethnicity that he was violently targeted by other people in the camp. Mawien fled to a nearby hospital where he was protected for three months, before walking the long road back to Sudan and fleeing again to Kenya.
“I escaped Dima refugee camp at night with my half brother, cousin and nephew and other people who knew the direction,” he recalls. “We walked only at night through the bush. There were wild animals. We had no drinking water, and I was sick with malaria but had no medicine. We ate wild foods.
“We then went to Polataka camp which was attacked by gunfire. The room where I was living was destroyed. We were lucky it was rainy season; we survived by hiding in the long grass and the crops.”
For many Australians, it is hard to fathom what life as a refugee must be like. To bring that experience to life, Oxfam Australia is launching a new project, Refugee Realities, to draw attention to the rights and experiences of refugees and other displaced people around the world.
Refugee Realities is an interactive simulation exercise that will recreate the experience of a refugee, from becoming displaced to finding permanent settlement. A refugee camp, fitted out with humanitarian supplies and materials sourced from actual emergencies, will be created in Melbourne’s Gasworks Arts Park. Visitors will have to navigate a land mine field, learn about family separation and how to register to receive humanitarian assistance. Volunteers, who include humanitarian workers and former refugees, will guide groups through the experience.
One of the guides will be Mawien Kuol who, after nine years travelling between camps is now settled in Australia with his wife Veronica and their three children. Maiwen is volunteering as the logistics coordinator for Refugee Realities — part of a team of eight interns and countless volunteers who are bringing the project to life.
“I wanted to reflect my refugee experience for other people. Let other people know what being a refugee means,” Mawien says.“People need to have a better appreciation of the experiences we have gone through. People need to know that being a refugee is not a choice, it is imposed.”
While Mawien’s experiences are unique, like most refugees his story is about a journey — a perilous journey that has taken almost a lifetime, crossed country borders and involved incredible strength and resourcefulness to survive.
There are more than 34 million people around the world who, like Mawien, have been forced to flee their homes because of war and conflict. Around 7 million of these people have been living in refugee camps and temporary settlements for more than 10 years.
Story by Oxfam Australia’s Refugee Realities Project Coordinator Steph Cousins.