Akuch Kuol Anyieth - Unknown: A Refugees Story

A moving, confronting and ultimately uplifting story about a young girls escape, with her family, from war-torn South Sudan to Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, and then to Australia.

In 1996, when Akuch Kuol Anyieth is five, her mother flees to Kakuma with her children, intent on finding safety and freedom for her family, while her husband stays behind in South Sudan to fight in the civil war. The family spends nine years in the camp, eking out an existence amidst famine, disease, unbearable heat, and chronic violence. Despite their suffering, Akuch never loses hope or her sense of humour. Shes a bright student who loves learning and does well at the local school.

In 2005, the family is finally granted a family humanitarian visa to Australia. They are on the way to paradise. But the reality of their new lives in Melbourne is complex. As Akuchs brothers behaviour spirals out of control, the family find themselves isolated and struggling with various forms of racism.

But Akuch is determined. She learns English from scratch, excels in her educational achievements, and tries to live the life of a regular teenager. Above all she does everything she can to help her family emerge from the bonds of violence.

Akuch Kuol Anyieths Unknown is a remarkable memoir. Its a homage to the strength of her mother in protecting her family against all the odds, a story of sadness, anger, humour, determination, survival and love.

I want to tell you about a different kind of world, one that exists within the world we live in: the world of being a refugee, settled in exile, in a land far from home, living through perpetual violence. This is the story of my life until now, a subjective recollection, told with the help of my family membersmy mother and my brothers and sisterswhom I had to consult on many occasions to help confirm some of my faded memories.

Unknown is the story of what I have experienced, what we have experienced, and how these experiences have shaped and will continue to shape how I think, how I view the world, what I want to do, and the ways in which I want to contribute to my family and to the world at large. As I grew up in my new home country, Australia, I realised that it would perhaps be helpful and maybe even important to tell this story. I have used pseudonyms for some of my friends and relatives in order to protect their privacy.

This book is dedicated to my family; to every refugee escaping war and in search of a better, peaceful life; to South Sudanese youth; and to all victims and perpetrators of family violence.

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

COLOSSIANS 3:13

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

EPHESIANS 4:2-3

MY NAME IS Akuch Kuol Anyieth. I am South Sudanese by birth, Kenyan by migration and life experience, and Australian by migration and citizenship. I spent my childhood and some of my teenage years in Kakuma, a refugee camp in remote, arid, north-west Kenya, near the border with South Sudan. My childhood memories of the camp include hunger and thirst, dust storms, bites from scorpions, outbreaks of malaria and choleraand violence.

Usually, the South Sudanese name their children after family members, grandfathers, grandmothers, aunties and uncles. Names can also be chosen to reflect the circumstances of a childs birth. In the language of the Dinka tribe of South Sudan, tong means war, so the names Tong (male) or Atong (female) indicate that a child was born in a period of war. My mother Mary Achol Anyuon gave birth to my sister Atong in 1988, during the Second Sudanese Civil War, in her birth village, Mar, on the White Nile in central South Sudan.

Baba, my father, Kuol Anyieth, was born in South Sudan and raised in Khartoum before the war. He completed his secondary education and most of his university studies in mechanical engineering there, before going to visit family in Mar, where he met Mama. According to both of them, it was love at first sight. They got married immediately and moved back to Khartoum, where my sister Ajok was born and named after my great-grandmother on my paternal side.

Baba did not resume his university studies as he needed to provide for his family now that he was a married man. He secured what Mama often referred to as a great jobas a mechanical engineer at a vehicle-production company established during the British colonial period. Baba worked for the company for many years, moving between the headquarters in Khartoum and a branch office in Wau, the capital of the state of Western Bahr el Ghazal, where my brother Anyieth was born and named after my paternal grandfather. As the war escalated, tensions rose between the Arab management and the Sudanese employees. When the company shut down, Mama and Baba moved back to Mamas village.

My mother lost three children, Deng, Yom and Thon, to diseases caused by infections that could have been simply treated if the country was not in chaos. After Atongs birth, she decided that she had had enough of burying her dead children and would not have any more. Nevertheless, three years later, I was born. All our family and friends were surprised. For three years Mama had kept her promise to herself, in a country with no access to contraception for women. Hence my name: Akuch, which in Dinka means unknown or I dont know. I was the mysterious child who defied all the odds to be born, and to survive displacement, poverty and violence.

Towards the end of 1990, Baba heard that a refugee camp for displaced Sudanese refugees had been set up in Ethiopia, where the UN was distributing aid. The second civil war between the North and the South of Sudan had broken out in 1983, and as the war escalated Southerners escaped to this camp and to other neighbouring countries. Baba wanted to move the family to the camp, but Mama was pregnant with me, so he decided to walk there with Anyieth. Mama says it was Babas way of teaching Anyieth how to be a manto protect and provide for your family. They were going to try to get a portion of land in the camp, erect a shelter and then come back to Mar to get pregnant Mama, Ajok and Atong. Baba planned to find an army vehicle that was going from Sudan to Ethiopia, so the rest of the family wouldnt have to walk the long miles as he had done, carrying Anyieth on his back for most of the journey.

Baba and Anyieth were still in Ethiopia when Mama gave birth to me and tribal war broke out between the Nuer and Dinka tribes in South Sudan. Mama ran with us from one village to another, seeking refuge. Baba and Anyieth started walking back to Sudan, hunting for us in every village. Somehow, we heard that they were heading towards a village call Kidepo, located in Eastern Equatoria. By the time we arrived, Baba had built two shacks for us there. The family was finally reunited, but not for long. As soon as Baba settled Mama in Kidepo, he left to serve in the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA), driven by his undying dream of defending his nation of South Sudanas were so many Sudanese men. My father was also determined to pursue his mechanical engineering career in the army. After Baba had gone, we moved from one village to another in Eastern Equatoria, for about three years. Villages were often attacked, or we would run out of food and have to move somewhere more peaceful.

When Mama heard that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had set up the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, where they were distributing food to refugees seeking asylum, she decided that we had to find a way to get therefor our safety, and in the hope of one day migrating to a western country.