The End of Where We Begin--A Refugee Story by Rosalind Russell

Author:Rosalind Russell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781911293569
Publisher: Impress Books

A decade later and Daniel is back in a refugee camp. When the war erupted in Juba again, Daniel’s father couldn’t help. He could no longer commandeer trucks and boats to help his son escape. His father’s house is gone, his Land Cruiser is gone, all his savings are gone. He can no longer support his four wives. He has retreated to the bush, commanding a unit of soldiers in a remote part of Jonglei State. Daniel left Juba on a convoy of buses and found his mother, sister and little brothers in Uganda, with nothing. His little sister Tabitha had dropped out of school. There was no choice but to head to the refugee settlements that had mushroomed across the rocky hunting grounds between Arua and the Nile. Being a refugee in Uganda has advantages over Kenya; the family has a little piece of land on which to build their own house. But almost immediately, Daniel started to feel the drain of refugee life. Some people adapt easily to the dependency, they feel unburdened by the removal of choices. Daniel has watched his mother and sister settle in without complaint. They have succumbed to the system, they embrace it even – queuing to register, queuing for cooking utensils, queuing for food, queuing for water. They are so accepting, and it annoys him. He feels annoyed for weeks and his mother chides him for his bad temper. He’s nearly twenty, but still playing the part of a truculent teenager: grumpy, bored and monosyllabic. His days are spent sitting outside their tukul, strumming out repetitive, dreary ballads on his guitar.

He watches his horizons narrow. It’s a physical sensation, as if he is slowly losing his sight. He’s been to one of the best schools in northern Uganda. Although he could have studied harder, he’s had a much better education than most of the young people in the camp. His aspirations have always been vague, but at school he’d had a sense that anything was possible. He should be at university, not mouldering in this no-man’s-land. His school-friends are all studying – in Gulu, Kampala and Mbarara. Once or twice, Daniel is able to buy some airtime at the cafe near the UN’s basecamp. He goes onto Facebook to see how his friends have moved on: Keno in his university dormitory, a selfie of Paul in a white coat and safety glasses – he is training to be a medical technician. Josh is on a field trip to a sugar factory, wearing a hard hat and posing for the camera with peace signs. Daniel clicks on the pictures, zooms in for detail. He stares at them until his internet time runs out.

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