David's Journey

The long journey to Australia started when David was three and ended when he was twenty-two. After they fled from Wau, David and his father walked for two months to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. David remembers the harsh journey with lack of food and water and bodies scattered alongside the road; his father told him they were “sleeping”. They spent four years in a refugee camp in Ethiopia until they were “kicked out” because of the Ethiopian Civil War. No option remained, but to walk back to Sudan. However, the situation there was still volatile and after a year of languishing in open armed conflict, David and his friends headed for Kenya. By the time David reached Kakuma refugee camp, it was 1992, he was about ten years old and without any family. He spent 13 years in the Kenyan refugee camp with other South Sudanese boys orphaned or separated from their families by the war – this group later became known as the Lost Boys of Sudan. David’s friends were all he had and they became very close during these insecure years. In 2001, the US Government resettled many of the “Lost Boys”, but David missed out. His day finally came when a cousin who was already living in Australia offered to sponsor him. David arrived in August 2004; he was 22 years old.