Excerpts from 'Making it Home'

Making it Home, real life stories from children forced to flee by Beverley Naidoo (Puffin June 2004) This is a poignant and inspiring collection of stories by refugee children from all over the world. Told through the eyes of beneficiaries of IRC programmes, it provides a compelling insight into the plight of the world's refugees. The youngest contributor, six-year-old Wachen Bohlen left war-torn Liberia, but wants to return because "it is my country. It is my home." The oldest is fifteen-year-old Merci Ngubi from the Congo who spent two weeks trekking in the jungle with her family after fleeing from their home. To buy a copy of the book, visit Penguin's website.

Shirley Iraganje is ten. She’s from Burundi and now lives in Phoenix, Arizona, USA.

My name is Shirley Iraganje. I was born on 8 July 1994 in a small but beautiful country called Burundi in the Great Lake region of Central Africa.

When I was living in Burundi I had a lot of friends and family that I really miss now. I remember an aunt of mine telling me that I had to stay with her for a while because my dad was ‘working’ far from our home and my mum had to stay at school. Now I know that we were living separately so that we would not get killed together. My little brother did not stopping crying because he was missing our parents so much. I remember I saw my dad again when he was taking us to a plane and I asked him: ‘Where have you been?’ The only answer he gave me was: ‘Vite, vite! On va rater l’avion!!’ [‘Hurry, hurry, we’re about to miss the flight!!’] We were joining with our mother, who had already left the country.

I was four when we left. I remember leaving behind me a nice house I was living in. There were lots of different flowers all around it. It was next to a mountain, and my aunt and myself used to climb at sunset, her carrying me on her back. I still miss her. The flight to Burkina Faso was very long. Worse! Dad was not coming with us. The following day I do not know if I was excited or angry to see my mother again. I asked her the same question: ‘Why did you leave us by ourselves?’ I was only four then so I couldn’t understand her answer, but I do now.

A few months later my dad joined us. I don’t know where he had been. Then we moved from a studio into a very small, one-bedroom apartment. During that time my father was trying to find a job while my mother went to school. He found a job in a French high school as a teacher. Later on I went to the same school. Two years to wait until I am six. Meanwhile another journey was pointing ahead.

It was one evening in September. A friend of ours in military uniform took us to the airport of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. We changed the plane three times. At the end of the journey in Phoenix, Arizona, somebody was waiting for us and took us to a hotel, where we spent the first night. The following day we were settling into a one-bedroom apartment. A year later, my family moved again. But it was still in the same apartment complex, only in an apartment that had two bedrooms. Two months later, my brother Ralph and I started going to school. After two years in America my baby brother was born. His name is Robert Comblé Baransaka. Then we moved again into a three-bedroom house in Peoria [also in Arizona], where we live now. My dad used to call it our small ‘White House’ with red and green curtains, my mother’s favourite colours. It has a backyard. My brothers and I are happy that we have somewhere to run around and play all kinds of games.

Today I attend a school called Cotton Boll Elementary. My teacher was proud of me because at the end of the first grade I received an award letter signed President Clinton. I was also student of the month in my old school. Last year I won so many honours I was chosen out of my whole class to win a bike. When I heard, I was so excited. My parents were very proud of me and I was proud of myself too. I’m a member of a girls’ basketball team. Our coach is a great person. We took a picture that I keep in front of my bed by my computer so that I can see it every morning.
I dream of being wealthy enough to buy a big house for my parents when they are old and avoid them having to spend the rest of their days in a nursing care home centre.

At home I help my mother cook and clean. When my dad and my mum are at work I help my aunt and neighbour take care of my two little brothers. Sometimes they make me mad because they’re always screaming and running around and messing around, and the worst part about it is that I have to clean up after them when doing my homework. They always make a mess, no matter what they’re doing, but I’ll always love them. Whenever I have free time to myself I go to my room and take out a book and read. I love reading so much. I have tons of books. I like mystery, scary or adventure books. I’ll always read even when I get older. I would like to write a book telling the world about my sad memories: about how I left my friends behind me, maybe forever, because I do not know whether or not they have been killed meanwhile.

I remember when I was still in Africa, and the war was going on. My mum told me that her father got killed when my mum was just a little girl, that’s how long the war has been going on. Myself, I became a refugee when I was still very young. When we moved here I was very nervous about starting a new school and a new life. My mother is teaching me how to cook. I love the kind of dishes she makes using groceries she buys from the African and the Manilla markets. Also I adore pizza. The smell of pizza reminds me of those small pieces of bread we used to eat with fresh milk at breakfast every morning in Bujumbura. This is the story about my life.

Neema Ndayihimbaze is thirteen and has lived in a refugee camp in Tanzania for seven years since leaving her home in Burundi.

My name is Neema Ndayihimbaze. I am thirteen years old, and for the past seven years I have lived in Nduta Refugee Camp. My father is Biryanguze Ezironi, and my mother is Ndamukemanye Justine. I have six sisters and one brother. Two of my sisters are older than I am; Mpawemayo Emeline is seventeen, and Niyibikora Joseline is fifteen. My brother, Kwizera Seth, is eleven. My other sisters are also younger than I am. Niyogushimwa Nepola is nine, Nimemya Fauziya is seven, Nshimirimama Daimess is five, and Tuyisenge Elda is three.

Before we came here, our lives were very different. We are Burundians. Our village was called Nyabigina. We were all born there and had never lived anywhere else. It was our home. When I think of it now, I always think of our house. It was a very good house, with white walls, a room for each of us, and a kitchen. We also had a small house on our property for my father’s younger brother. The best thing of all was our television. I loved to watch our television. We kept it outside our house, and there were so many of us who used to watch in the evenings – the neighbours would come to watch, and my parents, my sisters and brother, my uncle, and all our friends. Sometimes it felt as though there were a hundred people, all sitting together and watching and enjoying it. We used to watch football all the time and dramas, like a programme on Burundian television called Ninde. One story on Ninde that I particularly remember was about a girl who loved a young man, and who agreed to marry him. But when the day of the wedding arrived, the girl discovered that her fiancé was a thief who had stolen livestock from another family in the village, so he was taken away to prison. We used to see people on the television, leaders and politicians in other parts of Burundi, and we saw that the world was very large, and there was much to know. Our television is the thing that I miss the most.

Besides watching television, I used to love to eat in our old house. My mother would cook for us in the kitchen, and we would all eat together outside. My sisters and brother and I would eat in one group, with friends and neighbours who had stopped by. My parents and uncle would eat in a separate group near by. My mother would cook rice, beans, banana, and all kinds of meat. I especially loved eating rice and meat together. Those times were lovely.

I used to love going to school. I always wanted to study, because I knew that it would give me a good future; I wanted to be a teacher or a nurse when I was older, so I enjoyed my lessons. We used to go to school at 08.00 in the morning, then come home at noon for lunch, before going back again. In the evenings, after school, I would play with my friends, especially my three closest friends, Furaha, Riziki and Francine. One of our favourite games was called ola: two girls stood facing each other, tossing a ball back and forth, with one girl between them who had to dodge the ball. We also used to play ola umusenyi. It was like ola, except that when the ball went out of bounds, one of the girls would fill a bottle with sand. Whoever managed to fill the bottle three times was the winner.

Our life in Nyabigina was peaceful and happy until the war came to the village. The trouble first began when our President Ndadaye was killed. When the violence broke out, my family and I fled. We walked to a village called Rusoro, which was a two-day journey away, across the border in Tanzania. We thought we would be safer there than in Nyabigina. It was very frantic on the way to Rusoro. I was running in the street when, suddenly, I collided with a bicycle. It was an extremely forceful and violent crash, and even though it happened over ten years ago, I still have the scar on my leg. The whole experience was very painful, and it upsets me when I think about it.

We remained in Rusoro for two weeks, and then decided to go back home. But things were never completely safe in Nyabigina after that. Every time the fighting drew near, we would have to flee into the bush for the night, because it was too dangerous to stay in the house. We had to separate, and I still remember how frightened we were. My mother and my brother and sisters and I would spend the night deep in the bush, far from the house, but my father would not be with us; he would stay near the house to make sure it was safe. In the morning, we would all return home together.

Things stayed like this for the next four years, until finally life in Nyabigina became too dangerous. The young men of the village were involved in the fighting, and my parents felt that it was impossible for us to stay. My father held a family meeting one evening, and he insisted that we must leave because the situation had become so bad. My uncle had just got married and did not want to leave Nyabigina, but the rest of us agreed with my parents.

When we woke up the next morning, the road in front of the house was filled with people; families from Nyabigina and Ruviyagira (a village that was further away) were fleeing before our eyes. As soon as we saw them, we decided that we should join them. We took food, cooking pots, clothing, money, and our television, and began walking.

The journey to the Tanzanian border took two days. Although we had enough food for the trip, water was very scarce. We spent the night in the bush, trying to hide from the armed soldiers and bandits who were patrolling everywhere. My parents warned us all to be silent so that we would not be found; none of us was allowed to talk. Even during the day we didn’t speak much. My parents made us walk in front of them so that they could watch us, and they carried all our possessions so that we children would not be burdened. But because the eight of us were not speaking to one another, we could hear clearly what our parents were saying. They kept asking each other where we would live, and how we would live there, and what would happen to all of us when we crossed the border.

When we reached the border, two days later, we found a group of rebel fighters assembled there. They demanded 1,000 francs per family in order to cross. Luckily we were able to pay, so we arrived in Tanzania without any problems. After crossing, we walked for two hours until we reached Rusoro, the same village we had gone to four years earlier, when all the trouble began. We were among the first group of refugees to arrive in Rusoro, and so we were welcomed. The villagers showed us where we would all sleep. We left all our possessions with a family in the village and they said they would watch them. When we came back three hours later, we discovered that one of our cooking pots was gone. We all decided to stay quiet about it. They were Tanzanians, and we were foreigners staying in their country, so we knew that our word would not be taken seriously if we accused them of theft. We began to learn Kiswahili, and within about two weeks we could communicate with the villagers.

Our situation in Rusoro was really very bad. There was not enough food. Even though we would buy what food we could, it was still not enough. We had to sell our television, which was very hard. My sisters and brother and I could not go to school. And there was absolutely nothing to do. Even though we made friends with the Tanzanian families in the village, we were still idle. My parents had nothing to do either. In Nyabigina, my mother was a farmer and my father worked as a builder, but in Rusoro they could do nothing. That was when we decided to enter the camp. We had stayed in Rusoro for two months and conditions were very hard, so we hoped that life in the camp would be easier.

We have been in Nduta now since 1997. There are eleven of us in total: my parents, my sisters and brother and me, and our cousin, Tumaini Edmond, who is five years old. Our cousin joined us after we arrived in Nduta. His father had been killed, and his mother had remarried in the camp, but her new family objected to Tumaini because he was the child of her previous marriage. So now he lives with us as our youngest brother. My uncle who stayed behind in Nyabigina is dead. He was killed by soldiers while trying to hide inside one of the houses in the village.

All eleven of us live in a brick house with three rooms: two for sleeping and one for eating. The roof is two pieces of plastic sheeting. We have lived here since we first arrived in Nduta, but none of us feels safe. Last August, the whole family was asleep, but because it was raining heavily my mother came into our room to check up on us. When she entered our room, she saw that the window had been completely destroyed, and when she looked around she realized that a plastic basin was missing. Thieves had broken the window and taken things from our home. We were terrified.
The next night, the thieves came again. This time, they entered through another window. My parents woke up when they felt something tugging on the mosquito net above their bed, and they gave chase, but they were not fast enough. This time, the thieves took our clothes, our cooking pots and utensils, and our camera. They also took our peace of mind, because none of us could sleep for many nights afterwards. I tried to spend as much time as I could at school and with friends, because I didn’t want to stay in the house. Even now, six months later, I am still afraid. I find myself wondering whether one day all of us will be killed. We keep hearing rumours that the thieves will return and destroy our home, and our neighbours are always threatening us.

Despite everything that’s happened, I have kept up with my studies. I began school immediately after arriving in Nduta. I still want to become a teacher or a nurse; I see others in the camp, and those who are educated have a good life. This has helped me to stay determined. I want that life when I am older, though I wonder how it will happen in the midst of so much trouble.

During my holidays I go with my parents to look for firewood, but in the evenings during the week I am usually free. I try and spend time with my friends, and we play different games together. One of the games we play is kombolewa, where someone throws a ball, and while one person runs to get it, the others all scatter and hide. The person who ran for the ball then has to find everyone. Furaha, Riziki and Francine, my three closest friends from Nyabigina, were also in Nduta until recently. Furaha and Riziki repatriated to Burundi three months ago, and Francine’s family has settled in a village in Tanzania called Ntongwe, near Lake Tanganyika. I have other friends in Nduta, but none as close as they were.

In Nduta, we thought life would be safe, because the war was far away. We thought there would be no fighting and insecurity like there was when we left Nyabigina. But life here is becoming impossible for us. The hardest thing is the food shortage. There is never enough to eat. I usually eat beans and maize paste mixed with cotton oil. There is no fruit, and there are no bananas. We usually have two meals a day, one at midday and one in the evening. Also, the rainy season here is full of problems. In Nyabigina the soil was sandy, so we had no trouble when it rained. Here, the rainy season turns everything into mud, and it is very difficult to live. No matter what the weather, we cannot get anything that we need, whether it’s food, clothing, shoes, cooking materials, or other things. The deprivation is such a hardship. As a refugee, you cannot get the things you need to live your life. There is just no way.

My greatest wish used to be to return home to my old good life. But lately I’ve become afraid that, whether we stay or go back, our lives will not improve. Life would be so good if we were in another country, with no war, and no thieves, and no one to threaten us. But I have begun to worry that Burundi will be unsafe for us, and that our lives will be endangered there. My father was one of eleven brothers, but all ten of my uncles were killed in the war. Those who have returned to Burundi pass messages back to those of us still in the camps, and we were told that if my father returns, he will be killed as well. So what kind of life will we go back to? Our lives were good there once, but will they be again? If we stay here in the camps, we will continue to hear gunfire at night, to live in fear of thieves, to be threatened by our neighbours. There is no peace for us, either here or there. I do not see a solution.

Joyce Ihiju is fourteen years old and a Sudanese refugee living in Uganda. She left the Sudan to escape from the civil war there. Her parents were killed when she was four.

I come from a small village called Torit. I am an only child but we had other relatives living with us, and my parents loved me very much. I miss all of that now.

My father was a driver for one of the local hospitals. My mother was a farmer and used to spend most of her time in the field looking after the crops. I can remember how we only stayed in our house during the day. At night we would hide from the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army in the bush or forests. When I was four, disaster struck my family when my father and two of our relatives were ambushed and killed. A few days after my father died, the fighting got worse. My mother started to worry about us staying in the village because anyone found there could be beaten and killed, so we left Torit. But as we fled we were ambushed. My mother was grabbed, seriously beaten and killed by the rebels. I was beaten too, but a woman helped me to escape.

We ran to someone’s house, where I lived for quite a while (I don’t remember exactly how long). But then that home was also attacked by rebels and burned down. I managed to escape and ran to another household, who took me in on the condition that I did not stay for too long. I lived with that family for about three months, before finding another family to look after me. I stayed with them until we fled to Uganda to escape from the fighting. There we were taken in by the Acholi-pii Refugee Camp. But when the camp was attacked by the Lords Resistance Army we had to move here to Kiryandongo Refugee Camp. My early memories of this camp are happy. For the first time I felt peace of mind and regained my hope for the future.

But then my foster family grew tired of me and asked me to leave. So I had to manage on my own until another ‘Good Samaritan’ family offered to look after me. Although I have a new family now, my life has not changed much. I feel lonely and afraid of doing anything that might annoy my ‘new parents’. I live with six other orphans and I’m not sure of my next destination or what will happen to me tomorrow. I spend all my time doing lots of housework and gardening and I have no time for playing. By the end of the day my body is aching and I am exhausted. During the last six months my foster father has started to be sarcastic to me, which makes me feel like it’s time to find another place to stay where I can be free like other children.

Whenever I’m asked about my family life and background, I burst into tears before saying anything. I find it very painful, remembering how my parents were killed in cold blood, and the only way to release the pain is to cry. My greatest wish is to find my relatives and get resettled.