Mary's story
Mary fled Sudan in 2000 with baby son Moses. Her other 5 kids were left behind. Only a few years ago she was reunited in Hobart with her sons David and Isaac. Moses is 16 years old and plays for Hobart United.
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Mary:
One day I went to the bush to collect the wood. I left all my kids in the village, I had only Moses on my back. Then it all started, those terrorist started to kill all people. I had to run. I was running I don't know how long. I had to go the refugee camp. I had just Moses and 10 litres of water on my head and 20 litres in my hand. I thought that I have lost all my other children. Years, and years later Red Cross told me that my children escaped to Rwanda where they were staying with their uncle and his wife. She didn’t like my children. Step mothers usually don't like somebody else’s children. So my children were doing all hard work, everything, farming... sometimes with nothing to eat. My oldest son run away and joined the army in Sudan. He is a child – soldier. I didn't see him for more than 20 years. He is still fighting in the bush. Once we talked on the phone. He said: 'Mum, it's you?' and I said: 'Yes, it's me', then he said: 'Mum, I want to see you'. That's all. His is drinking, I want him to be here with us but every time I'm sending money for phone he is just spending it on alcohol. He is now maybe 30 years old and still fighting. By my other boys are with me now. My daughter is still in Africa, she is fine, has her own family. God opened the safe way for us. I was only 6 months waiting to come here, to Tasmania. Others are waiting for years or never get it. Why we are here? I don't know. I don't know English. This country is not easy for me, but we are safe.
Shartiel's story
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Shartiel, know as ST, is 16 years old and plays in defence for Hobart United.
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He was born in a Tanzanian refugee camp after his family fled ethnic violence in Burundi. He has no memory of the conflict his parents left behind. We discovered in interviewing the family about their experiences that ST had never heard any stories before and was shocked to hear for the first time about what his parents endured to get the family here.
Shartiel's parents; David and Harriet: 'Everything was going well at our farm in Burundi. We had many goats, 8 pigs and 12 cows. We are Tutsi, our land used to belong to our great grandparents. We grew up there. This land still belongs to us, but we can't live there anymore. All bad came with ethnic problems in 1993. There were some 'bad friends', they took away our animals, they were hunting people, and killing them with machetes and spears. God saved our family, he took us into the safe place where we are not hunted by anyone.'
Bhim's Story.
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My parents speak Nepalese though they were born in Bhutan. For some reason the Bhutanese didn't want them to live there. My parents are Hindu, for them a cow is like a god. They don't eat beef. The Bhutanese forced them to change their culture, clothes and speak the Dzongkha language, a foreign language to them. It was bad, but if not for the King of Bhutan my parents would still be living there. They had a big orange orchid. They left it and all their possessions and money behind when in 1992 they had to run away because of the violence. It started when soldiers came to their village and started shooting. They were killing people without any reason. 10, 000 were killed in just one month.
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David's story (17 years old Tasmanian, plays as a striker for Hobart United)
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I was 12 when my parents separated. Years before my father had a scholarship to teach overseas and because of that at some stage he was invited to a conference in Europe. He didn't take mum with him. She was really unhappy. When he was away we moved to another place but she didn't tell us why. My mum has a couple of mental illnesses... one of them was depression. I was never close to her. When dad came back from Europe I moved back to his place, in Macquarie street in Hobart. My two sisters, Emma and Amy stayed with mum in Burnie. For years after that moment, me and my dad were unable to see the girls more than once every two months. On October 2014 my dad was diagnosed with cancer. He kept teaching through it all, and stayed very positive but he got to the point where he was coming back from work and just sleeping and unable to look after me. Dad wanted me to play soccer, but he couldn’t drive me to training any more. I had to move to mum's. Dad was on chemotherapy but unfortunately the tumour just grew. I was back with Dad, assisting him in hospital. I thought that as he had got out of it so many times before, that he would be fine... One Monday at 5.30 am, he died. The last thing I told him was that I loved him, and he managed to say it back. Me and my sisters told the people in charge of the funeral to not let our mother be part of the service. She was outside, in her car. We knew that she would probably say something and badly impact the funeral. Her new partner is also a problem. Once when he said something bad about dad I simply pushed him over, so I got kicked out from mum's house.
Mr. Chandra and Mrs Durga Magar and brothers Amber & Surjan
(17 and 16 years old) play as a right back/left wing for
Hobart United.
Boys grew up in a refugee camp in Nepal, where their parents met and got married. Father Chandra was forced to flee Bhutan due to his politics and left with nothing but the clothes on his back.
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We lost everything in Bhutan. Our land in the mountains, our farm with animals and crops. All our money and possessions are gone. We know about this only from the stories parents told us. We were born in a refugee camp in eastern Nepal. We are Nepalese but always very pleased to listen about the past in Bhutan. Our parents were very happy there, they used to live as a Nepali minority.
Our parents escaped their country in 1990 when mass imprisonment and killing started. Years before that they were forced to stop speaking their language and use Dzongkha, the Bhutanese national language. They weren’t allowed to follow their Hindu religion, but were forced to become Buddhists. You can't change your religion this way... Our mother couldn’t wear her sari, and our father was forbidden to wear his traditional hat, the Dhaka topi. They were forced to pay taxes, which were 20%. higher than for Bhutanese. Our father was 20 and mother was 16 when they met at the refugee camp. When they arrived they were given an axe to clear up the forest to make a place for their tent. After 5 years with humanitarian help they managed to build their bamboo house. Their marriage was arranged by our grandfather and the community in the camp. They could talk to each other a little bit and then they got married. Mother never went to school, she was responsible for the house and her smaller siblings.
In Nepal they continued to fight for their human rights and the opportunity to go back to Bhutan. We remember that the army of India used to shoot at us when we tried to cross at the border. We were throwing stones at them, we wanted back our land and our rights. We used the stones for our safety, we didn't have any weapon. When people in the refugee camp started to fill up the forms for the resettlement to a third country – it was a big shame. Our father wanted to stay and fight for our cause. He wanted to stay united with the Nepalese. We brothers wanted to leave the refugee camp but we also believed our father when he said: 'One day we will all come back to our own land.' Our father was one of the last one to fill the form, he did it some time after they killed our lawyer representing 7 refugees camps in their legal battle with the Bhutanese King. Now in Tasmania we are all together, we are happy helping our parents. They don't speak English. They taught us to not forget about our culture and religion.