Many of us would go out of our way to listen to our favourite radio show. But would you walk for half an hour in the dark at night to sit under a tree and tune in? For Julius Alfred in South Sudan, his weekly trek wasn’t just for the pleasure of listening, it was vital for his family’s future.
‘The conflict erupted in my community in 2016. People were threatened. We were already living in fear because we lived near the barracks. That’s where the fighting took place. We heard gunshots. That was really frightening. So we decided to leave the area and flee to Uganda.’
Julius is 58 and is known in his community as Muzee Wa Kaazi, which means ‘the hard-working older man’. And his determination through recent traumatic events has proved that name to be very apt. In 2017, when the civil war reached Kajo Keji, Julius fled with his wife, children and extended family across the border to nearby Uganda.
Life in the refugee camp was tough: they survived on food rations and by tending a small plot of land. ‘I was not feeling good because the rations were not enough,’ Julius says. ‘I felt a real pain in my heart – I was still very traumatised.’
When it became safe to return home to his farm, Julius was shocked at what he found. ‘All the buildings were burned down. There was nothing left of my house, no food to eat. There was just a remnant of my crops left.
‘There was no water or food. Just finding a place to sleep was very difficult. I had to stay with neighbours. I slept in houses that were only partly destroyed. Just sleeping where I could. That’s the life I came back to here.’
