Refugee Voices: Technological Innovation in an Ethiopian Camp?

I am very eager to see my homeland because my parents told me it was a land of plenty, with enough fertile land to cultivate, a lot of milk to drink, enough food to eat, and enjoy life as you like.

I came to Ethiopia as a one-year-old baby when my parents fled our country in 1987 following an enormous attack on our village which is located in the Blue Nile province of Sudan. Now that I’m 18 years old, it means that I have been in exile for 17 years, or 95% of my life.

I have been told that the late 1980s and early 1990s were a time of appalling misery for our people. I was lucky to escape the famine and diseases which claimed the lives of so many children. My parents and other refugees crossed the border between Ethiopia and Sudan five times before they finally settled in Bonga refugee camp (in western Ethiopia) in 1993.

Despite the challenges of camp life, I have many reasons to count my blessings. I am grateful to UNHCR and other agencies for the education and training opportunities I and my fellow refugees got here in the camp.

Despite getting married at the age of 12 and dropping out of school for a while, I have now been able to resume my formal education. I had two children, one of whom died of a serious fever at the age of nine months.