the hopes of a refugee in Kenya
One day while roaming around the Kakuma refugee camp looking for casual work he met a Kenyan man who was doing some work in the camp. The man invited him to his home and the following morning they left for Uthiru in Kiambu County. Deng fell in love with Uthiru and he decided to stay there working in construction site for his upkeep. “I would carry building blocks and get paid a shilling per block ,” says Deng. “How I got the casual jobs in the sites was by God’s grace because most of the construction workers spoke Swahili and here I was speaking broken English .Most of the time I was forced to use sign language to pass my message across,” he adds. One day he met a benevolent South Sudanese who enrolled him for a diploma course in Business Management at Kenya Institute of Management. He successfully graduated in 2011 and put up a business but the thought of fellow refugees still suffering in the camps kept nagging his mind. How could he help them? They needed a voice to tell their story. Today Michael Deng 25 a third year student of Communication at St. Paul’s University Nairobi campus. He managed to enroll and pay his school fee using savings from his business and with support from the government of South Sudan and has been attending evening classes so he can run his businesses during the day. Although today South Sudan is independent from Sudan, Deng like July 9 2011. South sudanese celebrate independence after a successful referandum to cede from the North South Sudanese await to board a bus to return home many Sudanese refugees have not gone back to his county. He has tried going back to South Sudan several times but life there is too harsh and he ends up coming back to Kenya. Humanitarian reports from South Sudan show that South Sudan that gained independence in July 2011 is still facing major humanitarian crisis like lack of adequate food, health facilities, poverty and high illiteracy levels with the country coming second last with the worst literacy level in world. Deng’ hopes to finish his studies in Kenya first and become a journalist before going back to tell the story of South Sudan. South Sudanese campaigning for secession ahead of 2011 referandum
THE SEED - VOL 25, No. 8, AUGUST 2013
23