“My dream is to become a doctor, to help some other people’s future, like those who fall sick and are now in our health centre here. That’s why I want to become a doctor.”
Sixteen-year-old Arok knows the pain of the South Sudan war firsthand. She was forced to leave behind her home and everything she owned – and one of her older brothers was killed as they tried to escape.
“We started coming from South Sudan because of the attack of war that’s going on,” she says. “One of my brothers, the elder one, he was killed on the way when we were coming here.”
For seven years, she has lived in a refugee settlement with her mother and brothers. Her father left her mother to marry another woman and Akok doesn’t see him much. But he returned recently in an attempt to marry Arok off. She hid with the help of her family and narrowly escaped that fate.
She says her priority is her education right now and her favourite subjects are mathematics and science. Arok needs to study hard to fulfil her ambition to become a doctor.
Her mother works hard to provide for Arok and her brothers, but it’s very difficult to pay for their school fees and meet all their needs. Like so many of their neighbours in the community, they can go for days without enough to eat. When those times of hunger inevitably come, Arok says it’s very difficult to concentrate in class.
“If there’s not food at lunch time, you’ll not even understand what the teacher’s teaching because you just feel like sleeping. You feel hunger, you feel a lot of pain.”