“My dream is when I complete my education, I would like to become a trader. I want to be a businessman!”
James ran through the bush to escape the fighting, hiding in the long grass to avoid gunmen and desperately trying to unsee what he had witnessed.
“When you see someone has been shot in front of you, you feel like you are a dead person,” he says. “When I saw very many people are dying, I just turned off my eyes. I don’t want to see all those things. I said, God just save me, and actually God answered my prayers. Now I’m still alive.”
He was alive but struggling with the trauma of seeing his father shot in front of him, when he arrived, afraid and alone in Uganda. “It was a very heavy war,” he says. “It destroyed properties of people, even death of people. They killed my family. I’m the only person who survived. I could only pray that all those things would go away.”
In a refugee settlement, James was reunited with his auntie. At last, he had someone to love him back from the brink. “My auntie is the one who takes care of me,” he says. “It’s very hard to afford money to pay for school so you can continue studying. But the only thing I was thinking was, ‘If I keep going on with my study, my life story will change forever’. That’s why I’m continuing with my schooling.”
James struggled to concentrate in class, living with the grief of losing his family, and wondering what would become of his life. His lack of resources made everything more difficult.
A meal at school meant he no longer had to walk home in the middle of the day in search of something to eat. He could stay and study, eat with his friends, and enjoy his education. For the first time, he could picture a new future – and dream of the day when he could care for his auntie as she has cared for him.
“One time I went home from school but I got nothing… I was struggling and then I just fell down because of hunger.”