When I was 10 years old, I fled my homeland amid the bomb blasts of civil war in Sudan.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Leaving southern Sudan as a child was terrifying. It was 1985, and my family and I were trying to escape to Khartoum, the capital in the North, to safety.
When I was a girl, civil war in Sudan forced me to flee my home town of Wau.
I grew up in southern Sudan, one of nine children. Our life was simple but very happy.
By the time I was 10, I had lived in 11 different countries.
In early 1993, when I was 12, I was separated from my family as the Sierra Leone civil war, which began two years earlier, came into my life.
I am the face of a refugee. I was once a refugee. I was with my family in exile.
When I was engaged in the struggle for my country, I was very young. My horizons were open.
My life was filled with family in South Sudan. I am the seventh of nine children, and we grew up in what would be considered a middle-class family. We did not have a lot, but we did have more than a lot of other people.
I left Somalia when I was seven years old, but I witnessed a whole year in a war.
I left Sudan when I was 25 or 26 years old. If I had stayed, I would never have ended up being an entrepreneur. You can have the qualities, but if you don't have the environment, you just wither away. It's like a fish: take it out of water, it will not survive.