Dhaba’s story
I have been living under a bridge for eight months. I try every day to cross. We survive on distributions. Sometimes at night a dog urinates on us. The police take our sleeping bags.
Author: Lynne Jones
Yonas’ Story
My father was imprisoned when I was fourteen and because my mother had so many children I went to live with my aunt. My father was a soldier. Everyone is a soldier in Eritrea. We don’t know why he was imprisoned.
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Emily’s story
My name is Emily, I’m from the busy city of Tijuana, Mexico. I lived in Mexico for six years before I moved to California with my mom, dad, and my only brother. The only thing I remember about living in Mexico those six years is preschool. My mom and dad wanted my brother and I to…
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Whisky’s story
Call me Whisky, that is what my friends call me. Gambia was not easy. I was there with my parents, my mother and father, but my father did not like me. He has three wives so I did not have any help. My mother sent me to school for three years but I could not continue…
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Siva’s story
I lived with my father and mother in Nigeria. When I was eight my father died and my mother married another man. He wanted to take advantage of me and he treated me badly. I did not want to stay there, so when I was ten I left there and I stayed with some friends, christian…
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Salaam’s story
My mother left Eritrea when she was two years old because of war. All her family, her parents and sisters and brothers, died there and she went to Sudan. My father is also Eritrean. So I was born in Khartoum. I lived in a small apartment with my mother and father and brothers and sisters. I…
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Jusuf’s story
My father was a tailor, he made clothes for children and men and women. He had a shop next to the house, like this place we are sitting in now, when I was five years old. This was in a village. The family was not big then but as we grew we had to move to…
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Ghadeer’s Story
I am from Syria, my father owned a factory but during the war he shut it. There is him, my mother and two brothers in my family, I am the oldest. I remember a little from before the war: the first time I went to school I cried a lot, I didn’t like going at the…
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Isabel’s story
We come from a town near Sabratha in Libya. My father is a business man and my mother is a writer. I have a younger brother and sister. When I was little our life in Libya was good. The best times were when we were together as a family. We went to funfairs and travelled on…
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Lama’s Story
I was a carpenter from fourteen years old. I have never been to school. I lived in a big town with my grandmother. My father is alive but not my mother. She died when I was five. I have only one sister. My father sent me to my grandmother because he had three wives, my mother…
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Anna’s Story
My city had both Arabs and Kurds. I was five when the war began and until now we have war. When I was seven I went to school, we lived in an apartment. When the bomb came it damaged it, I don’t know when, but we went to another place, and as we went I saw…
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Sadiq’s story
I come from a small village in Somalia, near the Somali border. I lived with my mother and father and my brothers and sisters. I am in the middle. We all lived together in a typical Somali house like those in your pictures. I went to school when I was very little, five years old. Before…