South Sudanese refugee Thon Makuei shared his journey with Moira Shire Council staff to bring to light the challenges faced by refugees.
In 1985, Thon was about 11 when civil war forced him to flee his country.
Thon was a part of ‘The Lost Boys of Sudan’, walking more than 3000 km to the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya — home to 58,000 refugees.
Travelling for two months, 200 children between the ages of five to 10 made the journey.
More than half died along the way from dehydration, sickness and starvation.
While at Kakuma Refugee Camp, refugees were given 1 kg of semolina for seven days by the United Nations.
With no money but plans to further his studies, Thon came up with an idea.
“I would buy semolina from people in need for them to buy medicine, then when it is almost the day when everyone is running out, I would sell back to them and make profit off it to pay my school fees to do nursing,” he said.
“When I got my nursing qualification, I was employed at the same camp where there were only two doctors.”
After spending 14 years travelling between refugee camps, Thon was relocated to Melbourne in 2005.
“On the plane they offered me food and there was cheese and salad — at the camp where I was, salad was never on the menu,” he said.
“I thought ‘we have soap here, I'll wash my hands later’, which was actually the cheese.”
After arriving in Melbourne, Thon inquired to see if he could help smaller towns.
“I was never from a city, I wanted to go to a small town where I could know everyone,” Thon said.
He moved to Shepparton and now helps refugees with their transition to life in Australia as part of the Ethnic Council.
He said a major difficulty faced by refugees when accessing services was a lack of knowing where the person comes from and having the correct translators.
Ethnic Council's Sam Atukorala said his mission was to help provide the best possible service for refugees.
“The Ethnic Council started as a place for refugees to get together as a social network, from there we became a service provider,” he said.
“We are lucky to have people like Thon who have been through the journey to tell us what services are needed.
“The multicultural community is huge, we can't put everyone in the same basket.”
