Apajok Biar is a South Sudanese refugee living in Australia. 

She was born in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya after her family was displaced by fighting, in 1991. 

Growing up in Australia, Biar’s parents would tell her stories about what they went through to get their family to Australia and the struggles that they faced.

In: Music... 'My name is Apajok...
Out: ...none of us were hit'
Duration: 1.59
Emotion canvassed: sadness

Full Transcript:
My name is Apajok. Apajok Biar. I am South Sudanese living in Australia. I am came here when I was two, in 1997.

So in the refugee camp what happened was you get a ticket. And this ticket represents how much food you can have in portions. So everyday you get it stamped. And that shows that you’ve got your small portion of food. So you would get maybe you would get a couple of grams of rice and a couple of grams of lentils, maybe half a tin of beans. And yeah so everything was portioned and was really small but they really appreciated everything and anything they could get. And it was tough cause people would come and raid the refugee camps, that’s why they had to run away from the Ethiopian refugee camp because they were getting attacked, um and run to the Kakuma one. But that’s all you can do because there’s nothing left so...

We got approved to come to Australia and our family was going from the refugee camp in Kakuma to Nairobi city in Kenya to get the plane from Kenya to Zimbabwe. And there’s a bridge. It’s the only bridge that you can take to get into the city, so my parents- our driver at the time was driving an army car because my dad was part of the army. And we were about to go over the bridge and a couple of people came out from under the bridge with guns and told them to stop because they know if you’re going over the bridge you have goods, you have clothes, you have money and so forth. So then the driver decided no I’m not going to stop, if we are going to stop then we are going to get killed definately and everything’s going to get taken- If I keep going there’s a chance we’ll survive, so he kept going and the car was shot at a couple of times and by God’s grace none of us were hit. 

Image: Apajok Biar (front left) and family, at Darling Harbour in Sydney.


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