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Emmanwel: My name is Emmanwel, l'm from Sudan.
Paul: My name's Paul, I'm from Sudan.
Emmanwel: Life normally is made hard by others and to say that the individuals
that make life hard and it wasn't easy for us that's why
you could see that most of us are down here.
Paul: I never taste the life as sweet as what it was supposed to be when I was born.
At the age of seven, a young boy, who was being looked after by their parents,
this is the time that war started in Sudan.
Life in Sudan was a complete torture as I can mention it.
There was, aerial bombardments everywhere,
there was guns everywhere,
there was screaming everywhere and even at night our parents were denied to cook
for us because if they light the fire the fighter jets would see the fire
when they're flying over on our heads.
So, I would describe life as a torture in Sudan,
we never had a good taste of life until we came to Australia,
that's when I begin to realise that life is really good as it is.
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Paul: Back in 1987 I fled my country and went to Ethiopia.
I stayed there in Ethiopia for four years as a refugee and back in 1991 there was
a civil war again in Ethiopia so it was unsafe for us as minors,
so we had to move away from Ethiopia and we came to Sudan's border and Ethiopia.
As you know Sudan was not also safe for us,
we had to move from Sudan to Sudan/Kenya border.
So, in 1992 we came to Kenya and we settled in a place called Kakuma refugee camp.
We were in groups as minors.
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Paul: Back then education was not a priority
because there were no facilities available.
But because we were strong hearted we used to sit under trees and we practise
a, b, c, d using our fingers, you know we'd have to write them down in the soil
and this is where by we got the basic education that we have now
and we had to sit for our Kenyan Primary Education Certificate,
that was class 8 we call it year 8 here,
we were not in a refugee camp anymore,
we joined the rest of the Kenyan students and we studied together for four years.
When we completed our Year 12 Certificate, the KCSE, went to the UNHCR,
which is the United Nations High Commission for Refugees
and approached them if they can let us come to Australia.
So, we were given a form, me, myself, Emmanwel was not there by then
so I was one of the lucky people who was in the camp and I filled the form
and that's how I came to Australia back in 2002.
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Emmanwel: In 1998 there was some resettlement cases that were offered by the
Australian government that they had to resettle a good number of refugees into Australia.
So, I had gone and grabbed a form, filled it so that I could come to Australia
but unfortunately it did not work.
I got rejected maybe for some reasons,
maybe I didn't meet the criteria of coming here.
In 2003 my fiancée who is now my wife, love of my life,
she made it to Australia under the humanitarian program.
So what she did she went and grabbed a form and then lodged an application
for me to come down here.
I was issued with a visa sub class 309 which is a spouse visa.
Still I couldn't believe that I was still travelling to Australia until when I
touched down in the Sydney airport, international airport and then
here I saw my wife, my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law and some of my relatives.
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