: Rosalind Russell
: The End of Where We Begin: A Refugee Story
: Eye Books
: 9781785633720
: 1
: CHF 8.60
:
: Biographien, Autobiographien
: English
: 304
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Winner of the Moore Prize 2021 'A beautiful, moving and important book' - Simon Reeve The gripping true-life story of three young people in the world's youngest country, South Sudan, whose lives are ripped apart by a brutal war. Veronica is a teenager when civil war erupts in South Sudan, the world's youngest country. Lonely and friendless after the death of her father, she finds solace in her first boyfriend, and together they flee across the city when fighting breaks out. On the same night Daniel, the son of a colonel, also makes his escape, but finds himself stranded beside the River Nile, alone and vulnerable. Lilian is a young mother who runs for her life holding the hand of her little boy, Harmony - until a bomb attack wrenches them apart and she is forced to trek on alone. After epic journeys of endurance, these three young people's lives cross in Bidi Bidi in Uganda - the world's largest refugee camp. There they meet James, a counsellor who helps them find light and hope in the darkest of places. In a gripping true-life narrative, Rosalind Russell tells their stories with uplifting empathy and tenderness.

Rosalind Russell is a journalist and editor with two decades of international experience. She has worked as a foreign correspondent for Reuters and The Independent in East Africa, the Middle East and Asia, reporting on the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq and Myanmar's Saffron Revolution. Her first book, Burma's Spring, was described by Asian Affairs as 'reportage at its best' and reached number one in the UK Kindle non-fiction bestseller list. She lives in London with her husband and two daughters and currently works for the Evening Standard.

PROLOGUE

With the first hint of dawn the camp begins to stir. The darkness fades and the small, twittering birds that share this desolate, unsatisfactory home with a quarter of a million refugees launch into their feeble chorus. A pale, violet light seeps through the cracks around the door to Lilian’s one-roomed home and slowly her eyelids open. Another day. She sits up on the narrow iron bedstead, plants her feet on the dirt floor and steps straight outside in her nightdress. The jumbled remnants of a dream slip away as her muscle memory walks her, barefoot, to the water tap.

Things move slowly in the camp. Time and money, the twin engines of life elsewhere, aren’t so important here. There are hardly any jobs and very little cash. It is always hot, so no one rushes, but there are still certain chores that need to be done. At the water pump, neat lines of yellow plastic jerrycans radiate from the single tap like sun rays in a child’s drawing. Lilian sets down her container at the end of a row. Dozens of women have got there before her. The tap won’t be switched on until seven, and they have scratched their initials onto the containers so they can come back to claim their places once they’ve got the cooking fires going.

Lilian lives by herself in the camp, but she hasn’t always been alone. She was married at nineteen and she and her husband had a beautiful baby boy. In South Sudan she had a job she loved and a vegetable garden where she grew cassava, maize, groundnuts and beans. Now, six years on, she has lost her husband, her son, her house and her land. She could blame the war for that, but actually she blames herself. This is an issue she needs to work on, her counsellor has told her.

She walks back home with her friend Asha. The two young women, tall and lean, stroll towards the rising sun, responding to its nurturing warmth like flowers, standing straighter, tilting up their chins. Lilian feels wonder that she can do this, live another day, go on. She doesn’t understand why she is still alive, why she fetches water, sweeps, cooks and talks to her neighbours. But something is driving her forward.

“So, are you serving today?” Lilian asks her friend.

Asha is a quiet, industrious woman. She has started her own business in the camp selling her home-brewed maize liquor; she half-starved herself to get the seed money but now it’s paying modest dividends, for which she thanks God because she has just found out she has a baby on the way.

“Yes, but I only have two bottles left. I’m closing before counselling starts,” Asha says.

“Those men will be disappointed!” says Lilian, talking about the drinkers who assemble under the tree as the sun starts to get hot. Asha serves them her powerful, fermented brew in plastic mugs and they talk and laugh and fight and usually fall asleep, half propped up on the knots of the tree roots. Asha wakes them when it’s dark and sends them home. “How about,” suggests Lilian, “after we’ve finished today, I’ll help you with the next batch.”

Asha smiles at her friend. It’s rare to see Lilian in such good spirits. They set down the water drums next to the beaten metal doors of their adjacent mud-brick homes and Asha hears Lilian softly humming as she starts to prepare the porridge that must sustain her until tomorrow.

Today is counselling day and, although they would never say so, they are both looking forward to it.

Daniel is sitting on the bench he has made, leaning back against the warm clay of the shady side of the house. He is idly strumming his guitar, more from habit than enjoyment; he knows that no one really wants to hear him play. He watches his mother and sister. They are squatting next to two basins of water. His mother is washing their clothes with a ba