a refugee childhood


Yayo Tangko (centre), with her sister Yotok to her left. The two girls looked after their younger siblings in Uganda.


© UNHCR/D.Lusweti


Home Alone: South Sudan teen leads her young siblings to safety in Uganda


BOROLI REFUGEE SETTLEMENT, Uganda, September 4, 2014—When 13-year-old Yayo Tangko turned up at the Boroli refugee settlement in Uganda earlier in 2014 with her four younger siblings, she feared the worst for her missing parents. “Tey are dead, because otherwise they would have come looking for us,” the South Sudanese teenager told aid workers.


It turned out she was wrong and the children would eventually be reunited with their mother. When the fighting came to Pibor county, where they lived, the children’s parents were away at a market. Kept together by Yayo, the children were swept along by the mass of humanity flowing out of Jonglei and into Adjumani and other districts of northern Uganda.


Tey walked for days, with the older children taking turns carrying two-year- old Babur. Other refugees shared food


and protected them until they reached the border crossing at Elegu, where they were picked up and taken to the Dzaipi transit centre. In such emergency situations, UNHCR and its partners are always looking out for children travelling alone or separated from their families.


UNHCR staff first met the children in February after they had been transferred to a refugee settlement in Baroli, and assigned a guardian. A UNHCR nutrition officer brought fortified biscuits, clothes and blankets, and referred Babur to a clinic so that he could be treated for malnutrition.


Te UN Refugee Agency worked with partners to provide shelter and necessities of life. Te children were also introduced to a special play area. “Now we feel safe. We can come out and play,” said Yayo.


Efforts were launched by UNHCR and its partners to trace family members.


But Yayo again showed her initiative by asking a refugee who was returning to South Sudan to take Babur and Kobrin, aged five, with him in May to see if they could find relatives to take care of them.


A few weeks later, the two youngsters were reunited with their mother, Mary, in South Sudan. Yayo talked with her mother by phone and, in early June, Mary and the two boys moved to Boroli.


Having most of the family together helps to make up for the hardship of being a refugee, and at least they are safe and can hope for a better future in a country that allows refugees a great deal of freedom. «


Edited and condensed from an article by Dorothy Lusweti in Boroli Refugee Settlement, Uganda


UNHCR / 27 © UNHCR/ Dominic Nahr


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