Natalie

Hello, my name is Aamira. I am 13 years old. I live in Sudan with my mother Rana ( 47 ), my sister Minoo ( 3 ), and my grandma Charuni (95). My house is very small. It is supposed to be a small “apartment like” house for 1 person, but there are 4 people living in it. It isn’t very wide and we have almost no property. My father was killed when we were running from the soldiers. We ran to the Church where we thought we were safe, but we were not. After my father was killed no one worked and made money for our family. The soldiers took our property. We got lucky and found this home that we are living in, it is very small but it will have to do… We go to the town everyday and beg for money. My mother cannot find work because she must take care of my sister and I. My grandma can not work or take care of us on her own, she is too old. We only eat a full meal once a week. The meal isn’t even full, it is usually only supposed to feed 1-2 people but it feeds 4 for us.

 Everyday we are scared to come out of the house because of the soldiers. It was hard enough losing my dad… we can’t lose another family member. My morning routine is very simple being that we don’t have much. Here is my routine, I wake up in the morning and get dressed, I only have about 2 outfits. I’m pretty lucky because my friend’s family ended up having nothing so they had to go to a refugee camp… I don’t get to see her anymore. After I get changed I help my mother with household things like cleaning. There isn’t much cleaning to do… after we make sure the house is in order, my sister and I go to the town to beg for money. My mom stays home with my grandma and takes care of her. By the time we get home we are pretty hungry but we can’t eat anything until dinner because then there wont be any food left. Because I don’t go to school I tend the property. I only go in the back because of the soldiers… you never know when they will come around your corner. In the middle of the day we don’t do much. We only go outside and play for 15 minutes unless the soldiers come. Otherwise we stay in the house.

In the afternoon we are mainly in the house for the rest of the night. We don’t have much. Most nights we don’t eat anything. I am getting thinner and thinner as the weeks go by… Life is hard especially at night because sometimes you look forward to having dinner and you find out that, there is nothing. And tonight is one of those nights. We only had a spoonful maybe 2 to eat. Eating that food gave me a crave for more but there was no more. I got hungrier by just the thought. Once I was finished, that didn’t take long, I went to my bed… which isn’t even a bed its just a piece of cardboard like material with a blanket over it. I sat there and just thought to myself… my mind went completely blank. I decided to just lay there…

Once I was comfortable I did what I always did when I went to sleep. I thought about how I would try to make a plan for my future to help my family. Life was hard and I knew that, everything changed when my dad died. I miss him so much… I think about it every night. I have hopes and dreams but I do not like to share them with other people in fear of what they might think, say or do. I hope to become a very successful doctor because I want to be the one to help people and bring medicine to our country. I want to help the country but I want to help my family even more. If I make enough money we could eat everyday! I have a while to go and I don’t even go to school, I will figure out a way to do this myself. After I get tired of thinking about it I go to sleep. Sometimes I cant fall asleep so I lay awake and pray for a better life but I realize its not going to happen just by wishing so I am going to do something about it… eventually I fall asleep and that ends my day…