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JULIANE:
I was very young when my mum left me. I was three and a half. I don’t know why she left me, people trying to kill her or something. People from the church that we used to go to, um, took care of me and they brought me up.

I just learnt to be my own mother, my own father. I thought that I had no father or a mother but I knew that she was out there somewhere for me.

Like, you’d have, like, about 30 children eating from one plate and, like, it’s like a really big plate but you only have, like, a small amount of food, enough to feed, like, one person. And I didn’t have anything to eat for a week, the only thing I survived was water and that water wasn’t very clean. It had, like, snails and, like, all those dirty stuff inside it but you had no choice but to drink it.

Um, you would watch other kids yeah, walk past you, they’d laugh at you. And they’re like saying, “oh yeah you’re dumb”. Like, when other people are playing I’d just be sitting there by myself so that I’d be reading my book or I’d be just sitting there crying and looking at others.

Um, I left the orphanage and then I got put in this big massive dark lorry with like about 200 other people. And they started driving me away but because I was the little one I was like right at the, like, end, like close to the door.

And then I saw this lady, she had no shoes, all she was wearing was a pair of jogging bottoms and, like, a t-shirt, and she was running and she was screaming my name so I looked at her and I thought I remember that face. That was my mum.

I started crying, and I know it must sound, like, really strange, but I didn’t know how or where I got the power but I jumped from the back of the lorry onto her. And then me and her started holding each other, screaming. I could not believe it was surreal, like. And from that point on everything turned around in my life.

My mum, she went to the British embassy. And then… and then the people at the end ended up giving me a visa and we boarded the plane and then we arrived in Heathrow.

My first day at school, it was really tough. I mumbled, like, a lot because I was afraid to speak to people and, like, I often got anxious and get panic attacks. There comes a time where I’m just sitting there in class, right, I don’t even understand what’s going on.

There’s this, like, click in the back of my mind that says what if I get home and my mama’s not there. And, like, that’s the moment where, like, my heart starts pumping really fast, like, I start breathing really fast and then before you know it I just pass out.

In school they have created this, um, special group, like, whenever, like, I’m feeling angry, sad or anxious, I just go there and there’ll like always be, someone I could talk to, like, who I could tell what’s going on. And they would try and fix it like as much as possible.

nd I’m really improving on my socialising skills, but you know what, I’m a fighter and I’m a survivor, and I just want people to know that no matter how much you go through and no matter how much you suffer, you’re always going to be accepted for who you are. One day you’re going… you are going to be this, like, shining star, and at the end of every dark tunnel there’s always a rainbow.