mutual_aid

hey comrades !!!…..i hope everyone here has been okay

I have honestly been nervous about writing this update.

I have been gone for almost a month now and i didn’t want to disappear without coming back to explain what happened to us after the last emergency post.

For anyone reading this for the first time, we are a small group of trans and queer refugee sisters living in juba, south sudan. before all this happened, some of my sisters were actually preparing for their asylum flights to canada after years of surviving camp life under unhcr protection.

after our last update, things became really bad very quickly.

we had just received support from our organiser and i was trying to charge my phone so i could safely transfer the money. at first everything seemed normal but suddenly two men forced me to unlock my phone and took everything from us.

they only returned our refugee documents and told us to leave.

we ended up walking for a long time without even knowing where we were going until a lorry driver carrying sand stopped for us after i waved my hands at him. after we explained what happened…he showed us kindness and helped us get back to juba.

we are safe for now but honestly we are still carrying a lot mentally from everything that happened.

things became even harder after we returned because we lost the place we were staying in after falling behind on rent. we spent about a week sleeping on a balcony before other trans girls here in juba welcomed us into the room they were already sharing.

right now there are eleven of us staying together in one small room. it’s crowded and messy and sometimes hard to sleep properly but we’re grateful not to be outside anymore.

earlier today we were all sitting together quietly charging phones one by one and reading comments from comrades and it made me think again about the photo we shared yesterday. honestly after everything that happened, it still feels emotional seeing all of us together again.

i was also offline this whole time because my phone was taken and when i finally borrowed a phone here, i couldn’t even remember my password anymore. Yesterday somehow i guessed it correctly and managed to log back into my account.

one of the first things i thought about was updating the people who stood with us before. i didn’t want anyone thinking we disappeared without a word after everything this community did for us.

i also really want to thank everyone who helped us during that terrifying time and the donor who helped us reach the amount needed for our release. i still honestly don’t know what would have happened to us if people hadn’t stepped in when they did.

right now we’re just trying to slowly rebuild ourselves again after everything