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Frankly Speaking With Deng Adut

At six, he was taken from his family to become a child soldier. By 14, he had fled to here as a refugee. Today, Deng Thiak Adut is a lawyer and has just been named NSW Australian of the Year. He shares his story with Jackie Frank.

JACKIE: You were taken from your village and trained as a soldier as a young boy. At 10, you were fighting in the Sudanese civil war. What are your memories of those times?

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DENG: Disease, hunger and death. They were always around me, and everyone I knew, on a daily basis. For me it was about trying to survive.

JF: In your book you say, โ€œWeโ€™re all dead anyway. It was just that some of us didnโ€™t know it yet.โ€ What did you mean?

DA: If you go to war and there are 10 of you, and you come back and there are two; then you go back the next day with another group and itโ€™s the same, you know your time is going to come. Even if you think of going for a walk, you could tread on a mine. So thereโ€™s no one day when you sleep properly and say you will live tomorrow. You make a joke about death, you make a joke about being injured [Deng was shot in the back aged 10 and also suffered from cholera, dysentery and malnutrition]. Death is almost the most beautiful part because youโ€™re not going to suffer anymore.

JF: You arrived in Australia aged 14, not speaking English, unable to read or write, and with little schooling. Now youโ€™re a lawyer. How did you achieve that?

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DA: I owe it to my brother, John, who made me focus on getting an education. We both graduated from the University of Western Sydney. And I would also read the Bible. It helped me settle my own war. It became a continuous way of learning, discovering myself.

JF: What have you discovered about yourself in Australia?

DA: I owe people. My brother lost his life, but what he did for me โ€ฆ priceless. The people who sponsored us to come here, I owe them. My friends, I owe them all. As I walk around I make a list of all the other people and the great things they have done for me in this country. It is gratitude that will keep me alive because I have to pay them back by all means.

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JF: Bridging the two worlds โ€“ South Sudan and Australia โ€“ how did you do it?

DA: I embrace everything. I even embrace people who are racist, because we are living in a society in Australia, where we have freedom of expression. We try to make sense of what each other are sayingโ€ฆ What do I like about Australia? Everything. This is paradise.

JF: Do you think Australians forget that no-one wants to be a refugee and leave their home and move away from everything they know?

DA: Yeah, it would be quite mad for anyone to think that someone would want to be a refugee. You donโ€™t have much choice. When you come here as a refugee, especially as a person who had pride like my brother, John, being rejected is terrible. When he came here, nobody would give him a job, even though he was educated. [John went back to Sudan and was later murdered. Another 17 of Dengโ€™s relatives lost their lives there.] Some refugees want to go home as soon as there is peace in their country. But many who want to stay canโ€™t because they donโ€™t have a job and feel humiliated, undignified. People become depressed because they canโ€™t contribute and are seen as lesser human beings.

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For the full interview, pick up the December issue of marie claire, on sale now.

Songs Of A War Boy (Hachette, $32.99) by Deng Thiak Adut and Ben Mckelvey is out now.

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