After years in refugee camp, Deng keen to spread wings
Published on 16 June, 2011
Deng Malok spent his childhood 'living like a prisoner' in a refugee camp in Kenya, after being displaced by the civil war in his home country of Sudan.
Now aged 22 and living in Bundaberg, he is not only free but has his heart set on spreading his wings with a career as a commercial pilot, thanks to CQUniversity's Bachelor of Aviation degree.
"What brought me to Australia was civil war between North and the South, which killed more than million people and displaced more than two million people," Deng says.
"I ended up in a refugee camp called Kakuma in Kenya in 1998. In 2003, I migrated from Kenya to Australia on a refugee settlement program, originally settling in Darwin."
Deng says his early life in Sudan was extremely difficult, tough and challenging, "but not the same as the life that I experienced in the refugee camp".
"In the refugee camp, the area has always been full of problems: dust storms, high temperatures, poisonous spiders, snakes and scorpions, outbreaks of malaria, cholera, and other hardships including attack from local people in the night.
"It's unforgettable conditions to experience and living in the camp is like living in prison; you have no freedom to move outside than the area that you are allocated in and no education and employment. Only the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees provided the basic needs.
Deng with Aviation senior lecturer Ron Bishop and classmates
"In my six years in the refugee camp I have never travelled further than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR) camp just five minutes outside the camp. The houses were so bad too. The houses were tents and mud brick houses."
Deng says coming to Australia meant a lot, including living in freedom and having opportunities to study Aviation.
He is living in Bundaberg with his cousin who studies Nursing at CQUniversity Bundaberg.
"My goal is to obtain a commercial pilot licence and to fly larger air companies, but if that does not happen, I will be looking for full-time work after graduation," Deng says.
