Q: How do you feel about the Sudanese curriculum and the exams?

Edna: If you are from Sudan or South Sudan and you do the Sudanese exams, you can enter an Egyptian university, but if you are from another country, you cannot. They won’t allow you to enter with the Sudanese certificate. If you are from Ethiopia or Eritrea, the only option that you have with the Sudanese diploma is to go to a private university, they will accept you there. I know this because of my brother. He passed the exam although it was very difficult for him. He took the exam in English, and there was someone, during the exam, who translated it. This made it complicated. He was prepared for this exam in Found Africa. Once you reach grade 12 you just go to the Sudanese Embassy and take the exams, it is the same for everyone. The thing is that in Found Africa they did not tell him that the diploma would not help him to enter an Egyptian university. It was not until he and his friend, half Egyptian and half Tanzanian, went to the Wafidin to ask for applying to a university, that they were told that they needed to have either an Egyptian certificate or an international certificate. Even my friend’s brother, whose nationality is Egyptian, couldn’t enter university with the Sudanese certificate. They just told them, you are not a Sudanese. For entering you need your country certificate or an internationally recognized British certificate. 

Q. How was Found Africa? 

Edna: I was there until grade 8. I took the exam and I failed it, we feared that the same thing would happen to me as my brother experienced. My family did not want to pay again for entering secondary school education for nothing. The Sudanese exam for grade 8 at that time cost 150 dollars. When I took the exam it was crazy. At Found Africa, my grades in English were really good. I always got 40 out of 40 When I did the Sudanese exams I only got 24 out of 40. The ones that correct the exams,  do not really grade the papers, because people from my class that were bad at English really got high grades. Maybe it is because of the names they noticed? If it is a Sudanese name they just put grades higher? I do not know. We were just two non-Sudanese in our class, me and my friend from Zimbabwe. It is not normal that you to fail the exam three times. I have these two friends from Eritrea, they both did it three times, and they failed all three times, and if you fail it three times, you are not allowed to do the exam again. 

Q: Who are the teachers at Found Africa? Where are they from? What is their background in English education?

Edna: The teachers are from Sudan. Their English pronunciation is not good, they taught us Arabic but it was not really useful as it was the Sudanese dialect that is completely different from the Egyptian one. Your scores at the Sudanese learning center do not have any value for your final score for accessing university. The only thing that counts is the main exam that you take at the Sudanese Embassy. Everything is about memorizing.

A week later, on March 25, Edna continued:

I was born in Eritrea, Asmara, on the 30th of October 2005, my mum and my dad are originally from Massawa, my mum married at the age of 18, and her parents chose a husband for her. This was the custom in Eritrea it was like that, and also my grandma did not want my mum to go to do military service, this is why she married her. 

Massawa is a coastal area, it is nice, there are tourists there and you eat fish, my brother Novel (Jacob) was born in Massawa, but two weeks after he was born, my parents decided to move to the capital, and I and my older brother Marvel were born there. They decided to move because Massawa is a very hot area, it is even hotter than Egypt, although I feel that it is better, there is no pollution and you can breathe fresh air, it is not good for babies to be born and raised in hot places. But we still had family there, such as my uncle, so we used to go to visit them, the trip is very nice because the landscapes are really beautiful, but as there are mountains the road is also full of curves, so you are lucky if you do not vomit on your way to Massawa. It takes you 5 hours to reach there. 

In Asmara, my dad used to work as a bank dealer, a cashier in a bank, but then you know, in Eritrea they are very strict with the military service, and out of nowhere they come and ask you to join the police or help them with other activities. This happened to my father, he was asked again to join the civil service, this time working as a policeman. He was really not designated far away from Asmara, but it was too much for him, according to the rules a person has to do two years of military service maximum, he was doing more and more, and it was too much for him, so he decided to run away. Since then we do not know anything from my dad, we do not maintain contact at all, I do not know where he is, even if he is alive. At that moment, it was my mum who was sustaining us, my mum was a businesswoman in Eritrea, she had an electro domestic shop, she was selling satellites, TV, microwaves, and other electrical stuff. She also used to work part-time as a translator, my mum used to know really really good English, there are good schools in Eritrea, especially for English, maybe you will not learn so many other things, but for English, schools are very good in Eritrea, she knew even better English than me, but with the stress and trauma she has forgotten everything now, I guess. She also knew this local language of Eritrea called Tigre, so sometimes she went to Massawa and translated for the tourists from Tigre to English, especially in the sea life museum there, explaining to the tourists about the seashells and the whole maritime life. There are a lot of tourists in Eritrea, they come by boats, Tiffany Hadish was in Eritrea. 

I left Eritrea for Uganda when I was 7, therefore, I can remember a lot of things from Eritrea. We lived in Asmara, where I went to a kindergarten, and a nursery school. Then I went to do my primary education in a very famous school in Eritrea, I cannot remember the name but I say it is famous because the uniform always appears on TV, the uniform is green and red, it is the same uniform, it was a public school, I just did grade 1 there, then I was about to start grade 2 but we left. I really cannot remember the name of the school because I always forget those moments that are traumatizing me, I really do not have a nice memory of school, I did not have friends there because I really was going through a difficult moment by then so I preferred to be alone. By that time I always had the same nightmare night after night. My godmother was my favorite person in Eritrea, and in life, after my mum. She used to live right next to our house in Asmara, so we spent so much time together, but then we moved to another place in Asmara, so we could not see each other so often. This was hard, I dreamt every night of her leaving me, or that I was dying and I was leaving her, it was really hard. Although she used to come to visit us, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, she always took me and we were doing nice activities together, I was not used to being away from her during the week. Her name was Salem, she is like 15 years older than me. She is now in Eritrea, I miss her a lot, and even now, I still have these nightmares. I wish I could call her more often, but in Eritrea, there is no wifi or data, you need to go to a cafe, to a special shop, to connect to the internet and use this app called Eri something, you are charged with dollars and then you can call. For us it is 2.5Egp for 1 minute to call to Eritrea, I am happy for her because she recently had a baby, sometimes we call and she tells me that I am the sister of the baby, the name of the baby is Salema and she is now 3 or 4 years old, they told me that she got the attitude from me. I used to be very sturbant, I used to get in fights every day, but now I am much calmer. Anyways, the thing is that I do not have a good memory of Eritrea because of my nightmares, I also forget many things from that time because of the trauma. 

Then when I was around 7 we left with my mum, Novel, and Marvel, my dad was not there anymore, he had abandoned us. I had no idea of our departure to Uganda until three days before the departure time, I felt bad, my mum decided it and none explained to me why, I can guess now that we left because Novel was about to finish grade 11 and go to the civil service, so we escaped. I can also guess that we chose Uganda because my mum had a friend there, she told us that education was really good in Uganda, although life is so difficult. Everything is very expensive, you cannot afford groceries, rent, not even school fees, and there are a lot of thieves. For example, our windows were having those bars, you cannot even put your hand through them, but t there was this time when Novel was sleeping on the top of a bunk bed, his phone was under his pillow, and he woke up and his phone was not there anymore, when he woke up he just found a stick on the floor. We were all shocked, how could someone steal a phone just with a stick, then someone told us that they put a plastic bag on the stick and they steal the phone like that. The thing about the thieves is really bad in Uganda and the police do not do anything about it, it is more, the police help them, but the police also steal. It impressed me because people in Uganda are really educated, even the thieves, I think it is more a cultural thing, as everyone does it. It is so different from Eritrea, even if you are not educated, you would never steal anything, people would disrespect you, and none will like you but in Uganda, it is so different. 

Uganda is also not safe for children or teenagers to move around, there are a lot of kidnappers and child traffickers, this is because my mum put us all in a boarding school. In boarding school, I had some friends there, but all of them were friends with benefits. You know, I was not really used to the food of the boarding school, so sometimes my mum brought me some extra food, that day, I had a lot of friends. From that moment of my life, I also have this memory of teacher Toni, he was really nice, he used to care, he was like my father in that place, he was helping me a lot every time I was feeling bad. We slept in a big dormitory. The boarding school was expensive, my mum was working so many hours in a cafe in Uganda just to be able to pay for our education. It was too much, it took my mum too much energy and she could not do it alone, this is because we left Uganda and came to Cairo. My mum now regrets coming to Cairo, she heard from a friend that Cairo was good, that UNHCR would help you, but now that we are here she could see that reality was so different, this was the same friend that introduced us to the smuggler that would bring us through the desert. 

My mum has always been concerned about us receiving a good education, going to university, have a brilliant future, and here in Egypt, we do not have this education. My mum also wanted to leave because you know, in Uganda, you pay for being a refugee, in Uganda, you pay for everything. The only thing that I liked about Uganda was that you have the freedom you can wear a shirt or a crop top and none tell you anything, and also the weather is really nice, it is green, the landscape is beautiful and you can breathe fresh air. We were 3 years in Uganda, and in 2016 we came to Egypt, I was 10 or 11 at that time. 

Even by then, my mum just told me 1 day's advance that we would leave Uganda, she told me to say bye to our neighbors, and we are leaving tomorrow. My mum sold all the furniture that we had for collecting money, and from Uganda, we left for Juba as my mum had a friend there. We just stay one night in Juba, and once our passports were fixed we took a plane from Juba to Khartoum as it is the only way to go from South Sudan to Sudan, going illegally is too risky. We were in Khartoum like 7 days in the house of another friend of mum. We lived in the house at 11 in the morning, and we reached the border town in the desert at midnight, the smugglers were just paying money to the police. At Adbara you stay until midnight, they tell you to buy everything you want, as you will not be able to buy anything else. It took us 3 days through the desert, we entered from Sunday until Thursday, and we entered Aswan on Wednesday. It was heavy, we meet those people who stayed in the desert, children with guns and knives, they are there and try to steal from you, they have trucks and persecute you. This just became a trend, before they did not use to do it, I think they are extremists, a friend of my mum had his head cut trying to escape to Israel, it was as a way to show the others what would happen if you were not giving them your stuff. 

The smuggler was from Sudan, my mum did not have money, first, some other friends were supposed to pay for us, but they were struggling with the money, but we were already on our way, thank God at the end my mum’s friend in Cairo paid for us. Aswan was bad and scary. It was a bad experience, they take you first to a field, in a desert, you are waiting there, and once you pay they take you to Aswan. The field is in the middle of the Saharah, there is a tent, like to cover you from the sun but you can even see the scorpions going out of the sun, and their connection is so bad, so we stayed there for two days, just the guy going up and down of the mountain, doing calls and checking if we had or had not paid as well as calling another guy and telling them to come and pick up those who had paid. They pay from there, it is like a whole connection and they have different bosses in different places, so for example, my (Diana’s) dad paid for us once we arrived. There was like a partner of the smugglers in Sudan and he gave them the money. And once you pay, you even need to wait for others. There are good and bad smugglers, even there are smugglers that ask you for more money and if not they kill you, we were lucky with our smuggler because the friend of my mum in Cairo was a  kind of the girlfriend of the smuggler. 

I do not know how much we paid for it because my mum's friend paid for us. But it was scary because just at the last moment, the other friend of my mum who was supposed to pay for us told us that she could not, so lucky the other friend paid for all for us. And then we came to Cairo, we stayed in Aswan from the morning until around 6 pm, that is when the train leaves, it was kind of scary the experience there, it took so long, we had already paid and just waiting for the man who was supposed to take us from the desert place near Aswan to the city.

But you know the trip through the desert was the scariest part, there were these people in the desert, they just live there and are waiting for someone to come and attack and steal them. Diana: you know, sometimes they even kill you, this happened to my mum’s cousin, and since then it has become kind of a tendency, I would guess this trend started around 2010-2011. He was trying to escape from Eritrea to Israel and on the way they found these desert groups and they cut him the head in front of the others to make them scared, and then they took his kidneys to sell them). We found people like this in the desert, they were persecuting us with cars, and the driver started spiting up so fast, then at some point he stopped, he hide his car painting it in mad, coloring it according to the sand of the desert, and he hides us in different places. They did not catch us, our drive was really good. My driver was drunk. The drivers are risking their lives, the shafatus are really dangerous, if the driver is caught by them they will torture him. The trip through the desert was frightening, but you know the most beautiful views that I ever have had of the stars were in Sahara desert. I could not even see the stars, my eyes were full of dirt. For us our eyes and ears were also filled with dust, at some point when I already was in Cairo, I got an ear infection, but this countries doctors, I was telling them, I am in pain, and they were just like, nothing is wrong with you, you are talking to me, that means that you can hear good. There are reasons why I hate this country, there was this friend of mine that had a car accident with a taxi,  in whatever other country the driver would take the guy to the hospital, pay hospital fees, everything, but in this country, they just left the guy lying on the street, he was even bleeding, he was left there. When we arrived here we stayed with my mum’s friend but for just two weeks, my mum did not want us to stay there, the woman was not nice to us. That day, we were just exhausted, we had just come from the desert without eating well, and that woman gave us just pasta. We were not feeling comfortable, also because my mum is a very different type of person when a guest comes, she gives them everything, even if she does not have food for us to eat, she will do the unimaginable for giving the guests food. Do you know the Ethiopian guy that came with us through the desert? He was 27, he was staying with us at the beginning, and you know my brother Marvel is a very social person, the first time we met him, they became friends directly. This man helped my mum to find a new flat, we paid 1.500 EgP, but it was small, just two rooms and a sofa. We stayed there 1 year and something, I was sharing a room with my mum, and Novel and Marvel the other one, the Ethiopian guy was not with us at that time, he was staying in the smuggler's house. But the smuggler no longer lives in Egypt, he fell from the window of his house, you know in this country there is this say that some houses make you mad, he had depression, and then he fell from the window. He did not commit suicide, I think he was just having nightmares. He did not die, he just got a leg injury, then he went back to Sudan to refresh his mind. 

Then after 1 year and a half, I started school in Found Africa, Novel, and Marvel too. It was very far away, and the daily trip was too long, even with the sun and the dust and the people, I got sick. Before I used to get really sick, even in Uganda, in a year maybe I was having five different diseases. In Uganda, just when I arrived I got a heart attack. When I miss someone too much, I get sick, also when I entered boarding, I missed my mum too. It is curious, I feel that my mind and feelings and my body are connected. After the heart attack, I was three weeks without going to school, my mum could not take care of me, there was this woman, called Nagret, who was the one who helped me and took care of me, it was kind of hard, every time I ate something I just throw it out. It took me three weeks to recover, and after one or two months of recovery, I became sick again with malaria, I got it from a mosquito, I had a very high fever, and you know in Uganda I was always the best student in class, and in Uganda, all the students are very competitive. The health system in Uganda is really good. 

But here in Egypt, the health system is not good, my mum was afraid of me getting sick again so we moved to Maadi, our home was close to our school, Found Africa. Me and Novel, we were in Found Africa, and Marvel was in StARS, he was accepted but we were not. I honestly preferred Found Africa, because StARS was full of Eritreans, and I preferred to be mixed. I entered grade 5 before I was smart, but when your classmates are not really competitive, you also do not get the motivation. Marvel entered grade 8 and Novel senior 1. 

We were paying 2000 EgP for the flat in Maadi, two rooms but the living room was so big, it was nice but the landlord was not nice. The real landlord had children, so the soons wanted us to pay 4.000 EgP or 5.000 EgP for the rent, the house was not worth that price. They were forcing us to pay, they said either you pay 2.500 EgP or you go out of the house. This is because my mum started to search for another house in Maadi, but you know what annoys me more, is that the contracts of the landlord are supposed to be respected. The other one was nice, the house had three bedrooms, I was always sharing with my mum and my brothers were always sharing, the other room was for studying. But we left the house because my mum’s work was so far away, she works in Dokki cleaning houses, and she is getting old. She still works on that, she gets like 3.000Egp, the lady is super nice to her and to us too, she is from Kuwait, she is so nice, most madams are not nice. 

When we first arrived in Egypt, my brothers started working, Marvel and Novel used to work with nightshift cleaners, but the salary was too low, so both left it, Novel is really good with the internet. He was translating for a youtube guy 1$ per 1 minute from English to Tigrinya. But that was also stressful, so both went to Save the Children to see if they could find another job, and from there both joined Glovo. But Glovo soon went to Kenya, and they lost their job. After that, they went to Woom. It is also another company like Glovo, they left, Novel is not working now and Marvel works at a call center. They give part of the money to my mum. 

I want to be a lawyer in the future, I would like to study in Canada. I feel that I do not spend time with myself, I like singing, listening to music, reading comics, manga, anime, 

MILITARY SERVICE INFORMATION

Diana explained: The moment you finish 11th grade in Eritrea, they take you to the civil service, this is not the military one. In this service you just do some stuff for the government, they give you some money but it is just a little. For example, my uncle graduated from university to become a marine captain, but for the civil service, they gave him the task of becoming a teacher. My father went to Asab, it is crazy hot there. He lost his hair there. It is true, that his hair burned there because of being hot. My dad did not go to school. He was the older child and they were living in a rural area. 

When I was in Eritrea I knew a girl who wanted to come to Sudan illegally, to escape Eritrea, and then she was caught before crossing the border, and straight away they took her to prison, and they saw that she was old enough to go to military service. She was not married, so she went. My godmother's mother also went to military service for two years, and then once she had completed her service the government started to look again for her, to make her enter again. She escaped but they always go to her brother making him responsible for her escape, he always hides. 

One point, if you have any problem, health problems, if you are not fully human, they do not take you to military services, my uncle now, he is in Eritrea, he had an accident. His friend who was drunk had a knife with him and without any bad intention he fell and stabbed the knife into my uncle’s arm, nothing serious but even this little thing made my uncle exempted from military services. 

WAR INFORMATION

Diana: In 2000 there was another war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, my dad fought there, and this is why he escaped to Sudan, he left us when I was 3 years old. The helicopters came and threw bombs. At that time my mum was pregnant with Miley. She heard bombs exploding everywhere, especially since our area was really close to the conflict area. My mum was just telling me, that even without a hand or a leg, that she wanted the baby to be safe. My dad left for Sudan when I was three months, and the government was even searching for him. They went to Goluch to ask for him, but none knew, my dad was hiding from them to escape. He left during the war, 

Edna: My mum experienced the war of the 1990s. It was really bad, especially in Massawa. My aunt explained to me that they were eating and the building started to fall. Luckily they were not injured and they could escape, but there was this lady, who was my aunt's friend who was also inside the building and she died because glass fell on her. That woman had a 7-year-old child, that was able to escape from the building. After some hours, the child was asking around for his mother, he was telling everyone that he was with his mum, “I saw my mum”  and people were telling them she will come later, she will come later, and finally, he knew she was dead.