Refugee Stories | Shadi Al-Jouma
20th April 2017
36 years old.
He's with his wife and two children - two girls (6 months & 2 years old).
He lived in Deir ez-Zor, he worked as a food and drinks delivery driver for 11 years. He was living with his wife in an area surrounded by military forces, bombs dropping daily. There was a shortage of food and his wife was pregnant with their first daughter.
19 February 2015 their daughter was born. Due to the lack of nutrition over the course of his wife’s pregnancy their baby was born with Microcephaly - a congenital condition associated with incomplete brain development. The food shortage also greatly affected her early development as a child.
06 February 2016 - The government started to take civilians to serve in the military, he would not serve in this war and at that point he and his little family left the country, walking 4 hours to cross the border of Turkey. They travelled to Izmir where they stayed for 13 days until they found someone to pay for spaces on a boat.
19 February 2016, their daughter’s first birthday, they managed to get onto a boat without troubles from the police. They made it to Greek waters and were collected by the Greek coast guard before being taken to Mytilene, Lesvos. He'd never make that trip again had he known how much he'd fear for his wife and child’s lives.
They received papers in Mytilene, before travelling to Athens on a large boat and then onwards to Idomeni with the hopes of crossing the border. They ended up staying in a tent for 1 month and 5 days, on 25 March 2016 they made it to Veria camp.
November 2016, their second daughter was born on camp. She hopefully won't have to spend too much time on this camp before they are relocated. He hopes to get relocated to Germany as his cousins and sister-in-law live there. In reality safety is the priority, education and healthcare second to that.
He told me at the end that he initially thought it’d take 6 days to get to Germany after leaving Syria. Imagine taking a flight, it’d take 4 or 5 hours maybe. Instead it's taken them over a year until now and still they’re unsure of where they will go, and when...
I'm going to write a series of these stories, maybe 5 or 6 of them. You can find the other story below.
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