Jane was a teenager when she arrived as a refugee from Uganda into Australia and her life drastically changed.

She was born in a refugee camp that lacked the basic novelties that all of us in western society take for granted everyday.

Now 21 she is studying at university for a career in the health field in the Northern Territory and is a patron of the Refugee Council of Australia, promoting Refugee Week which runs until Sunday.

She also undertook an Australian School-based Apprenticeship when she finished school in dental assisting and is now a fully qualified dental assistant.

“I was born and raised in a refugee camp and life wasn’t easy but I didn’t know the difference because that was all I knew.

“I was brought up in a community where we were all very close and took care of one another.

“Our neighbourhood was amazing, we were like a big family, even with people you were not related to.

View photos This shows Jane in her life back in Uganda in the refugee camp that she grew up in with her siblings. Photo: Jane Alia More

“People shared all that they had, such as if you had no salt, for example, your next door neighbour would lend you some.

“It was a great sense of family and togetherness.

“In the refugee camp, we had to fetch drinking water from a tank and that took an hour to walk there and back.

“We had to walk for about half an hour to go to school. Life is very different here.”

Jane’s mum made the trip to Australia first and she was left with her father in Uganda.

“I didn’t really know what to expect when I arrived in Australia, we had Geography lessons telling us where it was but that was all I really knew.





“I was shocked at how hot it was, for some reason I thought it would be really cool, it was very surprising.

“When I arrived here I didn’t expect so many of my mum’s friends to be at the airport to welcome us.

“I had a real culture shock when I went to school. In Uganda wearing school uniforms was compulsory, however when I went to school the first day, people did not really wear uniforms, just a few did”.

“My first thoughts went to like ‘wow’, we used to have over 100 kids or more in a class and at my first school we had less than 25 in a class.

“I really love education and it has been my key to succeeding.”

Jane says it wasn’t just school life that shocked her; other simple things like saying hello to someone at sometimes you receive no response, and you wonder what you had done wrong.

“We never had running water in our house in the refugee camp, it was only places in the city which had that.

View photos Jane is a Refugee Council of Australia and has been hard at work promoting Refugee Week. Photo: Jane Alia/Facebook More

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