Rafi’s Bar Mitzvah Project
Welcome
Let’s help Adhil and her family leave Kakuma refugee camp and become self-sufficient in Kenya.
This website has more information about my Bar Mitzvah project.
Lucky and Me
I met Lucky about 9 years ago when we were both on our way to the park. I was walking with my mom and his mom was carrying him, since he was about 18 months old.
We have been friends ever since. I have known Lucky longer than almost all my other friends. He knew my grandmother and we probably wouldn’t be such good friends if it weren’t for her.
Until I was almost 5 and he was 3 and a half I was taller than him! But quickly he became taller than me. Now Lucky is a lot taller than me, despite being a year and a half younger.
Lucky is so tall because he is Dinka. Average men are 6 feet tall in his tribe, and many men are about 7 feet tall. The Dinka are a tribe from South Sudan, originally from between the two Nile rivers, the Blue Nile and the White Niles, from Gezira, a place that was once ruled by the kingdom of Kush. They have a lot of special traditions.
Although Lucky is Dinka, he has never been to South Sudan. He was born in Nairobi, Kenya, where his mother had come as a refugee. Through Lucky and his mom Adut, I learned about his Aunt Adhil.
Meet Adhil – her life and the war
Adhil Majok Athuai was born in Kondok, Akop Payam, of Tonj North County of Warrap State. Now that place is in the country of South Sudan, but then it was part of Sudan, and when she was born there was a civil war of independence that had been going off and on for 40 years.
She doesn’t know exactly when she was born. There was no hospital, and no one wrote dates. It was sometime in the 1990’s. Her sister Adut said that her parents made a knife from the sorghum stalk to cut the umbilical cord, and wrapped the baby in a goat skin that they tanned themselves, and the babies just peed on there mothers because there where no diapers. “It wasn’t like here, we lived in the bush, no clothes, no toilet paper–we used pumpkin leaves.”
You can see some photos from the 1990s in South Sudan here.
When she was three or four, Adhil started helping her six year-old sister Adut take care of her family’s cows and goats. It is hard for her to remember the exact details, but her tribe, the Dinka, are famous for their cattle.
The first time time Adhil left home she was 5 or 6. She walked to Uganda with her sister Adut and her brother who was much older. It took a long time, about a month. They left South Sudan because the South Sudanese Civil War came to their village. Their parents had to stay home with the cattle and the old people, so it was only the children who left, and the oldest was only about 19 years old.
The president of Uganda was welcoming refugees, probably because he knew it would be good for the Ugandan economy. On the way there Adut got separated from her brother and was adopted by another family. Adhil says, “It wasn’t like now, there wasn’t Facebook, no phones, so we might have been not far away from her but we couldn’t find her.”
Adut says Adhil was always smart. In Uganda a priest got Adhil a scholarship to the UN school. She was there at least three years. She says at that school she did two grades each year. A peace agreement was signed in Sudan in 2005, and they went back home. In 2009 she completed high school. in 2011 South Sudan became an independent country. Adhil was married in 2011. Her husband decided it was better for her to have children than to go on to university, so she decided to get a job, and got one as a journalist for the Warrap State Community Radio News.
In 2015 South Sudan created 32 states, but before there were only about 10. So part of Warrap, Tonj, became a new state and Adhil was promoted to the role of chair of the human rights commission. She worked for about 4 years in this position. “People were in prison with absolutely no charge, and I got them out, and later some people didn’t like that.” By 2019, other government employees were burned in their houses. She was scared for her children.
Leaving home again
Adhil had to leave South Sudan again, this time not only because it was dangerous for everyone but because she had worked for the government.
Life in Kakuma Camp
Life in one the largest refugee camps in the world has never been great but for four years it was somehow okay, but now that USAID has cut funding, and the war has driven up prices, conditions are dangerous and it is hard to survive.
Even through all of the problems Adhil went to college classes in Kakuma for three years. During that time she had a baby girl. She has received a degree as a general medical assistant in 2024 and worked for the UN hospital.
Due to cuts in UN funding the hospital has no money to pay her now. Some people work at the hospital as volunteers, but she cannot leave her children alone without money to pay someone to watch them.
The government of Kenya has been having a difficult time keeping such a large camp in their country, and they would like to close it/turn it into a regular municipality with no special support for the refugees.
On the positive side, Kenya is trying to integrate refugees into their economy, and made it easier for an educated refugee to get a work permit.
OUR GOAL:
Adhil hopes to live on land in a fertile part of Kenya, so she can garden/farm to sustain her family and so she can work in the Kenyan economy, which is much, much better than the Kakuma economy. Our goal is to help that dream come true by helping her buy one acre of land, where she will build her own mud brick/adobe house. Please could you make a donation towards our goal?
We Are Also Selling Stuff
We are selling pot holders and coasters/trivets that my friends and I made.
We are also selling plants: Aloe Vera, including the edible kind, pincushion cactus, octopus and blue and bicolor agave, cuban oregano, night blooming cereus cactus, and Basil.
I am also selling artwork: paintings and notecards.
The plants, notecards and weavings are by donation. I am trying to figure out prices for the paintings, but feel free to make an offer. Please contact me at Rafiforpresident2048@gmail.com.
Please check back. I have more images I will upload and I will improve this site.
Donate here
Because I am not an adult I have been having trouble finding an online way to accept payment. Some people have given me checks and cash. Check back later please and the links may be good.
Venmo Coming Soon Checks and Cash are also fine, bring them to my bar mitzvah