EVERY mum wants the best for her children but for Teresa Padiet, who fled war-torn Sudan, the desire for her children to succeed is even stronger.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
As a child living in Sudan, Ms Padiet could only dream of having an education.
From the age of seven she sold watermelon seeds and cleaned houses to raise money to attend school.
One of Ms Padiet’s earliest memories was when war broke out in Malakal in South Sudan when she was six-years-old.
Hearing gun fire, Ms Padiet didn’t realise how serious it was until her cousin grabbed her and took her to hide in the bush. Her mum was working away on a farm at the time.
“There was shooting and people running around,” Ms Padiet said. “You could hear bullets around us. I was just laughing because I was a little kid. I can remember seeing people crying, a lot of people were missing, they’d lost their kids.”
They hid in the bush for two nights, returned to the village for a week until the rebels struck again.
This time they stayed hidden in the bush for three weeks without food or water.
“People lost everything,” she said. “I remember when we came back there were no houses any more. Everything was gone. They bombed everything.
“In South Sudan they like to look after their animals; cows, sheep everything, but everything was gone, nothing was left. I remember my mum was crying and saying ‘my poor little girl. Your life is destroyed because we don’t have anything’.
“She was saying ‘but I thank God, you’re still alive. Everything is going to be okay’. She told me ‘everything’s going to be alright’.”
Ms Padiet fled with her brother Simon Ajak Padiet and his wife to North Sudan and despite them not having any money, she was determined to go to school.
“I was seeing lots of children go to school and I thought ‘I want to go to school’. It was hard for my brother because he couldn’t afford to send me,” she said.
She used the watermelon seed proceeds to go to school in 1988, but they were forced to relocate when the area they lived flooded.
But it wasn’t as simple as just enrolling again. “At the new school if you don’t have a certificate then you’re not allowed to go to school and I didn’t have one.”
She returned to cleaning houses where the ladies living there said “You’re a smart kid and strong. Why can’t you go to school?’
“I said ‘I would love to go to school but I don’t have a certificate and no one will let me into school’,” Ms Padiet said.
A principal who lived at the house was able to get her and a friend into the school, located in a Muslim area. Her uniform had to fully cover her, but she couldn’t afford to buy one.
“I lined up on the first day. All the students in the school laughed at me and I ran into the corner and cried. The teacher came to me and said ‘ask your parents to buy you the dress. If you don’t have it you can’t come to this school’. I went home I didn’t know what to do.”
Fortunately the daughter of a lady whose house she had cleaned had leftover fabric which was used to sew sleeves onto her dress.
“Some was white, some was cream but it didn’t matter, they didn’t mind. I had something to cover myself. They wanted shoes but I didn’t have them,” she said.
She continued to clean houses to pay her school fees . “It wasn’t a big amount, but it was for me. I needed books, shoes, a bag.”
Ms Padiet couldn’t afford a bag and carried her books, but she was happy because finally she was at school.
“The good thing with me was I believed in myself. If I cried no-one would want to help me. I had to believe,” she said.
She studied up to year 11, pushing herself as far as she could with very little support.
She married young and had Berjitta, 18, in Sudan, before the couple moved to Egypt where Emmanuel, 15, and Daniella, 14 were born.
The family came to Australia in 2004 and had “zero English” when they arrived. A few years later Ywomo, 11, was born in Warrnambool, followed by Evans, 5. The couple has since separated.
Ms Padiet, 36, uses that same determination from her childhood, working as a cleaner at the Warrnambool City Council caravan parks and the Presbyterian church.
“I’m a hard worker. I can go through whatever but I don’t want my children to be in a different world than what I can see right now,” she said.
“I do it because I had a lot of dreams when I was a kid. I wanted to study. I wanted to be a singer so I could collect money and help poor people. I know how hard it is.
“If I wasn’t strong I wouldn’t be where I am today. I’ve found it really hard.”
The children aren’t allowed to have boyfriends or girlfriends, instead they are expected to concentrate on their schooling.
She wants them to go onto complete further study.
“I’m working hard now just to build their life and see them achieve. It was my dream to do something better, but it’s not about my dream, this is about them,” she said.
“They’ve got the opportunity in Australia to study. It’s a good place they don’t need to worry about food.
“They’ve got food and water. In Sudan you can go for five days without food but here they’ve got so much, so why would they worry (about a relationship)? I need them to focus on their studies for their future.”
Emmanuel feels lucky to live in Australia and said his mum wanted more for him because of her experiences. “I think every mum wants the best for their kids but she wants it more,” he said.
The family will celebrate Mother’s Day on Sunday with breakfast in bed, gifts and plan to spoil her throughout the day.
One of the key people who have helped the family settle into Warrnambool is Lee Adebisi who is known in the family as ‘Mumma Lee’.
Ms Adebisi said she bonded with Ms Padiet in 2007 and she had helped out and cared for the children when Ms Padiet visited Sudan in March.
“These kids are part of my life,” Ms Adebisi said. “The whole lot of them. It’s not about blood and culture. It’s about love and family. Often blood doesn’t define family. Family is who you love.”
Ms Padiet still misses her dad who died before the war and her mother who died in 2004. Her brother, Simon, who raised her died in 2006, which was devastating.
Ms Padiet returned to Sudan in March to search for Simon’s children, who are aged 14, 13 and 11, finding them in a refugee camp.
She has applied to adopt them and is waiting to hear if the application has been successful.
“I want to bring them to Australia to have a better life. I want to do this because my brother looked after me and I want to do the same for him,” she said.
“I would love to bring them here. It would be amazing to look after them and give them a life like my children.”
