Sulaksha

AGE 16

My name is Sulaksha. I am sixteen years old. I come from Batticaloa in Sri Lanka. I want to tell you about my own story. How my is life changing.

I was born on 20th of August. My mother told me it was such a nice day. I was five years old when I started school. My first day at school, I didn’t cry. I was so happy to be studying at school. After that, my life went on.

In my country, there are two language groups. One speaks Tamil and the other Sinhala. They started a war with each other that became big. We were so scared about leaving our place because the Sinhalese people came to kill the Tamil people. My father was scared to go to work. And I was scared to go to school. One day the Sinhalese army came to take my father and my uncle. We were so sad. How could we get our father and uncle released? Mum asked around for money and jewels and she gave them to the army and they released my father. We thought, what could we do in this country? How can we get food? We can’t live here, we can’t study here. My father and some of our relatives and our neighbours, they thought of a good idea. They bought a small boat. They planned to leave our country.

One day, at eleven o’clock at night, my father and sister left by boat to escape to Australia. They told the Australian government about our problems and the bad situation in Sri Lanka. The government took the details. They lived in a camp after that and then the government gave them visas.

My mum thought that everything would be okay now that my father was in Australia. She thought he would get citizenship and then could sponsor us. But the Sri Lankan army came and asked her where my dad was. She said, ‘I don’t know.’ After that they took my mum away. I was crying. We talked to my father. What can we do? The army might come to take us and they might kill us. The army had come to shoot my father’s brother more than thirty years before.

Finally, my mum and my two sisters and I planned to leave our country. We found someone who could help us find a boat. We left our country at night. It was such a terrible situation. Sixty-three of us travelled in the boat for eighteen days. The last three days we had no water, no food. In that boat were many kids, babies, pregnant ladies. It was a very bad situation.

Finally, we arrived. The immigration people took our details. After that they gave us visas and for two months we stayed in the camp. Finally we saw my father and my sister. I hugged them. Now we all live happily together. God helps us to live happily.

In my future I will study hard and finish university. I’d like to become a doctor especially for kids. I want to help my family and I want to be helpful to my friends and others, with my life going peacefully and nicely.