2020 World Refugee Day: Furaha’s story

June 2020 · 2020 World Refugee Day, Migration Ministries

I’m from Congo. My family is Muslim. When I was 13 years old, my father borrowed money from his friend. Then, when he came to get it my father told him, “I don’t have your money, but I have my daughter that you can take her.” The man was 35 years old, and I stayed with him for about 6 months until the war started.

When the war started, I had to run by myself because the man my father gave me to was in somewhere else. On the run, I met the Mai Mai bad people. They took me into the forest and had me cooking for them as well serving as their wife. At that place I met other girls that they had there and were using them too. Then the Congo soldiers came to fight that people, and I had to run away again. After that I found some church pastors who hid me and took me with them to Tanzania, where I met the father of all my children. I had 7 children but two of them got killed with poison when one of them was 4 and the other one was 2 years old. My parents were also killed by the Mai Mai people too.

The man who my father sold me was looking for me and asking my brother to pay him the money back or to turn me in back with him. My brother knew I was in the process to come to US with all my family and to stop me, he made false allegations against my husband and then he was taken to jail. I decided to come to US without my husband to be safe with my children.

Life is hard in the US to do everything by myself without the children’s father.

Currently I’m working a full-time job and in the process of getting my house build up by the Habitat for Humanity Program. I completed my 250 hours of sweat equity.