A Refugee’s Story: The Never Ending Journey of Joy Haugen

Refugees. All of them have stories and all of them come from different places. When you look at someone, you would never guess that they ever had a past, the past of a refugee. Refugees go through a never-ending journey. Even after they have finally settled down in a new country, they don’t stop facing challenges, socially and economically. They have to adjust to new neighbourhoods and new types of jobs. This is similar to what Joy Haugen faced during her life.

Joy Haugen has been working at UWCSEA East Campus for 7 years. She worked for the service office, but now she works for the boarding house. When she was a child, she would have never thought that she would have the opportunity here, working in an amazing school.

Joy Haugen was born in South Sudan, in time of war. When she was just 2 years old, her family fled to North Sudan(to a place called Khartoum), to try and escape the war. Her family was scattered all over the place. Her mother was worried about her own mother(Joy’s Grandma), so when Joy was just 6, she sent her and her aunt(who was just finishing high school) to go help her grandma. Her grandma lived in a refugee camp in Uganda, and to get there they had to walk. When they got there, there were no sorts of communication in the camp to locate her grandma. But through word of mouth, they found her. So just like that, Joy grew up in the refugee camp. She didn’t feel unhappy there as her grandma was so positive about everything, she felt privileged instead. There were positives and negatives of living in a refugee camp. In the camp, people were quite friendly. Health was pretty bad though, and it was easy to catch diseases because of the number of people packed into cramped spaces.

When she was around 14-15 years old, she migrated from Uganda to Kenya. Her mother was doing an immigration application for the US. They finally moved to the US in 1999. When she arrived and finally settled down, both she and her family faced a lot of difficulties. People in the neighbourhood did not accept them. They always excluded them because they were refugees. Whenever there would be a neighbourhood barbeque, they were never invited. In high school, she was always known as ‘Joy the refugee girl’. Many people teased her about her accent and her skin colour. In general, high school was just a horrible experience for her.

There are many refugees with the same story as her. They try to get better lives for themselves and their families, and they try to start a new life in a different, safer country. But they are not given the chance to. They are just never accepted by the people around them. Many people misjudge refugees because they think refugees are lazy and they just live off the aid, and they also think that they steal jobs. But the truth is, refugees, work endlessly. Joy said her mum had never ever stopped working to try and earn money to support her family back at home and her children here. The media also portrays refugees badly, as they know citizens are frightened that refugees could steal their jobs, and they use that as their advantage to make it seem bigger than it actually is. Instead, they should be helping the refugees.

“The fear keeps people from getting to know the truth.” This is something that Joy Haugen herself said, and experienced. Millions of refugees have had issues with acceptance. After their terrible experiences in refugee camps, they still have to deal with people not accepting them, and people looking down on them. Over time, the situation has become much better, but people should be way more accepting, especially to people in need.