Care group helps Sudanese refugees

When Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) approached North Kildonan MB Church with a request to provide social support to three Sudanese refugee boys, Henry Bergen’s care group was quick to step forward.

“There were people among us who could relate to their experience,” says Bergen, whose family immigrated to Canada in 1947 because of conflict in eastern Europe. “There were people in Canada willing to help us, and now we wanted to give something back.”

Representatives from North Kildonan MB Church and MCC gathered at Winnipeg International Airport to meet refugees from Sudan: (l–r) Henry Bergen (NKMB), Walter Thiessen (NKMB), Monynuer Monywach Daw, James Bilen Monywach Daw, Gew Mony Buony Ater, Mukai Muza (MCC); Ionka Hristozova (MCC).

The young Sudanese men, ages 13, 15, and 20, fled their war-torn homeland. Sudan has been mired in civil war for decades. The causes of conflict include religious differences, demands by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army for a greater role in government, and access to revenues from the country’s petroleum-rich land.

“Here in Canada, we can sit and watch the troubling events taking place in other parts of the world,” says Bergen. “Few people fully understand the fear and uncertainty these young men would have experienced.”

Two million people have been killed in Sudan over the past two decades, four million remain internally displaced, and more than one million live in exile. The young men arrived at Winnipeg International Airport with little more than the clothes on their backs, and each other.

Bergen arrived in Canada as a 16-year-old boy with his mother and her children, fleeing their home in the Ukraine during World War II.

“Our stories have some similarities, but they are still not the same,” says Bergen. Many Mennonites were reunited with their families after arriving in Canada, but that won’t be the case for these young men.

The father of the younger two boys went to fight and never returned home. Illness claimed the life of their mother en route to a refugee camp. Sickness took the life of an uncle travelling with them as well. It was their second uncle, now 20, who accompanied the surviving boys to Canada.

Initially, all three lived with Bergen and his wife, Bettie. The Bergens, their care group and other members of the North Kildonan MB Church are helping the boys adjust to Canadian life, getting them enrolled in school, introducing them to a Sudanese family down the street, and welcoming them to the congregation.

—Jonathan Tiessen, MCC Canada