A hard road - how Justin Mwange fled war and famine to build a new life as a nurse

INSPIRATIONAL: Justin Mwange while training to be a nurse

Justin Mwange was in his last year of secondary school when war broke out. Like the rest of his family and village, he fled into the bush, beginning eight long years of acute danger and hardship. There was no time to pack and no time to say goodbye, the sole objective being to outrun the murderous armed gangs stalking the land, and then to hide.

It was 1997 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and for Justin and the others the only two constants in their lives now were fear and hunger. They would spend the next year in the jungle, trying their best to look after each other, but always on the run, never safe, and always feeling hunted.

“It was horrendous,” said Justin, recalling with vivid clarity the terrible things he saw as a teenage boy. ”Finding food is difficult. Even in the bush you keep running. Someone says ‘They’re coming’ and you go. You had to move from one place to another.

“You see people dying, young children, from malaria and wounds because there’s nobody to look after them.”

At first they thought the war would end and they would be able to return home. But it didn’t, so Justin’s group decided to walk out of the bush to neighbouring Zambia, a journey of three days that only the strongest would survive.

“That was the hardest thing,” said Justin. “It was a difficult decision. There were elderly people who couldn’t walk and you had to leave them. You’re just running for your life. I saw people leaving their mother because they couldn’t walk any more and there’s nothing you can do.

“They just leave them to die and you can’t even bury them. You just lay a cloth over them, leave them and carry on. I remember seeing an elderly woman and she said ‘You go, there’s nothing I can do’, and she died.”

Justin’s group successfully crossed the border and was one of the first to emerge in that area, where they were met by staff from the refugee agency UNHCR. It was a sanctuary, of sorts. Though free from war, conditions in other respects were no easier. They were given a tent but no tools and told to put it up as best they could. They were still in the jungle.

PROUD FATHER: Justin with daughter Katie and sons James and Benjamin

This was Kala refugee camp and would become home to 25,000 people. The agency did their best to provide them with food and clean water, but the food was scarce and limited to one staple. “It was beans, and that’s what you’d be eating from December to January,” Justin said. He believes it was this diet that contributed to the death of his father Amedee, who died in the camp aged 58.

To try to overcome this, Justin applied for the sought after passes out of the camp, which the police administered, so he could go into villages to work. Small jobs for a small amount of money, but it helped buy other food.

The lack of facilities for a camp that size was incredible. The basic hospital had just 12 beds for children and 20 for adults. It was this that set Justin out on another long road, into nursing. He said: “There were four children to a bed and some on the floor, and that’s when I thought ‘Oh my God, if you need me maybe I can help’.

He began volunteering for Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), supporting people with malnutrition. He would help monitor blood sugars, weigh patients and distribute extra food parcels to children and the most vulnerable adults to keep them alive.

Justin spent seven years in the camp before applying for resettlement as a refugee. He did not know he would be offered refuge in the UK, or in Hull.

But after meeting staff from the Home Office he arrived here in March 2007 with his wife Elizabeth. Justin, who was fluent in French and Swahili but spoke little English, got work in a factory and attended English classes.

TOGETHER: Justin with wife Elizabeth and son Benjmain

He completed an English as a Foreign Language programme at the University of Hull before applying to study social work. He graduated as a social worker in 2012 with a 2:1.

Justin then worked as a care assistant in the community and supported clients with learning difficulties and children with autism for almost four years before he was finally accepted on a nursing course at the university in 2016.

Throughout his Bachelor of Science nursing degree, Justin has worked on placements at Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital. He made such an impression he was nominated for Chief Nursing Officer’s award.

That was a big moment for Justin, achieving professional recognition in a career he had set his heart on in a refugee camp. “Being in a refugee camp for seven years, I lost my self-esteem and self-confidence of achieving anything in my life,” Justin said. “I always see myself at the bottom of the queue and as the weakest link in anything. Just being nominated for the award raised my self-confidence and self- esteem.”

Better was to follow with the news that he has since qualified as a nurse. Asked he felt on hearing this, Justin said: “I sat down and cried. I looked at my journey from where I was, from living in the bush to coming here. I didn’t realise I could achieve this, I didn’t think I could do it.

‘I’VE MADE IT’: Justin in uniform after qualifying as a nurse

“There were times in the camp when they said we haven’t got any donors, we can’t get any support, and I thought ‘Are we going to die here? The war’s still going on’. But then I thought ‘Let’s hope. Maybe it’s not the end. Let’s keep going. Let’s see if I can manage this day. If I manage tomorrow, that’s good for me.”

Justin hopes his story will inspire others. He said: “I’ve watched people dying because I couldn’t help them because I didn’t have the skills. But now I have the skills. I just want to say it’s never too late. You can learn new things, you can learn how to help people, wherever you are from. If you have that dream to fulfil you can do it.”