The Flight for Life: Darfur-Eygpt-Israel-New York, The Story of Adam Bashar,a Refugee

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Yesterday I participated in another alumni event held in New York City. As an alumni of IDC’s Global MBA program I just had to participate. This time we didn’t host the president of the University, Prof. Uriel Reichman, or  Mr. Jonathan Davis, Head of the Raphael Recanati International School at IDC, but 4 students who shared with us their inspiring story.

I would like to share with you one of these stories. A story about the fight and flight towards life.

Adam Bashar, Now at IDC, Israel

Our hero is a kid by the name of Adam Bashar. Adam was born in 1988 in a small African village in Darfur, Sudan. He has 4 siblings. In 2002 the pro-government militia men, known as Janjaweed, which literally means “devils on the horses’ back”, launched an attack on his village. Consequently, he was forced to flee the massacre along with other kids. At that time Adam was only 14 years-old.

Adam described the day of the incident as,  ”I was coming back with a couple of kids from the fields, and bombs started falling, we run to the village to look for our parents while everybody else was running from the village”. His family was torn apart during the attack, and Adam with a group of kids, ages ranging 8-16, managed to flee to a village known as Nalma in Sudan.  Later he was arrested and held for two weeks by the Janjaweed. Upon his release, he was able to escape to Egypt.

In Cairo, Adam stayed at the UNHCR’s center for refugees, along with other refugees. There, Adam experienced difficulties finding a job that would assure his sustenance. In 2005, the Egyptians changed their policy regarding the Darfur refugees, and it became very dangerous for Adam and his friends to live on the streets of Cairo. Adam and two of his friends fled to Sinai and from there they walked, as Adam described it as, “towards the lights”. An Israeli border patrol found them sleeping in the middle of the desert after passing the border between Egypt and Israel.

After a shower and a hot meal, they were sent to a Kibbutz where Adam spent three months working and attending Hebrew classes. In 2007, after overcoming the opposition laid by the UNHCR, he was sent to a school located in the northern part of Israel, where Adam completed his high school education at the age of 21. During his studies, Adam co founded an NGO called Bani Darfor that aims to help improve the lives of other refuges.

Today, Adam is a second year student of Government Studies at the IDC Herzliya. In the future Adam hopes to help establish diplomatic relations between Sudan and Israel.

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