“It was 2 AM when they came to our village. They set all our houses on fire. There was no time to grab anything. Not even food. All we could do was run. For fifteen days we walked without any food. There were bodies all along the path. Only fear kept us going. We had no energy. People were sitting down to rest and never standing up again. We started eating leaves off the trees. I couldn’t breastfeed anymore. One of my children died on the sixth day. Another died a few days later. Nobody even talked about it. We were too weak. I could barely even cry. We just walked on in silence. When we arrived at the camps, the doctor told me my baby was not going to survive. But by the grace of Allah, she lived.”
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This week I’m sharing a series of first hand accounts from Rohingya refugees. The Rohingya are a persecuted ethnic minority who have been violently evicted from Myanmar by Buddhist extremists. Over the past year, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have been driven from their homes and are now residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Their living conditions are already dire, and monsoon season is approaching. As we share their stories, we are raising money to help build inexpensive bamboo houses for these refugees. (They are currently living in plastic tents.) Bamboo houses can be built for $600 a piece, and we’ve raised enough for over 1000 houses so far, but the need is much more. Please consider donating: http://bit.ly/2H0w5lm
