You can hardly tell the challenges that she has faced by looking at her. She is bubbly and loves to sing but behind the smile is a story of hardship, battles that she has fought; lost some and won some. Sandra Ayoo Mbele is a 27-year-old mother of two who has been a refugee at Kakuma refugee camp for 8 years. Her mother died immediately she was born and her father was killed as a result of his alleged participation in a local terror group in Uganda, her country of origin. Sandra then moved in with her ailing grandmother who also passed on just after she had completed her secondary education
Faced with rejection from her relatives due to the father’s presumed reputation in the terror group, Sandra fled from her home in Northern Uganda and with the help of a friend, she went to Kakuma refugee camp where she now calls home.
Life in the camp has not been easy, in the first few weeks she had difficulty communicating because she could only understand her local language and English. Very few refugees speak English so she quickly had to learn a bit of Swahili to be able to communicate with other refugees. Ther father of her two children, a refugee too, abandoned her after she got her second child and she was left to fend for her two children on her own. Life in the refugee as a single young woman is difficult but it is these challenges that have made her resilient and she attributes her strength to her faith in God.
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Sandra is an ardent listener of TWR-Kenya’s Atoo Sifa station that reaches the refugee population with the gospel. One of the programs that has had a great impact in her life is the youth program “Youth Junction” which is aired during the Youth segment at Atoo Sifa known as “Lets Change Kakuma.” presented by Peter Kimani. Among the issues discussed in the program is abstinence for the single and being faithful to your spouse if you are married. It is in this show that Sandra was encouraged to stand firm in Christ and to face life’s challenges as a young single mother.
At some point in her life, she was almost giving up and she listened to the program Trauma and Healing on Atoo Sifa. She was encouraged to get up and face the past and forge a future for herself and her children. Since she had been counselled at the at the camp and was also involved in counselling other young people at the Kakuma refugee camp, she took it upon herself to also encourage teenage mothers at the camp. Teenage pregnancy in Kakuma has been on the rise especially during the Covid-19 pandemic period when children were not attending school. Sandra is always there to help teenage girls who get pregnant. Encouraging them to take care of themselves, give birth and go back to school when the child is older. She has been very instrumental in forming a young women’s club at the refugee camp where they support each other as single mothers and encourage those who get pregnant to take care of themselves and their unborn babies. They also and encourage the younger girls to stay pure, get an education and be economically independent before getting married.
Besides the youth show, Sandra also loves the Women of Hope program that encourages women to accept, love and serve the Lord as they care for their loved ones. Whenever she can, Mbele listens to Atoo Sifa and says programmes such as “Baraka Ya Jumapili” (The Sunday Blessing) encouraged to accept Christ into her life and led her to become part of TWR-Kenya and Sifa missionary work by spreading the gospel in the camp.
