South Sudan man motivated by helicopter that attacked his village becomes Avionics engineer

- Samuel Nen Joh was forced to flee South Sudan after North Sudan's government attacked his village

- He stayed in a refugee camp in Uganda for two years before his brother located and brought him Kakuma camp in Kenya

- The young man was lucky and later managed to leave for Australia here to wen back to school

The road to success is always under construction but for one South Sudanese man who now lives in Australia, it was very rough and tough but that did not stop him from being the person he wanted to be.

Samuel Nen John was born and grew up in South Sudan’s Leer County in Unity State.

Narrating his grass to grace story to QUT, the young mn said he was forced to flee his home in 2000 when his village came under heavy attack by the North Sudan Government.

"Everyone in the village ran to different locations and in different directions. We walked for five months to the border of South Sudan and Uganda," he narrated.

On arrival at the border, he together with other children were picked and taken to a refugee camp in Northern Uganda by the Ugandan police.

He stayed at the refugee camp for two years and in 2003 his brother, who was a former child soldier, learned he I ended up in Uganda.

"He came and picked me up and took me to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya where he lived," he said.

Luckily, he got a chance go to Australi in In 2007 on a refugee visa where he attended Coorparoo Secondary College as ESL student.

He could not speak English at that time so he had to learn how to speak and write in the language.

He graduated from high school as an ESL student in 2009 and got offered a chance to study Engineering at QUT where things got very interesting for him.

"My first year was a general entry for engineering students and in the second year, I chose to study Aerospace Avionics and Electrical engineering," he said.

According to him, he chose that career path because he was interested in understanding the functionalities of the helicopter gunship that had chased them away from their village.

He did 12 months of work placement at Quality Avionics at Archerfield Airport and also worked for Signal Automation also known as Livezi.

Determined to do best in his career, he left Signal Automation and came to Airbus in 2017.

"Airbus is the only place to learn on the job. From being a refugee to Airbus, this is so awesome you can do it too," he said.

"The road to success was very tough and rough but here I’m at Airbus which I never dreamed of," he added.

He said with support from his lecturers and teaching staff, it was possible for him to achieve his goals.

"Sometimes in life, we have to make very difficult decisions in order to get to where we are; don’t simply give up; there are a lot of opportunities out there," he concluded with an encouragement.

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