My life was filled with family in South Sudan. I am the seventh of nine children, and we grew up in what would be considered a middle-class family. We did not have a lot, but we did have more than a lot of other people.

When I was 10 years old, I fled my homeland amid the bomb blasts of civil war in Sudan.

When I was a girl, civil war in Sudan forced me to flee my home town of Wau.

I've seen mothers and children really being vulnerable in the refugee camps; it's supposed to be temporary, but they end up having children who have grown up in refugee camps.

I think beauty is not just about what we put on our heads or on our faces or what we wear: it's deeper than that, and if we can celebrate that, celebrate the women, not just the superficiality... I think it would be really gorgeous.

I have short hair. It doesn't make me more unattractive than a woman or my sisters that have more longer hair and a bit lighter.