Akeer Chut-Deng was just seven when the lions and hyenas came looking for blood. Until then, the tribal and sectarian violence that swept the rest of the Sudan during the late 1980s had bypassed the tiny village where she lived with her mother and family.
“But then the war came, and suddenly there were bodies everywhere in the bush, lots of bodies left there to rot,” recalls Akeer, now 28.
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“Until then the animals were a part of our world. We were careful, but not afraid of them. But the bodies drove the animals crazy and they came to the village at night looking for easy prey, for our animals and people.”
As night fell, Akeer’s mother locked her and her cousin into an old wooden sea chest inside their hut, then stood guard at the door with a burning torch.
“One night when my mother was moving some cattle, a lion got in and killed a goat,” says Akeer. “We were terrified. I remember screaming and screaming. The goat was named Akeer, after me. My family saw that as a sign that our old life was over and we had to escape.”
It’s difficult to imagine anything farther from the sequined, pouting, strike-a-pose glamour of modelling than the horrors of the Sudanese civil war.
Millions died, and millions more were left homeless and dispersed around the world, including 20,000 Sudanese refugees who now live in Australia.
It’s from this humanitarian tragedy that a small group of beautiful young, mostly Sudanese-born Australian women have discovered opportunities far beyond anything they ever considered possible in their strife-torn country of birth.
Their striking looks, long legs and slender bodies are perfectly suited to the catwalks, not just here in Australia but across the world.
Ajak Deng, now a top international model living and working in New York, is the most prominent of the current crop of Sudanese-Australian models. Her achievement has prompted others, such as rising stars Nikki Thot and Flora Blaik, to follow.
But their successes are not the first. Akeer Chut-Deng is a part-time model and a financial planner with a major bank.
Just a few years ago, she was also considered a bright prospect in the international modelling arena, working between London, Paris and New York for a variety of high profile clients.
At 28 — and a mother to two young boys Yannick, seven, and Levi, four — Akeer has been modelling since she was 17.
But the glitz and glamour of the catwalk is worlds away from her start in life. Akeer’s family, members of the Dinka tribal group, comes from a small village on the Upper Nile in South Sudan.
“The country was in complete turmoil when we decided to leave — Muslim against Christian,” says Akeer.
“We went to Ethiopia, but they kicked us out and we had to walk from Addis Ababa to Kenya, hundreds of kilometres.”
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Akeer was 11 when she and her family were accepted as refugees by Australia and moved to Toowoomba in Queensland.
“It was so different,” she says. “I spoke Arabic and Dinka, but no English, and the cultural difference was great. At first we were welcomed, but as more Sudanese started to arrive, everything changed and people became hesitant, then ruder and more discriminatory.”
Read more of this story and see more photos in the May issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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