This TED Talk features educator Mary Maker recorded live at TEDx Kakuma Camp 2018.

We do not choose where to be born. We do not choose who our parents are, but we do choose

how we are going to live our lives.

I did not choose to be born in South Sudan, a country rife with conflict.

I did not choose my name, Niriak, which means war, have always rejected it,

and all the legacy it was born into,

I choose to be called Mary.

As a teacher, I've stood in front of 120 students,

so this day does not intimidate me.

My students come from war-ton countries. They're so different from each other,

but they have one thing in common. They fled their homes in order to stay alive. Some of them

belong to parents who back home in South Sudan were are killing each other because they belong to a different tribe

or they had a different belief.

Others come from other African countries devastated by war.

But when they're inside my class, they make friends, they walk home together,

they do their homework together. There's no hatred allowed in my class.

My story is like that of so many other refugees. The war came when I was still a baby.

And my father, who had been absent in most of my early childhood,

was doing what other men were doing, fighting for the country.

He had two wives and many children.

My mother was his second wife, married to him at the age of 16.

This is simply because my mother came from a poor background, and she had no choice.

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