Shyrete

"In war time, you just want to be alive."
Shyrete Sulimani, 39, is ethnic Albanian from Kosovo. In 1999, when war erupted in her native Yugoslavia, she was forced to flee to neighboring Macedonia for fear of reprisals from security services. She left home in the middle of the night with her daughters, aged three years and 14 months, respectively, carrying only a bag of diapers, water, a little milk and bread. "In war time, you just want to be alive." The next day she arrived at a huge camp established by UNHCR in Macedonia. There she found shelter and was reunited with her husband who had fled their home earlier to avoid compulsory conscription. The family was resettled to Canada, where Shyrete has since started a cleaning company and her husband a landscaping firm. Two years after arriving there, a third child was born.

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