A phone call. Ten minutes to pack the bags. Ten minutes to say an uncertain final goodbye. 

For some refugees now living in Lexington, Kentucky, 10 minutes is all it takes to hold hands and have a mother’s kiss for the last time before leaving their home country.

That is what happened to Husna Ahmadi, an international studies student on the pre-law track at the University of Kentucky, who was forced to leave her home in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2021 when the Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist group, took over the country.

As an 8-year-old, Ahmadi already knew what a civil war was and witnessed cases of forced early marriages, child labor, human trafficking and the “the many broken windows” destroyed by armed conflicts nearby.

“I grew up with bombs. I grew up with explosions near my house. I grew up with explosions in my school,” Ahmadi said. 

Ahmadi said that even a daily trip to school was a true act of courage and faith.

“May Allah keep you safe, and hopefully you will come back,” was the most common prayer her mother used to say before seeing her kids stepping outside their house, according to Ahmadi.

After the death of Ahmadi’s twin brother, her mother could also not keep up with her job as a teacher for mental and physical health reasons, which affected Ahmadi. 

“I was in shock because all of a sudden we got his (dead) body brought into our house, and I kept fainting,” Ahmadi said. 

It was during this time of sensitive struggles that Ahmadi entered high school. That was when an unexpected shift came into Ahmadi’s life.

After receiving a grant and a full scholarship from a friend who was abroad in the Middle East, Ahmadi began attending the American University of Afghanistan in 2020.

Then, the unexpected came again — the pandemic hit, and soon after, the Taliban attacked the country.

“American University of Afghanistan was the first target of (the) Taliban for a terrorist attack. They could’ve just dropped the bomb there anytime,” Ahmadi said.

Three days later, she got a call from her university.

“You have to be in this hotel in 30 minutes and we’re gonna escort you to the airport. You’re leaving,” Ahmadi said recounting the phone call.

Ahmadi said her family knew that whenever the phone rang, there would be no time for prayers over a daughter whose mother did not know when or how she would be back in her arms. 

After having 10 minutes to say goodbye to her family,  Ahmadi said she was sent to a hotel and from there she went straight to the airport.

“It’s August, (it’s) summer, (it’s) pretty hot. (On the airport’s runway), there was no shade, so sunny and you were on the ground . . .  and I spent 48 hours in there. No food, no drinks,” Ahmadi said.

At 7 p.m., the plane arrived and Iraq was the next destination. This is where Ahmadi spent one and a half years at the American University of Iraq studying business and management.

“We were told (by the American University of Afghanistan) that we would live in a third country (Iraq), wait there for our cases to be processed and then we would come to the United States,” she said. 

The University of Kentucky came into play through the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the Qatar Foundation when they coordinated with 30 universities across the U.S. to give full support to refugees like Ahmadi.

At UK, she found what she wanted to pursue, but never had the chance to study — international studies on the pre-law track.

Ahmadi said if she could talk to her younger self, she would go back to the time she had therapeutic support for her depression in Afghanistan after her brother’s loss.

“Now, what I want to say to my younger self every time is . . . ‘You did it, you made it abroad and you are doing great. You never thought this was gonna happen, but you did it, see where you are right now,’” Ahmadi said.

In Lexington, she has discovered her purpose in supporting other displaced people seeking a place to call home through the Step-Up fellowship program.

According to its website, fellows can volunteer in schools as interpreters for non-English speaking refugees, as well as assist in homework assignments or credit recovery classes.

The program also allows UK students to grow their services beyond the classrooms as mentors. 

Philip Manga, who left the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a refugee in 2005, was one of them.

“War after war after war. I say this all the time and it’s sad for me to say it,” Manga said.

When Manga fled his hometown in east Congo to go to Kenya where his father was, the woods became his new desert for almost nine days. This is where he had to walk by foot, a similar distance from Kentucky to Mississippi, to finally find an orphanage, he said.

“We didn’t know anything but just to get out and go away until you see the sun,” Manga said.

When living in a foster home, the American Red Cross came along and reunited Manga with his father in Kenya from where they all fled together to the U.S.

During his time at UK as a sociology major, Manga was  active within the community being a fellow in the Step-Up program, and expanding his service into a new initiative. 

In 2020, during the pandemic, he founded Box2Box, a service-learning program that connects the sport of soccer to self-finding for those who have lost a sense of identity when forced to leave what once was their homes.

“You’re not defined by your circumstances. I think that’s very big; that’s a gift that came from above for me,” Manga said. 

At Dunbar Community Center in Lexington, Manga holds soccer development programs and after-school tutoring alongside high school volunteers and the Step-Up fellows.

A room full of laughter, Hot-N-Ready pizza and vivid energy —this is the environment eighth graders and high schoolers are in every Tuesday and Thursday evening under Manga’s guidance.

“Box to Box Matumaini Academy” is the full name of the organization that incorporates the Swahili word for hope, Matumaini. 

For people like Ahmadi and Manga, hope is the ultimate driver that keeps their humanity alive when leaving all behind.