Profile - Twins reunited
It reads like the plot for a fairy story or high drama – lost twin reunited with her sister and family after years apart – but it happens to be true and one of Australia’s most touching stories in 2006-07.
Maulidi Mukasa’s wife was killed and he was separated from his nine-year-old daughter Neema as the family fled conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2001.
Maulidi and his other five children were selected to come to Australia by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and settled in Shepparton in Victoria. Not long after they settled in, Shepparton school principal Julie Cobbledick heard about the missing sister.
‘Maulidi came to see me to say that his little girl was missing and asked me if I could try and help find her,’ Julie says. And so began a search which lasted four years and eventually found Neema living with her uncle in a refugee camp in Kenya.
‘I never in my wildest dreams thought that this is where it would all end up,’ Julie said. ‘By the end of March, we knew that she was alive and then we went through the process with Immigration for applying for her visa which was granted in late September. So then Maulidi asked me if I would go over and bring her home, so I said yes.’
The department arranged for Neema to fly to Australia to be reunited with her family. Her twin sister Fitina was delighted when Neema arrived.
Julie said it had been a privilege to be a part of the family reunion. ‘It’s just been wonderful to have this little girl back with her brothers and sisters and her father,’ she said. ‘This is where she belongs, and where she needs to be.’
But the story is not over yet. At the end of 2006-07, moves had started to bring Neema’s Uncle Macinda, who had saved her life, to Australia.