Tesfy Kahsay Bairo is a 57 year old migrant farmer who was smuggled with his wife to Kassala, East Sudan from his hometown Tesseny in Western Eritrea. They fled in 1979, leaving everything behind.He crossed the border to Sudan without documentation and managed to find work as a gardener in Sinnar. After Eritrea’s independence in 1993, he decided to return back home. His return to Eritrea was short lived as the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea arrived on his doorstep in 2000. His hometown recaptured, Tesfy traversed the same route to Sudan he had used the first time. Tesfy and his wife began their second stay in Sudan as domestic workers and later took jobs in the sesame fields.

In 2005, he decided to move to Khartoum with his family (four daughters and two sons) who were all born in Sudan. He had only been able to enroll his youngest daughter in school, and she is now attending University. Recently, Tesfy started to experience pain in his chest. Doctors told him that he had a weak heart and urgently needed surgery. Despite seeking the assistance of many international NGO’s, Tesfy was unable to find the money to implant a Pacemaker to regularize his heart beats. At the time, he was working as a janitor in one of the community schools, and his salary was barely supporting him to cover other needs, let alone the expenses of such costly intervention. IOM Sudan was able to provide him with the necessary medical care and follow up at Sudan Heart Center where he had the surgery in mid October. IOM doctors escorted Tesfy to the cardiologist, and covered all the expenses of the pre and post care. Now he’s able to do more moderate work and walk without experiencing pain or breathlessness.