Pictures of Supermodel Alek Wek's emotional visit to refugee camp in her South Sudan hometown

I saw this very torching piece on Mailonline and I was torched, I wanted to share it with the whole world. This lady is so beautiful inside out. Even after so many years and moving on, she still still came to associate with her refugees in her country. What strikes me is the way she looks at home and so like one of them. The way she's dressed is so down to earth that you'll almost think she's one of them. 

Her life now involves pacing the catwalks of London, New York, Paris and Milan, wearing couture clothes costing hundreds and thousands of pounds.
But South Sudanese supermodel Alek Wek has proved she is not going to forget her humble and often traumatic beginnings in a hurry.The former North African refugee has made an emotional return to her homeland, her first since 2005, to mark the first anniversary of the country's independence.And the trip brought back plenty of painful memories. 


continue to view the pictures and the emotional story 

Alek Wek Distributing soup to the refugees                                A a UN Refugee Agency returnee site in South Sudan with a baby

Alek Wek's beloved father died along the way, but she, her mother and her sister made it to London when she was 14, and there they finally sought asylum.

She was spotted by a modelling scout for Models 1 in an outdoor market in Crystal Palace in 1995.In 1997, became the first black woman to appear on the cover of Elle magazine.She said that the hardships she lived through will be impossible to forget: 'Having witnessed it first-hand, and at a very young age, even if I put it at the back of my mind, it is still there.

The 35-year-old beauty fled her hometown of Wau with her family as a teenager during the 1991 civil war between government forces and rebels.The journey was a gruelling one in which the Weks foraged for food, used the sun to navigate, and were sometimes forced to spend whole months in villages and stretches of days shut inside huts when the warfare around them became too dangerous.

'I've heard stories like, "I'm going to die anyway, I might as well die, why should I even try?" That really resonated, not knowing what tomorrow is.'

The model put her strength of character down to her powerful, selfless mother, saying: 'Whenever I feel I am going through my own 'little' challenging moment, I just think about my mom.'