Life Uncut - From a Child Refugee to Working with Queen Bey - A Story of Resilience with Aweng Chuol

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

Hey Lifers, Today we've got a big ol' announcement to make!We are doing a live show tour in October! We're hitting up Adelaide, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Auckland, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Perth! Details will be added here once we have links but for now, jump on to our Instagram for all of the details! Laura moved house, and the jury isn't decided on whether a box of 'personal' items should have been unpacked or not. Britt gives us an update on her egg freezing & fertility journey. If you'd like to listen to the episode we did 2.5 years ago about egg freezing you can here!   Joining the podcast today is South Sudanese Australian model, actress and artist Aweng Chuol. Aweng's story is a big one to summarise.She lived in a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to Australia when she was 7.Aweng is the oldest of 12 kids; her mum was only 15 when she was born, her dad a child soldier, her grandfather a pastor. Aweng was working at fast food restaurants when she was scouted. She has gone on to model for some of the world's biggest brands and worked with the likes of Rihanna and Beyonce. In this chat we speak about: Being a Black, queer woman and having her community turn on her Forgiving parents and giving them grace for the wrong decisions they made raising us Healing from generational trauma Love not being enough, resilience and perspective You can follow Aweng on instagram here! If you have an accidentally unfiltered, your most embarrassing story, please send it on it to life uncut podcast on Instagram hereJoin us on tiktok Or join the facebook group here Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug Wollongong land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. And I'm Brittany. and we have a very, very, very, very exciting thing that we're going to share with you, but not yet.

Oh, aren't we? Should we just wait? Laura, you're breadcrumbing your own people. Guys, it's the biggest, most exciting news that's happened. I mean, I know I have two kids, but I think that this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. And before anyone thinks it, I am not announcing a pregnancy. That is not what we're doing.

You being pregnant would not be the best thing that's ever happened to me. I'd be super excited and I would be so thrilled. But, like, in terms of, like, me having my own children, it would be, like, the second best thing that's ever happened to me. I feel like it would be the best thing to happen to you because you would be like, now you fucking know the shit that I go through every day. I feel like that would be beneficial to you.

Now you know. Yeah. Oh, you're not sleeping? Oh, you're tired? Welcome to my life. I don't want you to suffer. I don't want anyone to suffer. I feel like low-key you'd be, like, enjoying my suffering.

Have a guess how many times Lola woke up last night. have a guess have a guess six seven what were the intervals what was the pace do you know why it's because guys yesterday so we moved into our new house which also is not the excitement no that's not the best thing that's ever happened to me we moved into our new house it has stairs it has these like oh okay big shot we got to levels i'm really moving up in the world it has stairs and i was carrying lola and i slipped five steps down from the top and i wrapped myself around her because i am a hero and i wouldn't let her get hurt and i landed so ferociously on my ass and then i rolled down the stairs whilst holding her like a little cocoon how many stairs did you

go down like eight stairs like did you bump bump bump on the whole way on my side i went down on my side that's why i'm sitting like this because my whole ass it's like being tenderized you know when you get a chicken fillet and you turn it into a schnitzel and you bang it with that i've seen some chefs do that but i wouldn't know it's that to my ass yeah so the funniest thing about this not funny story because it is absolutely not funny but this is funny i went to see laura's new house yesterday so i was like i'm gonna go over we'll have a cheeky little well i didn't drink because i'm freezing eggs but i had a coffee i was trying to beg brit to have a west coast cooler with me because i am my mother's daughter and then brit reminded me that she's doing her egg

freezing so no but who we'll get to that in a minute but who still drinks west coast coolers i was like i feel like my 70 year old gran is like britney you want a west coast like do people still drink that obviously you do yeah it's not a good thing but i am becoming my mom like literally turning into her each passing year i do things and i'm like oh yeah you always say you turn into your parents you're either the complete opposite you're the exact same person I think it happens with age but when I see you and your mum together as well it's you're uncanny some your mannerisms and your look my mum is insane and she talks to like coffee cups and stuff exactly uncanny uncanny no but what I said to Laurie is you better be really careful with these stairs and the kids

she's like it's fine and I was like these are fine for the kids because I have no concept of like what age you can be at with different things in life right like I'd give him a machete to play with in the backyard probably I don't know I don't have any concept I was like Brittany has never babysat. Just FYI. I was like, are you sure the kids are okay? She's like, they're good. Anyway, then I get this frantic message saying, I've fallen down the stairs. And I was like, I told you these were dangerous. And you told me the three-year-old could navigate the stairs, but you couldn't navigate the stairs. No, I said the kids are pretty good on stairs now, but I'm not pretty good on stairs. They're good. And they're four. And you're 30. And I'm 37. Anyway, moving

along. How was the move? How was the move with little kids? It was fine. Actually, you know, this was probably the most painless move that we've ever done. And the reason for that is because the day that we moved was a day where we had terrible timing. It worked out this way. It wasn't intentional towards Matt, although he thinks it was. It was a day of back to back interviews that are being booked and I couldn't move the interviews. So it was very easy for me because I didn't do any of the moving. Laura had messaged me a few weeks in advance and she goes, this is the moving day if you can book everything around this day that'd be great and we'd already booked heaps of things in by accident okay but I had done all the packing and so Matt was kind

of responsible for the moving and then the unpacking but we paid these people to do because you can pay people to come and they'll unpack boxes for you they'll unpack your house and then I came home from work and stuff was just unpacked and in wardrobes none of it was really in the wardrobes that you would expect it to be in but it was in wardrobes and it was in drawers like there's like kids shirts in the kitchen and stuff but whatever because then you have to go and rearrange it how you want it anyway right it's just that so it's not boxes aren't all over the ground yeah but they did a pretty good job of unpacking and I reckon they unpacked like 70% of the stuff but one thing they did so I had this two boxes which were labeled personal like I put

all my personal stuff in there things that I didn't want them to unpack personal toiletries my underwear like stuff that I was like this is you know you don't need to do that I could do that yeah you don't need to move my g-strings so i'd written personal on the box i hadn't written personal do not unpack but i feel like personal kind of like the word itself pertains to the fact that they don't need to open that box okay would you not think no i actually think you needed to say do not open well i mean but then if i write do not open personal what do they think it's going to be in there like my collection of like fossilized shits or something do you collect fossilized shit you fucking weirdo that came to mind way too quickly didn't it they're like because

i they definitely didn't open their books okay so i come home and we have like we've got two baths there's the main bathroom and then there's an ensuite bathroom one upstairs one downstairs one on the top level one up the very dangerous stairs anyway so i go into the ensuite bathroom and all of like my toiletries have been put out on display it looks like a chemist's warehouse the you just go shopping everything's been lined up there's like a perfect space between each product and they're on display so then i go downstairs to the main bathroom the bathroom that everybody uses the bathroom that the people who have been unpacking the house have also been using throughout the day right so we've had like 10 people coming in and out of the house

i go into the bathroom and in the main medicine cabinet it's not one that has doors it's just like this shelving right in the middle of the two mirrors side by side it's open three vibrators are just on display and right next to them is a bottle of lubricant they had unpacked my personal box not only had they put the vibrators on display those vibrators were in boxes themselves they had taken them out of the box no they did not put them on the mantle or at least they take them out remember that time you masturbated with the vibrator still in the container i also love that they were like let's make this as easy as possible for her let's take them out of the box and then maybe she'll use the lube so we'll put the lube there as well it's one-stop

shop it was perfect there was a part of me that made me think maybe maybe they didn't know what it was and i say this because no because we're just a cute guy rolling our eyes at each other we're like bro they knew no i say this because one of them was the pointed pleasure one that Carly Sophia gave us if you listen back uh like at the beginning of the year we interviewed one of our lifers Carly Sophia she came and she brought some vibrators for us this one doesn't look like a vibrator it looks like a kitchen utensil it's like this pointy little spaghetti noodle Laura if they thought it was a kitchen utensil do you think they would have put it on the bathroom shelf no it would have been with the spatulas I think because it was in a box that had

like other toiletries they were like oh that's an interesting leg shaver maybe it's an armpit laser They don't know. Anyway, they put that one on there. Then I had another one which was a whoosh one, which just like looked really fancy. It could have been like a face massager. They put that on the shelf. All of them are like really pretty colours and don't look like penises.

Well, let's just go back to how they took them out of the box. It had the name on them. Your ignorance is the cutest thing ever. They 100% knew what they were unpacking. I don't know. I reckon the 60-year-old man named Daryl who unpacked those boxes didn't know that that was what knew vibrators. because I found my mum's vibrator back in the day.

It was a big pulsating looking penis. Like it looked like a penis. I reckon Daryl doesn't know. Okay, cutie. Okay. Anyway, I have three of them and one bottle of lubricant. And even Matt was like, I didn't know you had that many vibrators. I was like, I've never used them with you.

That's why. This is why we only have six ones, mum. Anyway, let's tell everyone what the big news is. All right, everybody. Strap in. Are you sitting down? Do you have your computers ready and open? Because it's going to be Taylor Swift level of website crashes.

We are expecting some huge meltdowns on the interwebs when we announce that we, Life Uncut Podcast, are going on tour. We are doing a national and international New Zealand tour. Yeah. So I know we teased this a little while ago. October, we were saying that we were going to do live shows in October. It is happening. tickets are going on sale tomorrow oh we're so excited we're recording this on monday we don't

have all the details around the ticket sales yet best tomorrow we've been trying to find out how you can purchase them we're not sure but you will know if you want to come to the live shows we're going all across australia we've got shows in brisbane gold coast adelaide sydney we're going to new zealand we're going to be doing a show in auckland we're going to melbourne we're going to Canberra and of course last but very not least we're going to make the voyage the maiden voyage yeah this is basically the international part of the tour all the way to Perth we're going we kept you and we included you we're going all the way to Perth so like tickets that go on sale on Tuesday when you're listening to this go and follow Life Uncut podcast or go and look in our

social media because that's where we're going to have all the details around the ticket announcements where you can buy them how you can buy them and we're so fucking excited if you came to last year's show that we did in Sydney you'll know how much fun it was like the audience was amazing we had incredible guests it's going to be very similar we have different guests at every show and we're not going to tell you who they are but they're truly amazing and probably well I shouldn't say the most exciting part but this is very exciting is we have an entertainer coming on tour with us we have an opening act that is coming to every single show so no matter where you are what city are in new zealand as well this entertainer is coming they are opening for us they are a very

well-loved musician with some absolute bangers which you guys will all know but we're not going to release that information just yet we're just going to breadcrumb it a little bit longer just we're just going to breadcrumb it a little bit longer but as we said don't panic if you think how am i going to know where the tickets are when are we going to get them laura and i are going to be put they're going to be everywhere it's going to be on life uncut we're going to be putting them on our stories. We're going to tell you how to do it on our grams. We'll talk about it on the podcast in the coming weeks. We definitely don't want you to miss out because there is only one show in each city, unfortunately. So we could fit into the tour. Except for Queensland. For some

reason, you guys got Brisbane and Gold Coast. Yeah. You have to drive. Each city, not state. Oh yeah. But I mean, but it's like an hour and a half. Yes. Correct, Laura. That is correct. One show in each city, but there is one in the Gold Coast and Brisbane. But we will tell you whilst we don't have exact specifications right now when you're listening it's not going to be hard to find out one of the things I'm the most excited about this tour so we've got eight locations but we are taking the whole team and when I say the whole team I mean we're only a small team but like Keisha's coming Matt's coming like you know Mitch is going to be there and for us like this whole podcast our whole entire existence has been based around you guys and

the community that we've built over the last four years and I know that for me one of the things I loved more than anything about Sydney is that fact that we got to meet so many of you walking out on stage and seeing 2000 of you in the audience. It was just one of the best moments of my life. And we can't wait to go and do that in your homes around the country. And we just hope that you guys get tickets and you all come because it's going to be so fun. We're putting so much work into getting the most amazing guests on board. The content is fucking hilarious. And we are bringing everything to you for seriously the best night out and we are going there's going to be audience engagement so over the next couple of weeks we're going to be putting it out to you if

you're coming to a show and you have a fucking crazy story an accidentally unfiltered an ask uncut something that you want to be involved in and you think we need to know about we're going to be putting those call outs because we want to involve you and we want to we want to know your story especially if it's not going to be anonymous if you're happy to put your hand up and throw yourself under a bus, we froth that. Absolutely. And all the bits that you love about the podcast, just think about that on a stage for honestly the best night that you're going to have. It's going to be so much fun. Thousands of like-minded people. It's fucking wild. Yeah. And you know what? You can come alone too. Anyway, look, that's it. It's all going on

sale tomorrow. Go follow at Life Uncut Podcast on Instagram for all the details and we'll make sure that you guys do not miss out. Well, today, before we get into the episode, let me tell you what today's episode is about. We have an incredible interview today with a woman I've been following on Instagram for a little while. Her name is Awang Chol. Now, Awang is a refugee from Kenya. She came to Australia when she was only seven years old and she did grow up those early years in a refugee camp. She is the eldest of 12 children and her mum started having children really, really young, which meant Awang by default as the oldest child took on a lot of responsibility at a really early age to look after her family and help her family. Her father was a child soldier

who didn't come to Australia with the rest of her family. He stayed back in Kenya to continue to fight. There also is so much about this chat in terms of conversations around resilience, conversations around determination. Like the thing I love about Awang as well is she's such a trailblazer in her community. So she's a queer woman. She was married in her early twenties and she talks about the impact that that had on her community and the backlash that she received from her community. She talks about healing from intergenerational trauma and then also this idea of love not being enough and she talks about what it's like to be divorced but to be divorced when you're still only in your 20s and the stigma that surrounds that as well. I think

that Awang is truly, she's so well spoken, she's so incredibly accomplished and she has come from such adversity. The type of adversity that I think so many of us could never ever be able to relate to, but to see her be so successful and to go on to do so many incredible things. She has a remarkable story. She speaks so much about being an immigrant in this country and how she was brought up in a way to assimilate in order to be accepted, how they had to learn a language. And she just is a really remarkable woman. She's someone who we hope will be at one of the live shows, but you won't know when or where. Well, we're trying, she's trying to fit us into her busy schedule. Cause you know, her schedule includes like Beyonce, Rihanna, international

modeling jobs so she can squeeze us in between b and re we'll be stoked yeah i mean that's what that's what we're shooting for guys life on cut live show i'm high but anyways we'll get into all that very very shortly and brit i know that you had an update yourself because you have been back to and on your own fertility journey recently i know you spoke so much in the past about when you went through your first round of egg freezing but you're back into that process again yeah so i mean all you og listeners you're gonna know it's about two two and a half years ago now can you believe that was how long ago that was? Two and a half years ago, I did my first round of egg freezing. I got 15 mini little Britneys on ice, which sounds great. And it's not bad at all.

15 is great. You know, but some people come out with 30, some people come out with 40. Like it's so varying. Some people come out with two. So I feel like I was super stoked. But the fact of the matter is 15 as my specialist tells me 15 equates to maybe one child because it's just how it works not all of them survive the defrosting stage when the time comes then half of those aren't viable then statistically of the four that are left statistically one to two might take so it's just what they say which sounds crazy but it's how it is so I thought okay another two and a half years gone past. I'm 36 in a week. Wow. That crept up. I'm 36 next week. And I was like, I need to do it again because I've aged and our eggs age. Me aging is eggs aging. We're only born with a certain

amount of eggs, which most of you would know. And over time every year they die and they don't come back. So it is one of those things that I feel like you do need to take into your own hands and take control of before it does. I hate to say it, but before the time passes that the opportunity is gone. Well, also I know that, you know, in saying that you received 15 eggs the first time round, like that gives you some sort of comfort. It gives you some sort of feeling of having control and having an option. But in saying that exactly what you said, this idea that 15 could only result in one or two or none or three, like there's no knowing. So I guess the sentiment is the more eggs that you can have on ice, if you are going to go down an IVF journey, that that's

the better option, correct? Yeah, a hundred percent, the more eggs. And what they will do when the time comes is if I, cause I will obviously still try naturally. It's just that I have a lower percentage of it being successful, but I would rather, obviously it just happened. They'll always go and use the first eggs first because eggs are snap frozen in time. So the day you freeze them like a vegetable, like, you know, like you can snap freeze a carrot and you could eat it three years later. It's the nutrients are from three years ago. It's weird. So they'll always go and use the younger eggs that were frozen before I went to use the later eggs but I went today because you have to wait for your period to come and the day that you get your

period is the day that you have to go and start the blood test and that's when you pick up your medication and that's when you start it's all tracked around your cycle so fertility clinics are ready for that they're ready for people you can't book in as such but you give them your date so that they know it's give or take a couple of days and then you just wait till your period comes and then the process starts. So I went in early this morning, did my blood test, got my medication and I start the injections today. So I have two weeks now.

What does that mean then? So you have two weeks of injections and then what's the process again? Is it the same as last time? It's pretty much the same, but the injections differ depending on your blood results. And I'm assuming my bloods are different now, two and a half, three years on than they were.

So it just means it's the same process pretty much, just different levels of injections. But the nurses and the doctors tell you that as you go from every blood test because you do sporadic blood tests one thing I did realize is I mean I'm seeing a lot of people talk about egg freezing and embryo freezing and fertility which I think is amazing but when I said a couple of days ago on my Instagram that I was going to do this again I can't believe how many people wrote to me I mean a lot of people had questions but there was this overarching theme of women saying please talk about it because I'm really scared to

do it I know I need to do it but I'm scared I'm worried I'm and that really got me thinking about why like why are these women scared and why do they have anxiety surrounding it because I would hate women to have these feelings for some reason and it's stopping them from going on the fertility journey because time's not going to wait for you so I really am thinking that maybe we'll do a bonus episode that's just your guys questions maybe it can just be me if Laura has had enough of fertility chat but I I think that if there's all these questions that people don't know and it's stopping them from going down that journey i might get all your questions written in and we'll just do a little bonus episode where i just answer them wholeheartedly how i feel what i think and hopefully

it makes you guys feel a little bit better about undertaking the journey do you think part of it this idea of going and doing the egg freezing process and the fear around it i think like doing a bonus episode is a fucking great idea but do you think the fear around it comes from the then knowing like the then finding out all the information you know i think people i hear friends say all the time they're like oh i think i'm gonna struggle with having babies naturally and it's because they've had so many complications with their periods or with endometriosis or whatever it is over the years that going and actually heading and having I'm going through the process head-on would tell them what the issues are like they would have to deal

with it they'd have to actually process is there an issue isn't there an issue yeah 100% which it actually frustrates me a little bit because I have a friend that's like that like put your head in the sand and then we don't have to deal with the problem because that doesn't do any it's just going to make it worse for you if you put it off and put it off and put it off if you put it off for four years and then you finally like okay I'll go and do it and they say I'm sorry but your account is so low right now and there's nothing we can really do if you came three years ago we probably could have got something imagine how you would feel and I know that's a horrible thing to say but it is true and it's a it's a really fucking sucky hard truth that it is out of our

control and other women have written to me saying I'm so glad you're doing this I went into early menopause at 32 like and obviously that is rare but when I'm reading these women doing that I'm like oh my god like that choice is taken away from you but then on the other side of this is like I guess like the other big part of it is like you don't want the scaremongering of it either like I do think that women's fertility is such a it's such an area of fear for so many people and I guess like we always hear the worst case scenarios you always hear about people who have issues with fertility and with pregnancy and I think that there are so many ads now for egg freezing and on one hand it's very much a much more spoken about area of conversation but on the other hand

I think it also raises anxieties in people that maybe there's something wrong when there isn't and all they need to do is go and get tested well this is the other thing that I say to people and my friends included I think people think it's this whole big process to find out what your AMH is which is like your fertility count the initial baseline it's just a blood test from a GP and then they might also say you can get an ultrasound too. Sometimes it'll be an internal ultrasound, which is transvaginal, which is where the ultrasound probe actually goes into your vagina so that they can get a closer look and count follicles and things like that. But if you've ever been wondering, maybe I should just see where I'm at. You can just go to your GP and ask,

say, Hey, I want to check my fertility. Can I get a blood test? And it's just a baseline. And that's what I tell my friends. I'm like, I told my sister Sherry too. I was like, look, mine aren't great. She's two and a half years younger than me. I was like, why don't you just do the test. She did the test. Fine. And then that's for her. She's like, cool. I feel comfortable with my results. I'm not going to go any further. I'm not going to freeze now because I feel good about it. So it's just more about knowledge is power. That's what I want to say. Knowledge is power. If you don't know what you're dealing with, you can't make any decisions. We also did an incredible episode with Cheryl Foire from Jenea. This was back when Britt first started her

fertility process with her egg freezing. So if you do have any questions and you want to listen to that episode, we can link the details in the show notes. Go back and have a listen to that because there's so much about not just Britt's experience but also about the importance of advocating for your own fertility at least having the understanding about where it's at so that way you have choice and the power and being able to have choice around it I'm actually using Cheryl again the same doctor this is how we found it from the interview years ago and this is not sponsored by any means and we'll get into expense as well because it's not ludicrously expensive but it's also not cheap like you have to have some funds to make the decision that you're

to put that towards it. Like my medication today, I'll be completely honest. My medication cost me $4,400. And then on top of that, you'll end up paying the fees for the actual procedure. I'm going to have a GA and go under to get mine done. You don't have to do that, but it does add up to be a cost. So it's something you need to consider 100%. But I'm, yeah, I used Cheryl three years ago, Dr. Foie, and I'm using her again. So anyway, I'm going to talk to you as we go. I'll tell you how I'm feeling next week. Next week's episode, I'm going to be halfway through the hormones. so I could be a raging bitch heads up to YouTube right now. So I'll keep you updated. And if you do have fertility based questions, you can start sending them in and we'll, we might correlate them

to put an episode together. That's purely for those that are interested, which is why I say we might drop it as a bonus because it's not going to be for everyone. And that's totally cool. But I know there's a lot of women out there that have specific questions and want to know more. So we'll do that. All right. Well, before we get into the chat with the Wang, I haven't accidentally unfiltered accidentally unfiltered um why do you say it like that because that's how we used to say it all the time accidentally unfiltered that was so weird we used to do and i mean i still like it anyway here it is okay when me and my husband first got together he was living at home he had a cat and its name was dippy and at the time it had gone missing one night we were

having some fun in the bedroom unbeknownst to me my mother-in-law heard some noises that she thought was the cat. She thought Dippy had returned. She went outside and was calling Dippy, Dippy, Dippy. You're really method acting. Until she realized that the noises she heard were coming from our bedroom. The next day she told my now husband and for the rest of our relationship i have been called dippy because he was dipping it in oh my god yeah but what sounds are you making that someone mistakes you as a cat cat's fighting like because that's what they do let's have a cat fight ready that was good yeah that was good hey yeah that's anal sex well there's always one that goes too far off piste my parents always said i sound like a

dying cat when i was a child so maybe when you're having sex and they overheard you what when i was a child no i was a child i used to just sound like a dying cat when i was crying and screaming because i used to be like that's also very very very emotionally empathetic of them you sound like a dying cat no they told me as an adult but that's probably why i channel a cat now so well that's what i'm saying all right tippy anyway let's get into the chat okay joining the podcast today is south sudanese australian model actress and artist awang chole awang is modeled for some of the world's biggest brands and i'm very jealous but she's worked with the likes of rihanna and wait for it beyonce the queen herself awang welcome to life

on card hi good morning guys thanks for coming into studio in person we start every episode the same yes we ask what's your most embarrassing okay guys an accidentally unfiltered story but you know you've lived a beautiful and colorful life i'm wondering what's happened i've had a lot of fucking embarrassing stories honestly like i was thinking about it on my way here i'm like what the hell do i tell them that's good when you've got many to choose from yeah but my main one i would say it's like i it's a habit it's a bad habit right now it's embarrassing every time i do it but i book flights for the wrong like year i know it's so bad like in 2027 no literally like last year it was december and i was booking a flight i think i was booking a

flight to paris and i was booking it for like a week of like the next week like let's say the 10th or the 12th of december and i ended up booked for the december 2023 instead of 2022 and then the other day when i was coming from la and i was booking a flight because i had a transitioning flight from sydney to melbourne because i had a wedding this weekend i booked it for the 31st of august instead of the 5th of august so when i got to the airport and i'm like hey just checking in and they're like yeah your flight is the 31st of august you're checking in three weeks early they're like you're a little too early i'm like i have to be in melbourne now for a wedding so let's let's figure that out i'm not very understanding yeah i'm not very

understanding buy another one and i had just yeah bought another one because i'm like i just came from la it was a 17 hour flight i'm tired i just need to get to melbourne asap and she was a very nice lady but it was like 8 a.m in the morning so i'm like you can only be so nice at 8 a.m in the morning if somebody comes in and says their flight is three weeks from now but that's embarrassing i'd say i mean more so with that it's one of those things where you're like should i be learning the lesson the second time around i'm not learning it but the thing is also being a model i have travel agents all the time so when they ask me to be like oh yeah it's only like you can't make a mistake you can't fuck that up i fuck it up what she's saying is i don't often do

these things for myself and now i'm out of my comfort zone i've actually done that far too many times it's just embarrassing when I even when I first started modeling and I had to go to Paris I booked my own flight and I got to the airport and then for the next year and I was like okay I'm like 19 I should be knowing this shit you know. Aweng you grew up in Kenya yeah can you tell us a little bit about what was life like like in terms of your upbringing in Kenya yeah and then what was the catalyst that made you move to Australia family move here? I was born in Kenya I was born in a refugee camp called Kakuma which the United Nations are trying to like get rid of it please don't but i was born in a refugee camp kakuma between sudan kenya uganda it's like a

no man's land kind of thing like it literally translates like no man's land in swahili and i was born there 1998 october and then when i was seven years old my grandfather was part of the ministry he's a pastor and he basically got the united nations to get him like uh because the war had broken out and he was like i need my family to be sponsored as part of the church or whatever and we got sponsored by the iom the international organization that deals like refugees and I mean I was a kid so I really didn't know why we were getting removed I mean I knew there was war going on but I was like is it really affecting us like that it was and yeah I just came to Australia at seven I was 2006 and have been Australian ever since and it was very interesting

it's funny you say I knew there was a war going on but I didn't and it was affecting us but it wasn't what was life like that I don't know if you remember because you were only seven but do you remember like visually seeing any of the repercussions of the war or is it just something you like i know that's going on over the way no like we had to move so basically the way the camp is set up it's not actual houses like more huts and sometimes it could have like brick houses and there'll be very like low ground in case you know horses have to run through or like animals have to run through because running from like the crossfire of everything but i do remember i do remember having to move from hut to hut so like we would move closer to the border of kenya because the

united nations would be closer there for safety reasons yeah but i do remember like every month would get like a transportation of like rice like big rice packets to eat for the month by the United Nations like there'll be planes just landing and it would just take out rice and like grains and everything and it's like as a seven-year-old you're just like it's going on but I have great memory like I remember almost everything my dad was part of the war too he was a soldier so he's a child soldier himself and he'd come home like every few months and he'd come home with like big packets of like honey and it's like where were you I was at a war I'm like oh okay were your family really open with you about what is happening why you're moving where your dad is like your dad

is yeah yeah it's like almost my therapist and I talk about it sometimes where it's like they probably should have sheltered us a little bit more like it was like but I guess there was no therapist to talk to so all they could really do is dump onto each other and sometimes it would leak onto the kids but I knew everything that was going on day to day my mother would just she had me at 15 so like she was also like I'm a child and that's what I just saw there and but there was a lot that was going on I think my mother was explaining to me stories before I was born or like how she was in a car and it was like trying to cross through Uganda and it got shot up and she's the one who survived and I'm like that's scary and then my grandfather would like tell

stories about how he walked to Ethiopia and I'm like why are you walking to Ethiopia but to escape the war or like track his kids and a lot of my uncles we didn't know they were alive until I turned 14 because the war separated everyone so we came to Australia some went to Canada some went to america and we did not know because the sponsoring would be from united nations from iom from different agencies red cross you never know and my grandfather lived like a good 10 15 years not knowing where his siblings were for a long time yeah until the world of facebook came about what about for you for the family that came here to australia who was that comprised of it was my grandfather my grandmother there are nine children including my mother my mother and my

five siblings and then I had a few aunties and uncles a few family members there and they were like you know distant but that was the core it's like three families and do you feel like your family only got out because your grandfather was a pastor yeah and that gave you a leg up yeah again I think the religion definitely gave us a big the church gave us a big leg up but I mean the United Nations at some point went and just grabbed kids that were young with families and said let's just go you know because it'll get them out so there was a big spur of that and And then Australia had opened its borders because we were underpopulated at some point. And what about your dad?

So your dad stayed behind. He stayed, yeah. Him and I had big issues when I was growing up. I was a very angry teenager. I was on Skype screaming at him because I'm like, why would you stay? He was very patriotic and he was a child soldier. So this means like he was scouted to be, not scouted, he was chosen and forced to be into war at like 13, 12 or anything like that. So that's all he ever knew.

So when we were born, he wasn't ready for what was on this side of the world. He didn't believe it, that it would be better. And he was just like, I owe my life to this country. And I was just like, no, you don't. So you felt like as a teenager, you're like, you had a choice between us and being patriotic. And he chose patriotism, basically, is what I believed as a kid. And as I got older, he tried to explain to me.

I'm like, I still don't understand. And even to this day, I still don't understand because I know some of my cousin's fathers hopped on the plane. So I was like, that doesn't make sense. You could have just came and healed here, if anything. but I guess there's a bit of grief when all you've known is that and then you know a total and also I mean as you've gotten older and I guess the beauty of retrospect and hindsight and when you become an adult yourself and then you think well I'm you know 24 25 and then you reflect on the

age that your parents are when they're making such big life decisions you can often have a bit more grace for them because I have a lot of grace my mother when she was 24 she had what five six kids hell no how many siblings you have now 12 11 i'm the first of 12 yeah oh you're the oldest i'm the oldest yeah well then what's i mean what's that like do you feel like there's a part of responsibility that has ended up falling on to you oh yeah 100 and my mother does not deny it we spoke yesterday and she said to me like yeah i mean sorry like but she was a kid too yeah my mother had me at 15 and by the age of 24 she had six kids already she had half of her children by 24 and by 31 she had all of us so i'm like between 24 and 31 it's not a big gap for you to have six

more kids you know and it's almost like i think about what my 20s are like and the 20s is when you make mistakes it's when you can be selfish it's when you can kind of make so many little fuck-ups into your life because it doesn't affect other people it's all about a time for your own personal growth but when you become a mom so young you don't get the same you're not allowed the same grace mistakes or anything because all of those mistakes impact the kids they impact everyone exactly so you're kind of growing and learning the lessons at the same time that you're expected to be a parent yeah i mean i definitely feel like it took me a long time to forgive my mother i think until like a year ago i was still such an angry at my mother because it was like you know obviously

generational traumas generational patterns where refugees are ready i'm a black queer woman like what do you mean my childhood was also terrible you know but my mother she's apologized in her own weight i'll say that but i mean i'm 24 right now i have no pets and i could not imagine raising six fucking kids to be honest oh i was just thinking in my head i'm about to turn 36 as we're just discussing and i say to laura all the time i'm like i don't know if i know how to have a child i don't know if i have the responsibility and i'm 36 and your mom had 12 by 34 she had 12 do you think when you're the child of such a big family when there's so many siblings do you think that not to say that there's not enough love to go around there's not enough love there's not

enough attention to go around yeah i would say there's not enough love too i would say not enough love controversial but definitely you can't spread because love is not whatever you should say when i was younger i used to say that love is not enough like love is not enough you know and i feel like a love is it encompasses attention encompasses quality and there's a level of attention you need to give me for me to be like you love me you know and i feel like being the first born i was kind of dismissed a lot yeah my mother was very much on okay well i'm breastfeeding Since I'm breastfeeding, go figure out what you got to do. You know, even in high school, I feel like I had to get through high school with just

self-discipline because I'd come home anytime. No one cared. No one cared what grades I was getting. No one cared whether I go to extracurricular activities. No one cared. And I was just like, OK, like no one cares for that. So we got to help mom raise the other kids so they feel like they have care. It's almost like when you're surviving yourself, you can't give the attention to all the finer

things, the things that are so important to you because you're in survival mode for everybody else. Exactly. When you came to Australia, so you were seven years old. Yes. How long did it take you to learn the language, to adapt to being at school? Like, what was that period of your life like?

My grandfather's a Capricorn, if anyone cares about star signs. Okay, so, spoiler, Aweng is a big, I'm a big astrologist. I believe in astrology, like, definitely, basically. But my grandfather, he was a very hard person. And even now as I got older, I realised, like, he had to be. He had to be very strict and very hard because he didn't, And he just put his grandchildren on a flight, like almost 24-hour flight to a random country that he hadn't been to himself. And he has to just adapt and pretend he knows what's going on, you know.

So we were all in my grandfather's home in Yaguna, western Sydney. And it was a big six-bedroom, three-bathroom house. He had a huge backyard. And he had like 13 kids in the house, basically. My mom had six kids and then his kids. It was a lot going on in that house. And my grandmother and her sister and him. And it was just three adults trying to raise children and grandchildren at the same time.

So when we arrived, we arrived in the spring of 2006. So the summer holidays were starting. So the December six week holiday was starting. So my grandfather sat us down and he said, you guys got six weeks to learn this language. And we were in the garage every day for like four to six hours. Just like watching and like being immersed in like the English language. They stopped speaking to us in our other languages like Swahili and Arabic. they just stopped they're just like nope you're gonna speak one main native language english i'm

gonna learn it and before the semester started i knew a bit of english to get through school obviously you cannot learn a full language in goddamn six weeks it's almost impossible you know but well how were they teaching it could your grandfather speak anything no he just he made friends with the neighbors and then he made friends with the church nearby obviously he's a pastor so he just dressed up and like went to the church and said i'm part of the same world kind of thing and he made good friends with a few english-speaking but when you land to the australian government gives you contacts for language obviously like english is free to learn as an immigrant in australia like if anyone does not know that which is amazing it's amazing i love

that about australia for that reason but yeah we just had to adapt you have to adapt and if you don't you know can we just go back one second because this is bothering me something you said at the start you said they're really trying to get rid of the refugee camp yes they are yes so The funding, the funding, the countries have, it's a whole thing. It's been happening for five years now. The countries keep going back and forth. Kenya, I think they want their land back, I guess. Uganda government, the Sudanese government, the Egyptian government.

There's no attention to the funding anymore. And the United Nations are trying to figure out what to do with that. Well, how important do you, as somebody that, you know, lived in that camp, how important to you is it that this figures itself out? Yeah, it has to figure itself out. It's a camp that raised five to 10 million people, you know, And it's like 2 million people escaped from Sudan itself and died on the way to the camp or from the camp, you know. So I feel like refugee camps that are protected by the United Nations are very important because most countries are not going to open their borders to refugees.

So with that being said, like, how do you then cancel out the only other option, which is like the United Nations, which is an entity that has no governing by itself, says, OK, no more of this camp. And the camp has 10 million people who have survived through it. and it's still home to like five more people right now. I have family still in there. I have cousins still in there. I have aunties still in there. So it was just very emotional because it's like, where do they go once you guys say we're out?

Because once you know they should say they're out, there's no grounds for protection from anybody else, you know? Do you feel a level of guilt when you think that you still have family members there that couldn't get out? Yeah, I feel guilty. I feel guilty. When I went to Sudan and Kenya this year, earlier this year to see my great-grandfather,

I ended up visiting. I was about to visit the camp, but I ended up being in Nairobi be for like two nights and I had to go to New York for something and my auntie was like next time you come back you have to go to the camp and I'm just like I feel kind of guilty for hesitating it's just like I'm trying to protect my own mental space of course um but you know also the guilt of family is actually there people my age people that were born the same time as me that couldn't leave the same time as me out there and I just couldn't imagine being 24 right now in that camp I just can't without having that period of another life yeah exactly you mentioned

that when you came to australia that your family were very much like okay we're not going to speak in our native tongue we're going to learn english assimilation yeah and did you feel that you were able to hold on to your cultural ties or did you really feel that there was this kind of like line in the sand we're going to be australian yeah i mean i think we i used to speak what four to five languages when i first arrived in australia now i speak i understand three but i speak two fluently and english one of them and i feel anger at times my parents and my grandparents for forcing this new culture the australian culture which i love onto us so heavily that they thought we had to completely delete a bunch of our identity like a huge part of our identity but i

think there was a line in the sand saying hey we're gonna still eat the culture food and there was a rule in the house where we ate the culture food in the house but once we go outside like at school and everything recess and lunch we're going to the canteen and we're getting the australian food or the aussie food like meat pie meat pie sultanas you know like the aussie aussie food and i just was so confused as a kid because it was like on one end i walked through the door and i have to speak my native language dinka and then as soon as i walk out i gotta speak english for only to keep the balance going i guess duality but they had no choice i've just i've forgiven my grandparents and my parents because i'm just like honestly you guys did better than i would

have and they were i guess it's it's what they were trying to do which is give you a better life and maybe they made some wrong decisions but ultimately there it sounds like all they wanted was to get you out and give you an opportunity yeah and they also was trying to think of like the bigger picture you know they're like you guys are not they would they really thought we were never going to go back home because the war they're like your home is not going to be ready for a while so since that's the case how about we just make something of what we have now and what we see that could be good and then if we do end up going back home we'll teach the language you know because they haven't forgotten the language my mother still speaks other languages because

i guess trauma is different to different people you when you came here and you were kind of like thrust into working pretty young you know and I guess that that's kind of the byproduct of being one of so many siblings right you have to help to contribute to the family and it also is part of a very instrumental way into how you got into your career now yes you were working at Lidcombe at the time yes I was I've had many jobs it's crazy but I started working at Lidcombe at what 14 and nine months is when you could start yeah but I'm sure I started at 14 in like seven months i'm sure just like 14 or 7 months i started working at lincoln mcdonald's and i was working there until i turned what when i got discovered 18 maybe 18 and a half but in the middle of that

i also worked at nando's in auburn i also worked at kfc and hungry jacks in chester hill working everywhere just working everywhere i was just like a fast food tart no i'm gonna get to the other one and i was vegetarian during that time so that is the most ironic it's like the most ironic thing as I was a vegetarian for like 10 years of my life. Hang on. Were you a vegetarian because you worked at these places? No, I was a vegetarian because I woke up one day and I think Zendaya Coleman had said on Shake It Up,

when she used to be on Disney, that she became a vegetarian because she saw a cow and she just felt so emotionally like, you know. And I was like, oh, I want to be like her. And I just stopped eating meat. Talk about influence. No, I get influenced. Think for yourself, Aweng. Honestly, think for yourself.

But I was a vegetarian for like throughout my whole high school, like from 6th grade to like 12th grade I was a vegetarian it was crazy but yeah I worked at McDonald's in Lickham and I got discovered

there at 18 it was just like dysmorphic because it's like why are you coming to McDonald's to like scout people how did that happen

was it just incidental it was incidental I was just working and then this lady just kept staring at me and I'm like girl do you want your order or not

because I have to go and I had a shift in Chester Hill so from Lickham to Chester Hill you're taking the Lippington train to Bankstown ways

and I'm like I have to go I have to clock out now and she was just like you're so pretty like have you thought about modeling i'm like no like i have not thought about mcdonald's mcdonald's i'm about to finish high school i am tired like i just want to leave here and she's just like well a friend of mine owns an agency in melbourne do you want to come in for a test shoot in my studio here in newtown and i was like sure whatever she gave me her card

and went to the studio did a test shoot the next day flew to melbourne that's the first mistake i made on like my date and then I went and I did a test sheet and then they sent it to Paris some agencies in Paris and I got signed to Metropolitan in Paris and then I flew to Paris maybe two weeks later and it was so confusing because like I said my family refugees and immigrants and new to Australia it was just like telling my parents oh I'm going to Paris they were just like how no you're not no my mother was like no you're not I'm like yes I am I don't know if it works in other families but in our family like my mother always has your papers like your legal papers your citizenship all of that she always has them so she had an upper hand on like stopping me from going to

Paris and I was like I need to get my passport I even think like as a mom myself if my 14 year old came to me and said I met some person at McDonald's and I'm going to Paris but at that point I was like 18 okay right so so you said pass so in that period then when you came home and you you had been scattered and you had started flirting with the idea of doing modeling what was your family's reaction to that no really that's it no but for what reason because my mother had this i mean i'm gonna my mother's name is mary which is such a generic name anyways but mary she believed that i should have been a news anchor oh that's what she wanted no for real that was all or nothing guys for her it was like i want you to be a news anchor i like

the sound of your voice you speak english perfectly just slow down a little bit and become a news anchor and i've got into une law school in armadale at like 17 so i'm like i've got accepted into law like i'm going to une in armadale for a bachelor's of freaking law like i'm not about to be a news anchor i'm not it's so interesting that she had such a clear vision yeah but i think she's like she wants to live vicariously through me i think that's what she really wanted for herself because she has the personality to do that so i'm like i think this is what you want for yourself she said no so when I started floating with the idea of being a model she was just so mad she was really angry at me and I was like why are you angry at me for wanting to be a model and I want to go to

Paris none of our families have ever been to Paris was there ever a part of you that did think this can't be real some psycho is going to be waiting in Paris take me like the beauty taken and then never be seen again I mean it's just like you know growing up in Lakeham and girl going to like open girls high school I'll take the risk I'll say no that was literally what I was I I was like, how bad can it? Like, it was one of those things where I was like, honey, you just, you're also a former refugee. So, like, you take some risk factors, you know.

Your grandfather took the risk of putting you guys on a plane, and there could have been somebody on the other side anyways. So, I was always a risk taker, and I had to go to my grandfather's home and, like, convince him to tell my mom to give me my papers, like, and my passport, because time was ticking out. And the option, apparently, I remember correctly, I had also an Easton Laurent campaign option with Mario Sorrenti, and I'm like, Mario Sorrenti is a huge photographer. Like, I'm going to go to Paris, come hellfire.

And I went to my grandparents' home, and I was crying to them. And I was like, I have two weeks to get a passport. I need my birth certificate. And also, obviously, being a refugee, I had no idea at the time that I didn't have a birth certificate. I didn't have a birth certificate because they only gave, like, paper, like, yellow cards when you were born there. And I said to my grandfather, so now what? And he said, well, you just have to go to the government and X, Y, Z. So now I'm 18, freshly out of high school, a year into university, fighting my parents for, one, to get a passport.

and then two to actually find my birth certificate if it exists and it was a whole ordeal my grandfather went to my grandma's home got the papers for me went to the passport office with me helped me get my passport got it and my mother was like you're not going to paris i'm okay well i'm going to my best friend's house to sleep over for two weeks and i'll be back i ended up in paris i didn't care isn't it funny because you must have just had a pool where you're like i know that this is an opportunity it was just like also what are you gonna do like i feel like when you have a vision do it honestly it is what it is i just think like something that you you said that about not having a birth certificate it's like something that we all would just take

for granted something that you know and i guess in that moment it would throw you back i was triggered because they give you like a b15 form to sign wherever you have to explain why you don't have a birth certificate and i was just like the person who's going to get this paper the password office is probably going to cry you know like i would cry if i got a paper of like an 18 year old explaining they never had a birth certificate because of xyz being a refugee but for me i'm such a realist it's like this is my life and you can't make me feel guilty for something i had no control over you know totally i don't want to scoot over something you just said too because it's incredible you just did a throwaway comment where you were like you know i was 17 and i was

working five fast food jobs and i had 11 kids younger than i was looking after and i got into law school yeah oh yes i did that's actually incredible thank you and the fact that you i mean english was your second language you definitely didn't have a head start in your education no i didn't i had to do esl for like what a few years in primary school yeah i had to do that i think seventh grade when i finished esl because they were just like okay now you're good and i wanted to do advanced english so bad and i knew that you could do advanced english only if you were really really good in english and i was like okay now i gotta read the dictionary that's what i gotta do now and i thought i didn't finish it but everyone should read it sometimes

but i also think in that you know you mentioned that your family weren't able to be the ones to drive you like as in to keep you accountable because they're so busy taking care of so many other children but to know that you had the ability to keep yourself accountable that you were still able to achieve those things i'll always give myself credit for the self-discipline i have i had and i have because when i look at my siblings sometimes i'm like you guys really have it really lucky like you guys have a sibling that's older that's willing to like take the l's for you you know the lessons for you and be like okay well you made this mistake you went to schoolies and you got too fucked up it's okay you know if i went to school and got too fucked up

I couldn't even tell my parents you know I couldn't even I couldn't call my mother saying oh yeah I'm drunk at school he's like that wouldn't have been a thing my age and I just feel like the protection that I have for myself now comes from the fact that I didn't have it as a child and as a teenager and it's just you have I had to find my footing and yeah got it well speaking I'm doing good speaking of finding your footing and just to add something else into the throes of your teenage years yes it was in your teenage years that you realized you were attracted to women yes I was what 13 14 when I first realized do you have a comprehension of what that was and what that meant i mean i still didn't legalize gay marriage till 2019 right and

i was married by that point in 2019 so for me when i was a kid it was just i wouldn't i couldn't tell my parents because one my grandfather pastor so that's the first thing two religion was such a big thing in my family that it was like i already knew from going to church and from being smothered in homophobia in my community that this is never going to be a conversation right so i just kind of kept in my circle of friends until i turned like 15 16 and i had enough what do i say balls to come in and just tell them like well this is what's happening and it is what it is kind of thing and i remember my mother found out not through me directly like i had a photo you know when you go to the movies as your partner like when you're a teenager you take photos in the

booth the photo booth so i went to open cinemas with this girl i was dating in high school and we had photos of us just like being really close we weren't kissing or anything like that but you could tell that they were probably dating you know and i had left it on my drawer in my room And my mother had a habit of cleaning my room for me. But I always told her not to go in my closet because my closet was always organized. There was no reason for you to go through my closet. Just kind of like clean my bed if you want to. Vacuum, it doesn't matter.

And I came back and that photo was gone. And I didn't find out for like two weeks where that photo went. I was like in my head, like maybe I'll put it somewhere. She had it. She had it. And that's just it. And then she approached me one day because I had done something. Maybe I was past curfew or something.

And she goes, you know, I'm tired of you breaking curfew. And I'm like, I'm sorry. then she goes by the way I also found this in your room and it was just one of those things

where I was like privacy let's start there I told you not to go in the cupboard mom this is not a me problem this is a you problem no I literally

try to like gaslight her don't gaslight people guys but I was like Mary you should not have been in my room in the first place but two

what's the problem you know at that point it was one of those things where I was like I have to stand on this is what's happening and it is what it is

she came around to it eventually kind of fought it for a while my grandfather's who I feared knowing because obviously being the pastor and being the prominent male figure in my family I was like oh there's always a level of like disappointment love he had for me like he's

like my grandkid my first grandchild you're gonna be an amazing kid you're so smart you're so intelligent he always put me in such a high pedestal I was so worried about disappointing him that when he found out because my mother called him and then he came over and sat me down and I was like yeah I guess I'm gonna hell like it was one of those things where I just at that point I was just so depleted and he was like no you're not gonna hell and he just went quiet he never commented on again my grandmother never commented on it but the community I mean for me I've always been the black sheep of a lot of situations in my community anyway so when they started attacking me I was just like what can one do you know kind of what can one do I'm happy

do you think your grandfather's reaction was softer than you expected it definitely because I guess sometimes your imagination is worse than reality so when he was so quiet about it I was like oh I thought it would be worse like I really thought it would be worse but my mother kind of took that boat so it's okay when you just said that's when they started attacking me you mean your community yeah what happened with that so when I first started dating I started dating properly like 16 17 and then obviously I got married at 21 so nothing really has happened between 16 and 20 like they knew I was dating I had a long-term girlfriend from like 16 and a half to like 19 and the community knew that I had a girlfriend they knew she was from the community

but no one really ever outrightly commented at me or came at me but they went to my mother so they would see her at the store like oh yeah you know your daughter's doing this you know our community is very tight-knit you know you gotta understand like we make up like 0.0 x 0.1 percent of the eastern population so like we all know each other what's going on everything and obviously at that point i was being a model like i had just got scouted i had gone to paris once maybe came back and they just were like attacking my mother on the way she raised me maybe it's the way she was raised me maybe she was i didn't get enough love at home which was true but that's not it it's not that is not the essence of why and then when i finally got married

and I got married in New York City which was not I wasn't even in Australia so it was like what's your business in my business I got married in New York City and then

they just started attacking me online calling me the government in the South Sudan started contacting my mother the government I know what talk about God complex

because it made it made headlines over there over there and there was such a disrespect to them a disrespect to my father he was a soldier

remember he was a head of the army at some point in his life he was a very respected man you know like and I was like i'm not my father i'm sorry guys like i'm congrats to him for all everything he has done and everything he's he's done for the world but i'm not him but fancy the government imagine the government

reaching out to you specifically they reached out to my mother specifically because i kind of turned off my phone at some point i was like i'm shooting a music video for black brown skin girl i have no time for you guys right now honestly i'm too busy and then they contacted my mother saying what a disrespect it is to my father my father would have lost his mind he was a patriot he was a patriot He didn't care about my sexuality. And it just got so bad to the point where I had to just turn off my phone. And it kind of sent me to a mental psychosis because it was just like, why do you guys care now? Because when things were happening at home that should have been dealt with, no one was dealing with it.

When things were happening in the community that should have been dealt with, I think there's a bigger issue in the community than my sexuality. Also, there's a war going on. How about you look at that? There's famine. There's child soldiers. My father's a good example of that. Child soldiers, my grandfather, my uncles. We have lost boys.

There's a group of boys who went missing, literally went missing. like thousands of boys just went missing from Sudan and I was just sat there and I was just to my mother like why would you even tell me this

like she said yeah well they've been blowing up my phone for days now and I'm like well I'm turning off my phone so you should turn off your phone

and snap your sim card so how did you deal with that at a time when you should have been happy yeah and also COVID

had just started at that point so I got married on like December 12th 2019 COVID hit headlines like 18th of December and then I showed

legalized gay marriage on the 19th or 20th the 20th of December, 2019. It was just so mind-blowing to me, mind-boggling, because at this point, the world is shutting down now. So why are we worried about Lil Wayne? And I would say Lil Wayne,

because when it comes to the whole entity of the world, one little dice, you know? But I guess they needed to do something. And they even printed newspapers of my marriage in South Sudan. And I was like, what news station is releasing this right now? And it was just, I guess they needed something to fall back on, and I was a scapegoat. How did you deal with that?

I didn't. To be honest, I didn't. I just shut down. My mental went into a spiral. I felt so bad for my partner at the time. I felt so bad for my friends because it was just like, you just couldn't get through to me. I was just so disorientated because how dare you?

That's what really made me angry. I was more angry than anything because how dare you? The audacity of it all was just the problem. And then the homophobia was at an all-time high. I was like, we have famine. And, you know, I went to law school, so I knew that legal repercussions that are happening in the country. I read the Bill of Rights of South Sudan,

so I know what should be happening and what's actually happening yeah and I was just so angry at the government I was like what is going on with these people like we have actual problems like the government has not changed in years we basically have a bloody what do you call it standing right now what's going on with you guys and it was just a lot but it's one of those things where it's almost easier to deal with the deflection of it oh they're deflected yeah it creates other news to kind of focus on I know it's famine but this girl's gay yeah but I think that you've no for real and maybe partly it's because you'd been put up on this pedestal this success story that's what i really when i finally got out of my own internal anger i realized they're just deflecting because

they put me at such a high because of my father then because of my grandfather and because of my parents and all these people in the community that i've seen as families who have been so respected who are with the start of life xyz spiritual things all of that tribal things whatever and they just thought that i'd be the perfect role model and the perfect role model should not be gay is how they basically plastered it and then like people in the government would literally message me on facebook or send me emails saying this is so bad and so embarrassing so who wears the pants in a relationship like it was so bad like no one can understand how bad it was like i think i end up breaking my phone at some point i was just like i can't do it anymore what happens now again

excuse my ignorance but what are the actual laws in Sudan so if you go back now knowing it's out that you are I went back I went back in January because my great-grandfather was passing and I had to go back because I'm like you guys are not going to stop me but really I think now it's old news because I did go through a divorce so they think because I'm divorced I'm no longer gay straight now yeah which again ignorance is bliss to a degree you know it is what it is if you guys really believe that and it keeps me safe then it is what it is and once I get married again I'm not coming home after that

you know kind of thing and if I do come home hopefully it is legalized like in South Sudan they don't have the death penalty but there's definitely some kind of like repercussions of being

openly gay I mean I'm sure what percentage there's definitely gay from the community of course there's a high number of that but I just think

the country's so behind right now that no one is coming out of the closet and I always tell young girls back home do not come out until it's safe

and it's not safe right now and I'll tell you that myself right now you know because I'm in a position where I'm an Australian citizen So you really can't do anything directly to me.

And I don't live back home. I don't have any ties back home except family. So I could really leave whenever I feel like my safety is at risk. But there's kids there that are being raised there that don't have the same leisure and the same control, the same power, per se. But can also see how other people are living and probably think, well, I want to have that disability. You got married and then it was COVID. and then you were dealing with this like controversy that was playing out so publicly it was a mess how did that because like surely that has long-term impacts on your relationship

yeah i mean me and my ex we do we have communicated to like uh multiple degrees of what really happened in the marriage you know i feel like divorce i don't wish it up on my worst enemy it's one of the worst things in the world but if it has to happen do it honestly for your mental space but we were so young i was what 21 she was 23 we met maybe 10 months before we got married like not met again as friends no we met for the first time in life very quick it was very fast uh lesbian timing it's a thing fast forward by the third month why don't we have a dog together that doesn't make sense uh but yeah we met in january of that year and then by december of that year we were married and there was like a two months off block because i had fashion week

in europe so i had gone so we knew each other for like about 10 months and covid really impacted communication I think COVID got like I remember reading the statics I'm a nerd so it was a statistics of a divorce went up by 85 percent during COVID and I was one of those numbers basically but communication became really warped we were stuck in the same house and you kind of married a stranger so you met 10 months before you got married and then you get married and then the world shuts down and then your partner is in this international controversy where people are contacting you too from her country her native country basically yelling at you about why would you marry a woman too but you are american you have no business of homophobia in the sense of

like it's being legalized in america for so many years you know in the red state you know kind of thing it just impacted our communication and it just impacted our honeymoon phase so we didn't get to enjoy much because we didn't get to go out because of covid we didn't get to go on dates go on flights so we try to make it work for a long long time maybe a year of our relationship of covid we were just like all right let's go to la then and just get a house on la in la and just like chill for a week let's go to London let's move to London for a bit and it's just we were so young and communication was so bad and I definitely will sit here and say that I never had a good example of what love should look like like a really healthy example so if you're not

climbing on top of Mount Everest for me I don't know what you're doing kind of things where I was at and it was just like very warped sense of what love should be and then having being locked in a house together and it's like we're not communicating here we're not doing well here let's just separate for a while and then with that separation came divorce because we also realized let's get to know each other outside of this permitters of a paper making us feel like we're married but we're on good terms we're good we're chilling we're just yeah no always respect because once you marry someone you always have a level of respect for them totally it's just like that circumstances were terrible did you ever feel like i mean because obviously you're so young going through

a marriage so young and then going through a divorce so young did you ever feel like there's any stigma around getting divorced oh there is especially now my mother and my grandparents in the community that hated me being married were like make it work yeah right now you're queer and they're like she's a fucking struggle honestly she's a fucking struggle no literally there was such a high i remember calling one of my good aunties about it and i was like we're thinking of separating because we're just not seeing eye to eye and it just we don't want to like leak onto each other and we don't want to traumatize each other more than what has happened thus far and she was like make it work like get bigger flowers and do this and make the apologies

bigger and this and this and this and i'm just like no the fundamental problem here we don't know each other yeah we can't get to know each other in these circumstances where the world is at right now and where we're at individually you know kind of thing we also had just started therapy maybe months before we met so it's like we also just started therapy in our own individualism and it just felt like we were trying to warp each other into each other because what we see marriage as and what society has painted marriage as is people who think for themselves and when you can't think for the other person when you're 21 and 23 you're not I don't want to think about somebody else at 21 and 23 doesn't that's not I'm learning myself I'm just going to therapy and all

of this but my community was so anti-divorce but I just I always say this it's better not to burn bridges it's better to leave things unscathed and just be like on good terms than to burn a bridge and I felt like if we kept the relationship going we would have really hurt each other a lot more and we would have hated each other and I just didn't never want to hate somebody that I loved so much that I was willing to marry in front of the world like that's just not something I'd you know and there was true love there like proper you know I have heard you speak before about checking yourself into a mental health facility do you mind telling us a little bit about that Because I think it's really important how much,

when I heard you talk about it, how much ownership you took that I actually need to go and get help for myself. Yeah, I'm a queen of if it's hard, I'm out. Like I'm not about to pretend that I'm not struggling. I'm not about to perform. Like I'm going to check myself in because the resources are there, thank God, and the world is not going to drown me. And I feel like the era where I checked myself in was the same time

that my community was attacking me for being gay. so forget the divorce now this is me prior to the divorce and I just didn't know what to do like my hands were against the wall it was COVID my marriage was still in kind of honeymoon phase but we're still trying to get to know each other and I just didn't know how to communicate to my partner that there's more going on with me mentally and emotionally than our current our relationship I feel like my father had passed a few years before and it didn't hit me until COVID happened where I really had to sit down and be like what has happened in my life like because in covid you have to just have solitude that's what you really had when you have solitude a lot

of things come up and a lot of things started coming up and i just started getting more angry and really disappointed in my parents and my grandparents people who were supposed to help raise me and how they handle a lot of things and i just kind of like was like okay well check yourself in trigger warning i had attempted and i just was like okay i have to check myself in now because there's nothing else i can do and i took myself in for a few days and it was good it was life-saving because I needed it I really needed a wake-up call of having a wank's back you know and it just really I came back out as a stronger woman in a sense of well now you know the resource of checking yourself in and being out of the world and being not part of this whole mess and

the movement the sound is an option did you understand at this time or is it something that kind of you've always had a clear kind of understanding of how intergenerational trauma had affected you or was it almost a moment where you were like oh like this has all built up over years yeah i think it was the it's the latter i think it was covid really made me go inwards a lot i'm not sure how many people i think a lot of people probably went inwards during covid because there's nothing else to do so i was writing a lot and i even wrote a thesis about epigenetics and how trauma goes through your dna and after that three months after that is when i ended up in the psych ward because i was rereading a lot of my writing and i was like oh that was not a me trauma

that was grandfather's trauma that came to me that was dad's trauma that came to me that was mom's trauma that came to me and your dna gets impacted by trauma and especially when you have parents and grandparents who don't want to go to therapy because they don't believe that therapy helps they don't believe that things have affected them because it's better to just pretend it didn't it was just like okay so now i'm going to be the first generation of my family to go to therapy and not feel guilty about it and it was like oh look at that that you have the whole world on your shoulder it's a heavy weight to carry and it was just felt like a big rock on my shoulder that i had to carry and i was just like bye there's probably a whole nother level too that you feel

like you're the one that has to break that cycle like you are the person that not only is carrying this and has gone through everything else but you're the one that has to say i'm gonna go against the grain and make the change yeah it also be the first born it's also even worse in our community like first born daughters i'm not sure you guys have heard the saying african daughters go through the worst african first born daughters go through the worst because our mothers want to live by through us our fathers either hate us or admire us because we remind them of their mother and it's the pressure is just always always there and i just i was just like you know what let's break something the mental problems you know did you tell anyone in your family when you said you

attempted did you tell anyone in your family or your wife or did you just say i'm going to deal with this myself and go to this clinic no my wife had to she was my next of kin so she was the one who was like i agree if you want to because i was high as fuck off my ass i was high as hell in the hospital and they were like to be like okay well uh do you want to check yourself yep and they called her because she had to also consent and she was like yeah okay i obviously just hurt a lot but you know she kind of had to like be the strong one which respects honestly and she waited a few days for tell my mother because my mother can be very dramatic and i mean it is a it's i feel like it's a reason to be dramatic but she also like will probably make it about herself kind of thing

and like where she failed and all of this and i was just like please don't tell her until i everything has left my system and i'm consciously aware enough to consent and say okay tell her so then my mother called told her like as expected she completely went AWOL and said like oh where did I fuck up where did I mess up what did I do and I'm like granted but okay and then sometimes here's the list mom but also it's not about you right now yeah so it was just a lot of that and like internalization but a few of my best friends knew my partner knew obviously at the time and yeah I mean everyone kind of didn't know what to do for a while I didn't know what to do for a while i came out and i'm like apples anyone like i was just like let's go on with life come on guys

nothing to see here but um i also learned during that period that you can't put things under the rug and that's i think that's always been my provocative in life and at that point is when i got to it of realizing that you cannot put things under the rug you're very good and i've noticed that even just in this interview you're very good at making light you have to you have to I thought the same thing. When things feel like they're going into a place that's difficult, you bring it out with lightness. Is this been something that you've always used as a coping mechanism?

Yeah, I think so. I think it's, for me, I've always, like, realized that, I mean, I feel like you go through things. You can't do anything about the through. So now you've been through it, right? So now you've been through it and you've healed or you're healing through it. I think it's important to realize that you're where you're at now and not where you were.

And that's why I feel like lightness has to come somewhere in that. But that time was very difficult. I'm not going to lie. That was a very difficult time. I don't wish that on my worst enemy ever. But I also feel like there has to be a level of strength for me to have gotten out of that. And since I'm strong enough to have gotten out of it, I definitely am strong enough to heal and handle it emotionally. I think you're definitely an inspiration and there's so much power in you.

It seems like you so easily say it, but you're like, yeah, I put my hand up. I was not in a good place and I couldn't do it alone and I needed help. And that's cool. There's no embarrassment around that. I don't have to do this shit alone. like they're resources no no you have to use your resources I feel like one thing that I hated by myself in my teen years is that I never asked for help I was just like the strong soldier all the time and I'm like when I turned like 19 I was like I'm tired of being fucking strong I'm sorry

well you probably felt like you didn't have anyone to help you and obviously you had this huge family but everyone had other responsibilities yeah all right let's talk about something a bit lighter and a good part of your life like fucking rihanna and beyonce like you have worked with some of the biggest people how does that happen and what was that experience like was it otherworldly it was so trippy i love rihanna obviously we love beyonce forever of course queen bee in case you're listening we love you give me tickets but yeah rihanna was amazing i remember i have this like spiritual incline when things are about to happen for me sometimes it's very trippy I was at a party in New York City, and that was the day after castings, right?

That was the day after the castings, and they were calling us, and my agent emailed me and said, hey, you have to go back to Savage Fenty for a fitting tomorrow. I'm like, okay, cool. Went to a fitting, and this is after the Vetements show, and Savage Fenty is going to be my second biggest show that I've done in my career thus far. And I went in for the fitting, did the fitting.

Rihanna was in there with her team, fitted, went home. Now two days till we'll get an answer as to whether you get the show or not. and i just started hearing her songs all around me like it was like on my phone like i just be randomly going to a car and she'll be playing the radio i'll go to the parties and she'll just be playing and the next morning i wake up and i get an email saying rihanna really really wants you she loves your look and then i go to my instagram and rihanna followed me and i was like well you like let me just check my schedule yes i'm free and then i did the show and it was amazing and she booked me for the campaign I did the campaign and then brown skin girl came along as I heard

word in the street that Beyonce was looking for brown skin girls for the brown skin girl music video and I literally just sat down and meditated I was like okay this has to happen and I get the call from my team saying you're going to LA to shoot brown skin girl Queen B is amazing I saw her recently at the show and I went to the Renaissance show in London I didn't see her personally but I watched the show it was amazing but it was just it's been so great to be so fortunate to like leave litcom australia and go to the world stages and also meet world star it's like phenomenal fucking people like laura and myself amazing no literally love y'all honestly this is the best morning of my life tiny little room is the career highlight what do you feel

though now i mean you've had so many career successes you are only on the up in terms of your career and like to think that you've gone yeah to being on the world stage do you feel like there is this responsibility to not fail not fail but also to take care of your family do you feel like you're still plugged in in a sense that like being the oldest daughter being that you've come from such a tight-knit community that there is a responsibility for them there is there is i was speaking to a friend recently a friend that's in a whole different world to me she comes from a middle-class family her parents are in hollywood they are hands-on they basically control half of hollywood and her and i were having lunch in los angeles recently and she was just telling me

complaining to me about her life and i was like valid i have a lot of friends from different parts and walks of life and everything is related you know like you could be born into a very successful family but everything is related you could have it harder than me emotionally god knows you know kind of thing hopefully not but god knows and i feel like i was expressing to her how you know no matter where i go in the world i'm always going to think of the 11 kids after me you know no matter where I go in the world I'm going to think about the 30 something year old mother that gave birth to me at 15 you know I'm always going to think about that and even not just thinking I'm always going to feel pulled to help out I'm always going to be pulled like if I'm

getting a phone call from family back in Africa back home in Kenya back home in Kakuma I'm going to feel the guilt of like okay well it's only this and it's only this and it's only this but only that also adds up my therapist and I have been working through on having proper boundaries of like guys i did not work this hard to just get to where i'm at and just stay here i'm gonna have to like put everything on hold for a bit while i really build myself to the point where helping you doesn't affect me mentally spiritually financially you know like it's gonna just be a thing that's a breeze because i've built myself but in the building i can't exploit myself and my kindness to this level because sometimes thank you doesn't happen when i love people you know

like we would forget expectations and it's like why are you expecting from a kid you haven't seen since she was seven like why are you

expecting that and why are you expecting from a kid who you know is trying to work through her generational traumas and her generational

patterns and all of that so it's been very hard but I definitely do feel like heavy heavy responsibility to always take my family with me it's like also being

a double Libra Taurus I know I know I giggle what a double Libra Taurus means I'm ruled by Venus so I'm such a lover and such a giver and then my love language is acts of service so then it's also like i definitely

would provide without thinking twice and sometimes it's got me into a lot of bullshit where it's like even i don't have it i'll make it happen and it's really bad but i'm so happy i have a team that's very tight-knit and making sure that i understand that i don't owe anyone anything you've spoken about it a couple of times you've mentioned your therapist yes therapy is important make a free government yeah this is what i was gonna say how important in terms of your healing yeah therapy is important road from where you were during covid to now yeah has that been it's been amazing i mean i find my therapist is every 11 months because after 11 months the human brain actually makes you a friend more than anything and i don't want my my therapist ever feel like we're friends you're

my therapist you know that's an interesting point yeah like i did psychological sciences for like a year like two years ago and it was fun i think therapy is very important it's helped me i think it's the reason i'm here to not be morbid but i think the reason that i'm alive is because i kind of just submitted into not being okay and knowing that healing is not linear and i cannot fix four generations of trauma in one life like that's quite literally almost impossible and i'm the kind of person i mean i have grandparents great-grandparents i have uncles i have aunties in high numbers so for me it's also like i have generational trauma and patterns all in front of me you know i see it i see how it's impacted i see how it could impact my children and i could

impact anybody that comes into my family anyone that marries into my family so why not start healing myself at least i could just kind of put something there but my therapist is amazing she got hired five months ago so she has a few more months to go she knows she knows she knows but it's so important to just talk like i think talking is very important it's very important to get out of your system i journal a lot i just i really like solitude i like jazz i like blues i like walking or like bike riding i feel like you have to have a sense of routine for yourself you know as much as i have a routine for the world and for my face and for my skin and for my body you also have to have a self a routine for a wang you know like a wang has to be able to say

hey laura i gotta go because i gotta go during for an hour and there should be space for that i have to provide space for myself if i provide space for anyone else it's interesting what you just said before where you were sitting down with your friend who's seemingly has it all of parents stone hollywood she's obviously got money she's probably has an amazing life and then to hear her complaining about her life when you know what you've been through yeah but we know that it people's problems yeah it is it's relative and it's relative but have self-awareness but this is what i was gonna say it must be really frustrating for you to sit there and be like you have no idea but then you have to also think she doesn't have any idea in her life this is the

worst thing and there's got to be a part of you that's i guess sympathetic to that but do you ever say hey look look at what i've been through i had a friend i was in london and i was about to miss my flight i had to go to i think i had to go to paris or spain or something and i had a flight and i lived at tournaments from hito but i had this habit not anymore but i had this habit where i would pack the morning off now i packed three days beforehand okay or a day or two if i get enough heads up and i was packing and i was on the phone with him and he was like why are you rushing just tell him to just stop the plane and i was like stop the plane he said yeah just stop I'm like, hey, I want to call you back.

I hung up, finished packing, get in my Uber, get to the airport. And I'm like, I called him when I checked in and everything. I'm like, I'm going to heat through a terminal too. He's like, oh, honey, I've never flown commercial. I only fly private. So I'm like, sorry, that sounded so ignorant. I'm like, it was ignorant. That was the first time I ever like actually outrightly told any of my friends

and thing that how you perceive life is not really how it is. I don't have a private plane with a private jet that I can call and say, no, just tell the pilot I'm running late. So please stop the plane. like how do you stop a whole plane and for me even if i was in that position like time is important and why would i make the pilot delay there's so much there's a system here you know the atc the aviation like there's a lot of people you're pushing back the minute you push it back i think it's so interesting talking to you because i have almost the opposite feeling to that when we talk

about how it is relative to every person yeah it is relative to every person but i don't necessarily think that that makes it valid do you know what i mean and i think that sometimes in no way does that make it valid we live in such a cushioned world now in terms of like social media has told us that everyone's feelings are valid you have feelings it doesn't mean that they're all valid and also the system has always generationally helped you your feelings are not they're cool and the feelings are valid to you that's okay i think sometimes we need to have a bit more self-awareness around the comparison of the lives that other people have lived before we Because as a refugee, right, and then your third-generational,

like, financial kid, finance kid, you've never seen a commercial flight. I'm a former refugee. I was never supposed to see a flight, let alone a flight. Your flight was literally escaping civil war. It literally had the United Nations literally wrapped around it to protect it from being hurt. I'd love to know, and this is kind of going, like, a little bit off pace, but what has it been like for you

during the years when the whole Black Lives Matters protests were happening yeah were you in the states at the time yeah i was between london and new york at the time mainly new york and yeah mainly new york so i was in the midst of everything there yeah there was a lot going on there and in terms of what it has been like for you in terms of your career and stuff afterwards yeah have you felt that it's anything is different have you felt that there is the groundswell made a difference yeah the industry definitely started opening up more to black artists and even i think pay went up for a few different people like makeup artists and hairstyles and everything that was definitely a push but i did read a thread on twitter recently

and i think it was somebody in the industry talking about how now that everything has calmed down quote unquote it has never calmed down by the way black lives still matter and it's still a big big big dispostional in america specifically and worldwide and politically period well the referendum is happening right now crazy yeah so a twitter thread of one of the people one of the fashion a black woman in fashion was uh she had a thread about how everything's kind of going backwards now like now fashion is like okay we've done our you we've done our yes man we've done our black lives we did yeah we did it so now let's go back to the cookie cutter and it's just i mean to what extent especially being a model i think i do kind of i do kind of feel it

i do kind of feel that the industry of fashion entertainment i feel they sometimes think they exempt from the real world issues especially during covid i was really frustrated at fashion and entertainment on how much they felt exempt from the laws that were being put into place and traveling and how much swindling could be done at the time and it was just like there is so much problem with an industry that believes that they're exempt and that they could perform for a bit and then leave and then go back to normal like we have to step forward onto a podium to voice something you just can't leave that podium when you feel like you're ready you have to stand like the united nations you can't countries you can't join the united nations and say i'm

leaving that's just not how it works politically and morally but yeah fashion is going backwards now from that from what i'm seeing well what is next next we're going to la california for acting yeah are you big are there some big things on the card yes so i wish i could tell you guys how many amazing things i've been shooting but i have really yeah i have a few things coming up in this is a morning world still but i have a few amazing huge campaigns coming out but yeah moving into moving to los angeles october for acting and i'm very excited it's a new field a field that i don't know but it's so fun i've been in classes for the last year i'm trying to go to school at some point if my schedule allows it but yeah just kind of like trying to be all right trying to stay

afloat and keep dreaming more and more every day and are you dating i wouldn't say i'm in love but i am definitely in something i feel like guys i've been traumatized romantic oh my god but i am in the peripheral of love i just feel like my main concentration right now is stability financial stability mental stability and trying to get a few investments down and going to the film industry properly i feel like i'm young i've already been married i've been in love i've been head over heels in love before i just feel like now i'm trying to be more practical with it and not like lose myself and not give up my essence because there's so much that I need to do with myself first

and then fill someone's cup later on. Aweng, I am like genuinely upset that this interview has to end because I feel like I could talk to you for so long. You're all day. No, honestly, you are such a breath of fresh air. Thank you. I love the bounce back of the conversations. We've done amazing.

You guys know that we never finish an episode without our suck and our sweet, our highlight and our lowlight of each and every week. Britt, what was your suck? My suck was I've spoken about this a few times in the past. I don't keep a diary. My diary's in my head and every year it's like I'm going to be better, I'm going to start planning stuff in a diary, writing it down. But in my head I'm like I've got it, I've clocked it

and usually I'm pretty good. No, no. Okay, dying cat, Dippy. Look, like you're okay. I reckon I'm a, you know, until I hit 30, 97% success rate. 3% got lost along the way. You're almost 36, so that's six years of not being very good, which is the entire time that I've known you.

that's the problem isn't it yeah so no it's if he was on a graph it's slowly deteriorating anyway I just had an appointment with my chiropractor because I've I've had migraines my whole life so I go to a chiropractor quite frequently when I get these migraines I had to put an appointment booked it's busy you have to book in advance because I do all these special stuff on my neck and I just rocked up and I had I'd had to leave a meeting that I was at because I was like guys I have to get to this appointment went to the appointment turned up and you know when you're so confident at the desk you like got a three o'clock with barbie and i look at their thing and they're like no no three o'clock and i'm like there's definitely a three o'clock she's like

no there's definitely nothing in i'm like yeah well i put it in my brain and i kept it there so it must be 3 30 they're like no and i'm like fuck i'm like can you just look where i am then because i i definitely booked and she's like oh you booked for like three days time i just was three days early from my appointment better than being three days late it's not the same this is this you missed your appointment by whatever if you're three days late you get charged a fee i forgot about my hairdresser appointment and then i got charged for it the full amount didn't get my hair done i thought it was really cheeky actually when you didn't is that recently 150 bucks they charged me a cancellation fee because i didn't go to the appointment i actually do get that because

they've lost money but it was only for a trim i was only booked in for a trim and they charged me 150 dollars is that what they charge that's pretty rank okay anyway i paid it whatever well I think that's your suck, is it? Yeah, I wouldn't know that. I haven't a couple of weeks ago, but it should have been my suck. Now I'm bringing it up. Yeah, you never spoke about it. Yeah, $150 for a trim.

It seems excessive. Yes, if you'd booked in for a colour and then you didn't go to the appointment, that's like four hours of their time they're not getting. But it was specifically, I just need the ends trimmed off. That's like 25 minutes max. I totally get cancellation fees for sure, but that's excessive. You should be paying for what you would have. Yeah, max.

Also, though, it's a pretty dick thing to not show up to an appointment. So I didn't complain. Totally. you're like take a tip okay what is your sweet for the week my sweet for the week was and I'm an easy woman to please I had a really good pasta I'm a carbohydrate fiend I'm a pasta fiend carbonara fettuccine carbonara is my favorite and I had a really really good pasta that really hit the spot on the weekend so that was it I'm a super easy person to please if I'm ever hangry angry upset bring me a carbonara and you'll win me over well next week when you come to recording

and you're raging fertility raging we'll have a carbonara on the side i'm also heads up it makes you really hungry because your hormones are crazy so if you guys want to bring food for me that'll be a little carbonara yeah for breakfast perfect your suck my suck for the week look falling down the stairs was pretty fucking sucky to be honest yeah but moving is a pretty i mean getting into the house is great but the moving process part is sucky it's the worst also a sweet that i didn't have to do most of it because matt did it but my main suck for the week is that there's so much stuff that I can't find there's so many boxes that are still not unpacked and like trying to get up and get dressed in the morning and find things it's just that's gonna

be like my life for the next two months you're really disorganized for a while hey yeah I'm like kind of using a wardrobe a floor drobe a bedrobe a bathroom drobe you know everything is everywhere the most annoying part was one thing you didn't unpack which you probably should have was toilet paper none of your toilets had toilet paper I had to go and get a piece of Marley's drawing paper to wipe myself because I was like there's nothing else in this house like sorry Marley she's like it's my favorite picture you wiped your ass with a picture of Peppa Pig yeah I gave you a serviette serviettes are fine that was the roughest serviette oh my god it's not three-ply Brittany Hockley only wipes her ass with three-ply no hang on it wasn't like

serviette it was literally like paper towel imagine wiping your butt with sandpaper it was paper towel it's fine and then I was like don't flush it because it'll get stuck so make sure you put it in the bin it's like being yeah you know it's like camping we're camping totally it's like being in a country but they don't have good plumbing and you have to put the toilet paper in the bin next to the toilet anyway no yeah all right and my sweet for the week is that even though we've both been so exhausted from packing and moving and unpacking we're calling the new house the sex house because we've been there for five days and we've had sex twice and i think that's a really great ratio i don't think you should refer to the sex house in public like me yeah

the sex house matt people are gonna think you're going to brothels every second night welcome to our sex den and when i say sex den like twice twice in a week twice in four days that's that's fucking that's 50 of the time mate that is it two out of four that's a very good strike rate yeah let's see if it continues we were so tired it was like midnight matt came to bed and he was like should we i was like why not we live in a new house no hang on christmas twice you're just is horny because your stuff was put away you get horny at a clean house oh yeah yeah and Matt had been unpacking things all day and I was like come here it was like the longest foreplay ever every box he unpacked you were like oh I said to this I said this to Matt the other day I was like you

know foreplay starts at 9am in the morning if you're cleaning and maintaining and you're like being nice and doing like lovely things I was like I will want to fuck you at night time but if we just like move through the day and then it gets to 11 o'clock and you kiss me I'm not gonna have sex with you. But if you've done the foreplay, if you've spray and wiped the table, I will have sex with you. What I'm hearing is bribery. Yeah. Pack the dishwasher at 9am and I will fuck you at 9pm. And that's how it works. Okay. Before we head off, we want to say a big shout out to the Matildas, our homegrown heroes. Our homegrown heroes. Playing in the semifinals against England the lionesses tomorrow night we are all behind you rooting for you literally all of australia

is behind you and rooting for you i've never seen anything like this we have more madness surrounding the matildas right now in the world cup than the male world cup and that gives me happiness yeah and you know what will give me happiness when there's pay equity but we can talk about that on another day yeah it's a whole and pay equity but for now we're going matildas go matildas i could hear i was at home and i was watching it on my phone and i could hear people screaming from my backyard, from the pub, which is like almost 500 meters away. I could hear the screams in the street. That's how amazing it was. I am desperately trying to get tickets to go. It's completely sold out. So if anyone's listening now that has any connection to any ticket anywhere,

let me know. Anyway guys, that is it from us. We hope that you loved the episode. A big reminder to go jump on the socials. We would love for you to come to the live show, get tickets to the live show. We're going to be sharing all the details around it. And honestly, it's just going to be the best freaking nights all across the country and if you love the episode go leave a review and that's it from us we need another bunch of accidentally unfiltered if you guys have got an embarrassing story please send them in it can even be from ages ago it doesn't have to be anything you've done recently but we do particularly love the ones that are sent in live like as they're happening they're like oh my god i'm locked in the bathroom you won't believe what's happening

we froth those as well and don't forget tell your mom tell your dad tell your dog tell your friends and share the love because we love love!