Model Alek Wek Talks About Growing Up In Poverty

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Models have been known to suffer from eating disorders.

Some simply just don’t each much in order to maintain a slim frame which has Sudanese model Alek Wek bothered by it all.

The beauty knows what it means to truly really be hungry as she grew up in poverty in Southern Sudan.

Wek shares her past experiences in a new write-up for Newsweek where she talks about her difficult childhood before heading to London at the age of 14 as a refugee.

Reveals the model about her childhood:

“I know how it feels to go hungry. When I was 7 years old, my family and I became trapped in our own home, huddled together amid the bullets and bombs of the civil war that raged around us in Southern Sudan. To leave home meant the risk of rape, or kidnapping, or death. We did have to step outside sometimes, to use the toilet in our backyard, but we crawled there, low to the ground, to avoid gunfire.

One night, my mother turned the latch in the front door to make sure we were safely locked inside; a gunman in the yard thought it was the click of a rifle and began shooting like crazy into the night. My parents, my eight siblings, and I survived on food our mother had grown in the yard: vegetables, grains, peanuts. We shared what little we had with the neighbors—those who hadn’t disappeared. It’s an awful feeling, being hungry.”

Such a difficult childhood! Click HERE to read more about Wek's life and growing up hungry and in fear.

[Image via WENN.]

Tags: alek wek, beauty, eating disorders, food, models, slim