The distance between Juba and Melbourne

Nyasha worked in Juba and had long since decided that love would have to wait — her career was the priority, and everyone knew long-distance relationships never lasted anyway.

Tom was in Melbourne, an engineer who spent his evenings scrolling through profiles of South Sudanese singles in the diaspora, hoping to find someone who understood what home meant to him.

When they matched, the first message was a joke about how their time zones meant she was already living in his tomorrow. They talked every single day. Mornings for her were evenings for him, and they built a routine around stolen half-hours: coffee here, dinner there, always the same two faces on the screen.

After eight months of calls and letters and photos that never did justice to what they felt, Tom booked a flight. Standing in the arrivals hall, Nyasha says she knew within ten minutes that she was going to marry him.

They sealed it on the banks of the Nile during his second visit, surrounded by both families — half laughing in Juba's heat, half crying over a video call from Melbourne at 4 a.m.

"The distance was hard," Nyasha says. "But the person is everything. We chose each other across two continents, and it was the easiest choice I ever made."