MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA: THE last time Ethiopian refugee Jemal Ambo saw four of his children was a decade ago, when he fled his homeland on foot in the dead of night, terrified for his life.

Yesterday the abattoir worker from Collingwood said all he could do was “hug and kiss and hug and kiss and cry”, when he was finally reunited at Melbourne Airport with his children, now aged between 11 and 17.

“Today I see them, I’m very happy, they are very different,” Mr Ambo said of the reunion, in which his five other children met their siblings for the first time.

Mr Ambo, who is from the Oromo people, a large ethnic group in Ethiopia, walked more than 400 kilometres from his home in Agarfa to Kenya in 1998, after learning he was suspected of being a member of the anti-government Oromo Liberation Front.

“If you’re suspected of being a member of the OLF, God knows what could happen to you. A lot of people would have lost their lives,” said Lyda Dankha from the Spectrum Migrant Resource Centre, which helped the family bring the children to Australia.

Two years after he left Ethiopia, Mr Ambo’s wife Rumana Kedir Osmar managed to join him in a refugee camp in Kenya. But Rumana could only bring one of her sons, who was then aged two. She was forced to make the heartbreaking decision to leave behind two of her children and two of Mr Ambo’s children with his previous wife, who died in custody.

“There are no words to describe the desperation we felt at leaving our children to be cared for by relatives and there will be no words to describe the joy of having them finally with us,” Mr Ambo, who speaks little English, said through Ms Danka.

“We didn’t know whether our children were still alive.” In 2003, Mr Ambo, Rumana and their son were granted a refugee visa to Australia. The couple subsequently had three more children and were also successful in bringing Rumana’s 19-year-old daughter from another marriage to live with them. But Ms Dankha said the application to get Mr Ambo’s other four children to Australia had taken almost two years.

“Even on Friday we still did not know whether they would be boarding the plane because they had to do a final medical.”

Ms Dankha said the last time Mr Ambo had seen his daughter Yasriba she was not even one, and now she was almost 11. “They will have a lot of catching up to do,” she said.

Yesterday’s joy was only marred by the fact Mr Ambo’s 19-year-old son remains missing.

The Spectrum Migrant Resource Centre’s Sonia Vignjevic said the Ambo reunion was a great story of family reunion against all odds.

But on a more prosaic level, the next challenge would be finding “suitable and affordable housing” for nine children and two adults.

– By Jewel Topsfield | The Age