US refugees from rival tribes team up to drill wells in South Sudan

November 10, 2007 (ROCHESTER, N.Y.) — At the time, two decades ago, the boy was scrambling to stay alive, dodging a civil war enveloping his native southern Sudan.

Salva Dut was 11 when he, his uncle and two dozen villagers crossed into territory controlled by the rival Nuer tribe. Dut and most of his group were Dinkas.

As they rested by a pond, the rising sun already baking the tawny plain, six armed men appeared and questioned them shrilly about their links to John Garang, a Dinka rebel leader blamed for violent raids on the Nuer. The bandits then singled out Dut’s uncle, Jewiir, tied him to a tree and shot him.

“We find a hole in the ground left by an animal and buried him,” Dut said recently, still jolted by flashbacks from that day in 1986. “We spent the day mourning and at nighttime we resumed our walk.”

Their long trek ended a month later in a refugee camp in neighboring Ethiopia with hundreds of thousands of others.

It took a decade before Dut, in 1996, became one of the first of 3,800 “Lost Boys of Sudan” resettled in the United States _ and nearly as long after that before a fragile peace deal finally ended the 21-year war on Jan. 9, 2005. That very day, Dut flew home to begin helping Dinka settlements tap into an underground treasure: running water.

Dut, 32, a former church clerk in Rochester, now devotes his life to the Water for Sudan Inc. charity he launched in 2003. He spends half his year in Africa, half raising funds in America. Lifted by $680,000 in donations, he has drilled 17 deep-water wells in his native Warap that sustain at least 60,000 people.

Dut has a new and improbable ally, a member of the Nuer tribe that was his tribe’s former adversary.

He is fellow refugee Dep Tuany, a father of eight in San Diego, Calif., who shares chilling memories of those chaotic early days of a war that killed more than 2 million people and displaced 4 million others.

The villages in his home region of Maiwut, near where Dut’s uncle was slain, came under attack from both northern forces and the Garang-led Sudan People’s Liberation Army. During Tuany’s own trek to Ethiopia with his wife, their 14-month-old son, Wichieng, died of an intestinal disease likely caused by contaminated water.

In February, Dut is expanding operations to Nuer villages some 300 miles to the east by purchasing a second trailer-mounted drilling rig _ and putting Tuany in charge. Tuany, 42, a hospital aide who has run a Sudanese community center in San Diego since 1996, thinks the time has come to do his part.

The Dinka and Nuer, the two largest tribes in a semiarid country the size of Texas, “have been fighting for centuries over river, over cattle, over land,” Tuany said. “Even after we find a No. 1 enemy, the northern Sudan government, the issues between them never go away.

“For my people seeing me work with Salva, with the Dinka, is a great thing.” He predicted it would bring “so much unity, so much love and goodwill.”

His mother, whom he last saw in 1991, “will be the one to drink the first cup of water from the first well,” he said, adding that “my No. 1 concern now is to see the little children drinking purified water.”

Dut didn’t hesitate to bring Tuany on board. “We need to let those things pass and just move on with the new life,” he said.

Dut also enlisted Ater Thiep, 34, a former Lost Boy living in Dallas, to supervise his 12-member crew in Warap state while he turns his attention to rounding up drilling supplies in Uganda and Kenya.

The wells tap into aquifers as much as 200 feet down in remote plains where traditionally nomadic, cattle-herding people have had to roam for days when water holes become stagnant or shrivel during the October-to-May dry season.

Waterborne diseases are rampant. Dut only found out his parents had survived the war when his father, infected with Guinea worms and other parasites, showed up for surgery at a United Nations hospital in 2000.

It gave Dut the idea of how to help. His wells have transformed lives: Communities grow around them, and even the social order is shifting, with some girls attending school instead of spending the day collecting water for their families, he said.

Burl Jordan, who runs a landscape construction business in San Diego County, plans to spend a month in Sudan helping Tuany. He views the wells as a pivotal first step in restoring agriculture, health care and education in towns filling up again with people dislodged by war.

“You can’t do anything else without water,” said Jordan, 30, whose Rotary Club in Rancho Santa Fe quickly raised $200,000 after Dut and Tuany spoke in September, outlining their mission. “It really just grabs you to know the personal and dramatic impact you’re going to have.”

“Things are taking off,” Dut exulted. “If we have two crews, we will drill at least two wells a week, or more than 50 each year.”

Catching his breath, he said he felt certain that his uncle, Jewiir Dut Ariik — “a happy guy who smiled a lot and made you laugh” — would have approved.

“If my uncle came back today and find me helping the Nuer people,” he said, “I hope he will have the heart to forgive them.”

(AP)
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On the Net:

www.waterforsudan.org