‘Lost boys of Sudan’ have bad memories – US study

CHICAGO, June 6 (Reuters) – The “Lost Boys of Sudan,” who fled vicious attacks on their villages only to face a hazardous trek across Africa’s wilderness, often suffer nightmares but are faring well in the United States, a study said on Monday.

Twenty-year-old John Deng James had a long journey before being flown from a Kenyan refugee camp to a Boston suburb, where he works as a cashier. (ARC).

A survey of hundreds of resettled Sudanese young men — part of the 25,000 boys who fled their burning villages two decades ago and were dubbed the “Lost Boys of Sudan” — found most were successfully making the adjustment to life in the United States a year later.

But of the 300 surveyed, 58 percent said they experienced frequent “recurrent thoughts of the most hurtful event,” and 40 percent reported “feeling as though the event was happening again.” One in five could be diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Physically, 92 percent of those surveyed reported their health to be good to excellent.

“The Sudanese minors seemed to function well in school and activities outside the home. However, problems emerge in their home lives and emotional states,” wrote lead author Paul Geltman, a pediatrician at Boston University School of Medicine.

To cope with their fears, more than one-third of the refugees said they avoided activities that might remind them of their experiences. Nearly all had witnessed the mutilation or stabbing of family members and friends.

The young men were surveyed between six months and a year after their arrival, between late 2000 and early 2001.

As young children in Sudan in the early 1980s, roughly 25,000 youths were forced to flee for Ethiopia, braving the desert and attacks by hyenas and lions. Expelled by Ethiopia’s government in 1991, they fled to Kenya, though many drowned or fell victim to crocodiles while fording rivers.

In general, the Sudanese appeared to be less well equipped than Bosnian refugees who were brought to the United States in similar circumstances, Geltman wrote in the Archives of Pediatric Adolescent Medicine.

Many Sudanese were unaccompanied by family or friends when the U.S. settlement program began in 2000. Hundreds were plucked from Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp and placed in foster care or group homes.

The study concluded that refugees who were in group homes or foster care with other Sudanese fared better psychologically as they could more easily share their experiences.