Once wanderers in war-torn Sudan, now they work for nation’s recovery
Oct 28, 2005 (ROCHESTER, New York) — Years after wandering in jungles and deserts, some of the “Lost Boys of Sudan” are trying to rebuild their war-ravaged homeland from a world away, in America.
In Rochester, New York, a church clerk works tirelessly to raise tens of thousands of dollars for a project he launched earlier this year: drilling water wells in the isolated area where he grew up as the son of a Dinka cattle herdsman.
In Sewanee, Tennessee, three of the former “lost boys” are college students, preparing for careers in fields such as medicine and education, and promoting awareness of Africa.
These four are among about 3,800 Sudanese youths who arrived in the United States from refugee camps following their ordeal.
An old dream
When Emmanuel Gai Solomon, 24, arrived at the University of the South, he shyly requested three things, recalled Ann Sherrill, head resident of the university’s Humphreys Hall dormitory.
“He asked for a pillow, which I immediately gave him. Then he asked for a water bottle. He wanted one with Sewanee (written on it). The third thing he asked me for was a CD player. I gave him a James Taylor (CD),” Sherrill said.
“He told me that was perfect. He learned a lot of English from James Taylor.”
Solomon, 24, arrived in rural Tennessee as freshmen after he graduated from high school and taught mathematics, chemistry and physics in a U.N. refugee camp. One of his students there was Peter Anyang Manyang, 23, now also a student at Sewanee, as is Abraham Diing Akoi, 24, another member of a group of 300 from the refugee camp who were brought first to Atlanta.
Solomon now helps Trudy Cunningham, who teaches math, grade freshman students’ calculus papers to help repay his college cost.
“I think I will go eventually for teaching,” said Solomon, a junior.
Cunningham, wife of the college’s president, said Manyang, who aspires to be a doctor, became “the best Latin student Sewanee had” after starting classes last year.
Akoi, who is Manyang’s roommate and the most talkative of the three, said he remains “very concerned with the political situation” in his country.
Typically private about their childhood and families, the three Sudanese students last year held a campus discussion on their experiences. About 200 people overflowed the room.
They described how they were tending sheep in the fields and hid when attackers killed everyone in their villages. Some children were carrying books and those were used to teach each other in the years they roamed the wilderness.
“In their culture, they were told education is your mother and … father. They had this amazing devotion to education,” Cunningham said.
A former roommate of Solomon’s, Will Harper, agreed. He recalled a time when he was reading and Solomon asked how many pages he could read in 20 minutes. Harper said about 20. Solomon told him that if he could read that fast he would read the whole library. That answer inspired Harper.
“Before that, I never read very much, other than for class. Since then, I’ve probably read at least 30 books,” Harper said.
The Sudanese students have earned respect across the campus, where they are among the 9 percent of nonwhite students among 1,383 undergraduates. Sherrill said they have “raised a great deal of social consciousness.”
And Harper said they’ve even taught other students some Dinka _ including a good-natured call of “Ibo Gwai,” or “I’ll beat you” _ at the beginning of sports competitions between U.S. and African teams on campus.
Salva Dut
Salva Dut in Rochester, New York, also goes before audiences to tell about his native land and about his mission: to enable isolated Sudanese communities to tap into clean running water.
“These are village leaders trying to decide which village will get the well, and which village will wait,” Dut said at a recent Rotary Club dinner, narrating a slide show of his bittersweet journey to Lounariik, his mud-hut birthplace.
Earlier this year, he oversaw the drilling of five deep-water wells for nomadic tribes before returning to his job at Downtown United Presbyterian Church and to his constant fundraising work.
“This is one of my father’s wives and she just passed away while I was there because of rabies,” he said, continuing his narration. A dog had bitten her, “and (there’s) no treatment there.”
Another slide: “That’s my aunt. She was crying because I left when I was so little and now I’m a grown-up person helping my people, and that’s why she’s crying.”
In December 1985, when he was 11, Sudan’s civil war shattered Dut’s family along with so many others. Some 2 million were killed and twice that many displaced by the 21-year-civil war. While much of the country is relatively calm now, violence persists in the western province of Darfur.
After a decade fleeing violence and famine, crisscrossing hundreds of miles (kilometers) of Africa with 17,000 mostly orphaned children, Dut was among those from refugee camps sent to live in the United States.
He only learned of his family’s fate in 2000. When his father showed up at a United Nations hospital, sickened by contaminated water, Dut rushed back to Sudan to meet him. His father recovered after surgery, but Dut’s anguished experience made him realize in a flash what he had to do.
He has collected $140,000 (A115,400) since 2003 to get his nonprofit, Water for Sudan Inc., up and running, and he hopes to drill 25 more wells next year. His aim is to collect another $300,000 (A247,320) to furnish Texas-sized southern Sudan with a water network big enough to quell tribal disputes and banish waterborne diseases. The U.S. Agency for International Development promised to cover some drilling costs after a year or two, Dut said, but so far hasn’t made a firm commitment to join in the venture.
The first five wells, extending into aquifers as much as 200 feet (60 meters) down, are used by some 17,000 people. Besides relieving villagers of the need “to walk far away to find water,” Dut noted another benefit.
As the land turns dusty between October and May, the remaining natural water holes become precious, and “other tribes, other villages come in and claim, ‘This is my territory.’ And they kill each other,” he said. “I was happy to see I’m breaking that kind of conflict.”
Steve Knorr, a retired print shop owner whose Rotary Club in the suburb of Fairport gave Dut $1,000 (A824), said of his work: “What a wonderful project _ it kills you to hear it. Water is just something taken for granted, isn’t it?”
Dut attends St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, where fellow parishioners who helped him set up his charity are now thinking of building a health clinic, and maybe a school someday, in Lounariik, the town of 10,000 where Dut was raised.
Dut’s odyssey came full circle when he arrived in Lounariik in February. After two weeks of drilling and waiting for the cement cap to harden, elders led a prayer service, mud-caked children frolicked under the pump-handle tap, and a cow was sacrificed and eaten with a sorghum brew.
Each well is designed for up to 1,000 people but thousands more show up deep into the night. Villagers are trained to do repairs and water-quality tests.
“As part of the deal, there’s a social mobilization effort,” said Jim Blake, a retired computer consultant who helped Dut obtain government permits and hire a reputable drilling contractor.
“It may begin the establishment of long-term communities, it may exacerbate tribal problems with providing water to different groups. It’s hard to say,” Blake said.
Either way, villagers who suffered from Guinea worm and other horrific waterborne diseases are no longer ignored. Their savior, Blake marveled, is “just a guy who gave up his schooling, his career and everything else so he could establish this for his people, his home.”
For Dut, who became a U.S. citizen in 2001, linking up again with his bygone life brought joy _ a reunion with his mother, bonds with countless strangers _ as well as pain on learning so many relatives and neighbors had died in the war.
The hardest part of all was encountering multitudes of sick children. “You just can’t do anything for them,” he said. “You move on with what you are doing. That’s the only option.”
He added: “I was having a tough life when I was young. Now I’m in a different life with totally different challenges.”
His work gives him energy to move forward, he said. “It doesn’t allow me to think about the past.”
(AP/ST)
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On the Web:
http://www.churchworldservice.org/Immigr ation/lost_boys.htm