10 June 2008
Lost Boys of Sudan Go to College in America
After surviving war, young men find support in U.S. and succeed in school
Washington -- On January 6, dozens of tall, lanky young men originally from Sudan gathered at Harry S. Truman College in Chicago to celebrate their birthdays. They weren't really all born around the same day. They are refugees who had fled a brutal civil war in southern Sudan as unaccompanied children. Resettled in the United States and struggling to get an education, they don’t know their real birthdays.
The young men are some of the "Lost Boys of Sudan," named for Peter Pan's young band in the fictional account by J.M. Barrie. These real Lost Boys got separated from families and went through a cruel adventure of almost biblical proportions before some 3,800 found refuge in the United States. Despite living through trauma and their continued struggle to earn a living and go to college, most of them have done remarkably well in their new country.
In the late 1980s, amidst a long-running civil war between Sudan's Arab-dominated government and the rebels in the ethnically African southern part of the country, an estimated 20,000 boys fled villages to avoid being killed by government forces or pressed into rebel militias.
In groups, these children walked for hundreds of kilometers across parched plains to the safety of camps in neighboring Ethiopia. Many died of hunger and thirst; some reportedly fell prey to lions. In 1991, a new government in Ethiopia pushed the boys back into Sudan. For a second time, they crossed Ethiopia's swollen Gilo River. During that crossing, many younger boys drowned, and some were eaten by crocodiles. After 14 more months of hardship and wandering, the surviving 10,000 boys arrived at the United Nations-run Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya.
Starting in 2000, some 3,800 of them were accepted for resettlement in the United States. They were spread among towns and cities across the country, where local groups of volunteers helped them settle into a new life unimaginably different from what they had known.
In 1987, John Kuol was 10 years old and watched government planes bomb his hometown of Bor, Sudan, while he was out grazing cattle. He fled with many other boys. In 2001, he left the Kakuma refugee camp and flew to America. It was a bewildering transition. There was an unimaginable abundance of food here.
"In the camp, we ate once a day," said Kuol. "Here, there was lots of food, and we got stomach aches. I was offered hot dogs, and I thought -- ‘I won't eat dog meat!’"
He settled in Chicago with the help of a church-affiliated refugee agency and experienced weather colder than he had ever imagined. He got an apartment with several other Lost Boys and couldn't understand how neighbors could pass each other without saying hello.
Like his fellow refugees, Kuol took a low-paying job -- he worked as a security guard -- to pay rent. (Only 10 percent of the refugees were younger than 18; they were placed in local families and sent to local schools. They received more support than their older comrades.) Kuol, like many of the others, attended a community college in the evenings, starting with classes to improve the English he had learned in the camp. Kuol, who heads an association of Lost Boys in Chicago, now is enrolled in a four-year accounting course at Northeastern Illinois University and plans to graduate in 2009.
"They're much more serious than your average teenager," said John Trifiletti, who heads computer sciences at a campus of Florida Community College at Jacksonville.
The Lost Boys in Jacksonville and elsewhere benefit from some scholarships. But almost all work full time to cover living expenses. Supporters say it is not uncommon for them to start and stop their studies due to financial hardships.
Trifiletti said half of the 150 Lost Boys who settled in Jacksonville have started college. The five who graduated from his two-year institution in 2007 finished with honors. "They all slowly work toward their goals, and they help each other," he said.
Since being in the United States, and especially after a peace agreement in southern Sudan three years ago, many Lost Boys have re-established contact with family members. Some have visited their homeland, marrying there or helping establish schools. Most, however, want to continue living in the United States.
Observers are struck by the resilience of the young men. "Anyone who had lived through such experiences -- you'd expect them to have serious health problems, both physical and psychological," said Dr. Paul. L. Geltman, a professor of pediatrics at Boston University. He published a study of the 304 Lost Boys who were younger than 18 when they arrived.
Geltman found that a surprisingly small portion of the boys -- 20 percent -- suffered from anxiety or nightmares, symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. He said that, as a whole, the Lost Boys are "survivors" who have benefited from the community support they have received.
"We have to expect that refugees will come to the United States with lots of physical and emotional health problems. If we put them in the right environment, with lots of support services, they'll do well," he said.
