World Report: February 22, 2002 Vol.7 No.17
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Grades 4-6
Sudan's Lost Boys Find a Home
When Peter Wal and David Gai landed in Boston, Massachusetts, on a cold night last March, they had no money in their pockets. They didn't even have coats to protect them from the frigid air. Gai, 25, remembers staring at the leafless trees, thinking they were dead. "I thought if the trees couldn't survive in this place, how would we?"
Wal, 23, recalls asking strangers for help at the airport. But no one could understand his very formal, heavily accented English. "It wasn't what I expected," says Wal. In his small village in Africa, strangers were welcomed warmly. He was unprepared for this new world glazed in ice.
Wal and Gai are refugees from the war-torn country of Sudan. They arrived in Boston after a journey that took nearly 15 years. They've known hunger, exhaustion, terror and tragedy.
The Lost Boys
In 1987, when Wal was only 7, his village was attacked by soldiers. He was tending cattle on a nearby field when he noticed a thick cloud of smoke rising from the village. Wal knew instantly that his home had become a casualty of Sudan's long and bloody civil war. "Almost everybody was gone. Dead bodies were everywhere," he says.
Wal fled to the east. Soon he joined hundreds of boys between the ages of 4 and 17 whose families had been killed in similar attacks. Like Wal, the boys escaped death because they were tending cattle when their homes were attacked.
For months the boys walked barefoot through wilderness seeking safety. Along the way, they took care of one another. Older boys carried younger ones when they got tired. Still, hundreds died of starvation and disease. Many others were attacked by lions or drowned trying to cross rivers.
After three months, the exhausted group arrived in Ethiopia, where they settled in a refugee camp. Aid workers called them the "lost boys."
In 1991, war forced the boys out of Ethiopia too. After another long trek, they ended up in a hot, dusty refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya. There, they built their own mud huts but had no running water or electricity. United Nations workers provided one small meal a day and informal schooling. The boys were hungry for both. "I learned that education is the one thing that cannot be taken away, even if there is a war or floods," says Wal.
Coming to America
In 1999, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.S. government agreed to resettle 3,700 lost boys in the U.S. Now in their teens and 20s, most have already been placed in cities across the country.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC), a nonprofit agency that assists refugees, is helping Wal, Gai and other Sudanese adjust to life in Boston. Before arriving, the young men were given "cultural orientation" classes, where they learned how Americans live.
In Boston, the IRC found apartments for the refugees and gave them food and clothing. At first, it was a difficult adjustment. "We would come to an apartment and find raw meat in the microwave because they had confused it with the fridge," says IRC worker Stephanie Sluka.
Most of the refugees took low-paying jobs such as janitors and airport porters. But many dream of continuing their education. Last September, Wal moved in with a foster family so that he could go to high school at the Beaver Country Day School in Newton, Massachusetts. For the first time since he was 7, he had a family. "He is so eager to learn," says foster father Roderick Lewis.
John Kuol, 19, another refugee, also attends Beaver. Kuol and Wal had last seen each other in Ethiopia in 1988. "It feels like family having him here," says Kuol.
Even though the war in Sudan continues, many refugees hope to someday return to the home they only knew as children. Armed with educations, they want to help rebuild their broken country. "They call us lost boys, but we are not really lost." says Wal. "We know where we came from and where we want to go."
