The Clarion-Ledger November 29, 2004
Lost Boys of Sudan
By Jean Gordon
The last time Joseph Lueth saw his parents he was 7 years old. That's the year militiamen invaded his village in southern Sudan and all the boys fled - on foot - to Ethiopia.
Now 21, Lueth can't believe how his life has changed. Just four years after his arrival in Jackson, he has an apartment, a job at Central Mississippi Medical Center and he drives a Ford Escort to his classes at Hinds Community College.
"Many people walked from Sudan to Ethiopia and Kenya - just barefoot," Lueth said. "Right now when I sit in my car I feel like I'm somebody."
Like the other "Lost Boys of Sudan," Lueth is a survivor. He is one of 15,000 Sudanese refugees forced out of their country as children by war. The group earned the name "Lost Boys" because they've spent years wandering from refugee camp to refugee camp, fleeing civil unrest. Many are orphans.
In 2000, Catholic Charities placed 70 "Lost Boys" in homes in Jackson. The boys were part of a United Nations resettlement program that brought 4,000 Sudanese refugees to the United States.
Today, all of the Sudanese young men in Mississippi are in school, working or both. One recently was ordained a minister. But though they are grateful for their lives in the United States, most feel great concern for Sudan - a country at war for all but 11 years since gaining independence in 1956.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell recently declared the latest wave of violence in the western Darfur region "genocide."
Still, the Sudanese refugees say they hope to one day return home to help rebuild their fractured country.
"I want to find where my parents are," Lueth said. "I can't do anything without peace."
Deadly walk
Deng Mabil, a 21-year-old senior at Millsaps College in Jackson, doesn't talk about his life in Sudan unless directly asked.
"If they don't ask, there's no way I can just tell them," said Mabil, who like many Sudanese men is slim and stands more than 6 feet.
Mabil fled southern Sudan at age 5, when northern Sudanese government forces attacked his village. The militia destroyed homes, schools, hospitals and stole the primary source of sustenance: livestock.
The violence propelled Mabil and his 8-year-old brother to join thousands of refugees on a 1,000-mile trek to Ethiopia.
Thousands died along the way.
The American Red Cross reports refugees drowned, were eaten by wild animals, shot by militia or overcome by hunger, dehydration or fatigue.
Mabil said many people drank their own urine or sucked moist mud to quench their thirst.
Children like Mabil had to flee because boys were prime targets of northern Sudanese attacks. They were considered future enemies in the country's two-decades-old civil war.
The conflict has killed 2 million people and displaced 4 million more.
Though the war in Sudan often gets cast as one between the predominately Muslim north and the Christian south, it's more complex. According to the Sudanese refugees' narratives published by the Millsaps College Faith and Work Initiative, competition for oil and agricultural resources in southern Sudan have fueled the conflict.
Many hope the Nov. 19 peace accord between the Sudanese government and southern rebels will bring an end to the enduring civil war.
But recently, much of the world's attention has turned to the western region of Darfur, where since February 2003 a government-sponsored Arab militia called Janjaweed has killed more than 70,000 people and forced 1.6 million people from their homes.
Mabil welcomes the attention.
"A lot of people don't know what's going on in most places in Africa," he said, adding he's often asked to speak to school and church groups about Sudan. "When I tell them I'm from Sudan, they ask why I'm here."
On a mission
Like most of the college-age Sudanese refugees in Jackson, Mabil balances a full-time job with a full course load.
"Because we have been through the life we have been through, that's why we have been working so hard," he said.
On weekdays, Mabil attends classes from 8 a.m. to 2:40 p.m. By 3:30 p.m., he's at his job as a patient escort at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. When his shift ends at 11:30 p.m., he heads back to his dorm for a night of study.
Mabil said he's particularly grateful to the people at St. Andrew's Episcopal Cathedral in Jackson who have helped the Sudanese refugees with their transition to American life.
"Without them I don't think our life would have been so good," he said. "Those people really understand how hard it is to be by yourself with no parents."
The church formed a special ministry that supports the Sudanese community - who are mostly Episcopalian - with their education, employment, health and spiritual needs.
"They just showed up," said ministry chairman Greg Miller, an English professor at Millsaps College. "I think they looked up Episcopal Anglican churches in the phone book and picked the one that began with an 'A.' "
After Mabil graduates from Millsaps - which granted him a full academic scholarship - he plans to study international law to help solve political issues that turn people into refugees.
"Our mission here is to get an education," he said during a break between classes. "Then we can go back home and try to help our people."
Lost childhood
Mangok Mayan, a cultural specialist with Catholic Charities in Jackson, said the Sudanese boys have matured fast because they've struggled for so many years without their parents.
"Some witnessed their parents being killed," said Mayan, also a Sudanese refugee. "Some ran away when the militia came and never met them again."
Mayan, 41, works as a liaison between Catholic Charities caseworkers and caretakers who look after 9- to 17-year-old Sudanese boys living in Jackson group homes.
Part father, part big brother and part teacher, Mayan helps the boys get acclimated to American culture, customs and food.
Since the 70 Sudanese refugees arrived in Mississippi in 2000, some have moved to other parts of the country to join family members. Of the 45 who remain, Mayan said 24 are in college and the rest are in high school or studying for their high school equivalency exam. Most also have jobs in hospitals or restaurants.
Before Sept. 11, 2001, more "Lost Boys" had been bound for resettlement in the United States, Mayan said, but immigration restrictions imposed after the terrorist attacks stemmed the flow.
Mayan also keeps tabs on the "emancipated adults" who have aged out of group homes or foster care and share several apartments in a downtown Jackson complex.
As a father figure, Mayan helps remind the young men not to forget their language and homeland, and to be careful about the freedom of America culture.
"Freedom is good," he said. "But not if you don't use it well."
Gratitude and guilt
Isaac Gang, a 26-year-old student at the University of Southern Mississippi, was the first Sudanese refugee to land in Jackson in 1995.
When he arrived in the country at age 17, he had to navigate American culture without the help of fellow countrymen like Mayan.
"I didn't want to ask certain questions of Catholic Charities," he said. "Like how to deal with girls."
In rural Sudan, boys and girls have well-defined roles. Boys typically help their fathers tend to cattle and girls work with their mothers in the home. Marriages are brokered between families with the exchange of cattle from the groom's family to the bride's.
And boys don't cook.
But Gang took an immediate liking to his first American meal: cornflakes.
"That's what I eat for breakfast everyday," he said.
Gang said moving to a new culture was more confusing than scary.
"We were raised in war," he said. "I was not afraid."
Excited for his first day of high school, he left angry and disappointed because he couldn't understand his teacher's Southern accent.
"We were taught the British English," he said. "That day was very tough."
Now a senior in college, Gang hopes to continue his education in graduate school, studying computer science and history.
His parents live in a liberated area in southern Sudan, where the United Nations supplies food.
He writes them letters monthly and makes dates to talk to them via satellite phone.
"They are very glad I'm in school," he said.
Like other Sudanese refugees in the United States, Gang said he feels guilty "all the time" about the advantages he has in America.
"Everything I do I feel guilty," he said. "Driving a car. Eating three meals a day."
Spared lives
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, seven 20- and 21-year-old Sudanese men gathered in one of their countrymen's living rooms to talk about the enduring war in Sudan.
"One problem ends and another starts," Mathiang Ayor said about the months of violence in Darfur.
Dor Deng Amol, a student at Hinds Community College, said the refugee resettlement program saved his life, but thousands more back home continued to be killed.
He and the other Sudanese men said more international pressure - particularly from the United States - is needed to bring peace to Sudan.
"As we came to the United States our problem for living on our own has been solved," Amol said. "But for people there it has not been solved."
WHAT IS A REFUGEE
International law defines refugees as people who are unable or unwilling to return to their countries because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or belonging to a particular social group.
Source: Southern Sudanese Association of Mississippi.
PROFILE
*Population: 40 million.
*Location: Northeastern Africa, directly south of Egypt.
*Size: One million square miles. It's the largest country in Africa and more than one fourth the size of the United States.
*Ethnic profile: The two major cultures are Arab and black African, with 500 ethnic and tribal divisions and 50 distinct languages.
*Northern Sudan: Population is mostly Arabic-speaking Muslims. Includes most of the country's urban centers.
*Southern Sudan: Population is mostly black African Christian or animist. Most people live a rural, subsistence life.
*Government: Military regimes favoring Islamic-oriented governments have dominated national politics since the country gained independence in 1956 from the United Kingdom.
Sudan has been embroiled in a civil war for all but 11 years since the 1950s (1972-82). The wars are rooted in northern economic, political and social domination of non-Muslim, non-Arab southern Sudanese.
Since 1983, the war and war- and famine-related effects have led to more than 2 million deaths and have displace more than 4 million people.
The ruling regime is a mixture of military elite and an Islamist party that came to power in a 1989 coup.
Sources: CIA World Factbook 2003; www.globalsecurity.org.
'THE LONG JOURNEY' ... AN EXCERPT
"I left my beloved country, Sudan, in 1989, due to the outbreak of civil war... We walked hundreds of miles to Ethiopia, seeking safety ... We became prey for the lions and many other wild animals. There was no food and water ...
After we reached Ethiopia, we ended up not staying long because of the change in government in Ethiopia in 1991. So we had to flee back again to Sudan. This time was the rainy season, and many rivers had started overflowing. Many people were drowned while crossing the rivers. Soon after our arrival in Sudan, we automatically began facing the threat of increased fighting between Southern rebels and the government troops from the north. The government began bombarding the places we had settled, so we were forced to set out again, this time to Kenya."
- Excerpt from A Slave In Your Own Country by Deng Mabil in The Long Journey: Sudanese Refugees in Mississippi Tell Their Stories, published by Millsaps College Faith and Work Initiative, 2003.
STATISTICS
*Number of Sudanese refugees resettled in the United States in 2000-2001: 4,000.
*Number of Sudanese who settled in Jackson: 70 (58 unaccompanied refugee minors and 12 adults).
*Number of Sudanese currently living in Jackson, Hattiesburg and Oxford: 45.
*Other U.S. cities that received Sudanese refugees: Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Seattle and Tucson, Ariz.
Sources: Catholic Charities; International Rescue Committee.
© Copyright 2004, The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS)
