Lost Boys of Sudan find hope, mystery in the States

They were just boys when they fled their villages in Sudan in the late 1980s and trekked hundreds of miles on foot through Africa's bush to Ethiopia, then back to Sudan and finally to safety in Kenya.

They escaped death from hunger and thirst, crocodiles and lions, disease and enemy soldiers.

Now The Lost Boys of Sudan, as they have come to be called, are young men living in America. Thirty-eight of them, now ages 18 to 25, have been relocated to Memphis, where they have discovered that life in America poses a new set of challenges.

Coming from the cattle-herding Dinka and Nuer tribes along the Nile River, they must adjust to a new culture in a new world, one where toilets flush, thermostats change hot to cold, marriages aren't arranged and food - all the food you can imagine - can be found at the nearest supermarket.

Separated from their families years ago with little hope for reunion, they are the unlikely survivors of a bloody civil war that has ravaged their native country since 1983.

The fighting in Africa's largest country - the second civil war since Sudan gained independence from Britain in 1956 - is over a host of issues, including religion, political power and unexploited oil reserves in the south.

Two million Sudanese have died and another 4 million have been displaced in the nearly 18 d years of conflict between the Arabs and Muslim-controlled government in northern Sudan and the Christian and indigenous black African population in the south. The average life expectancy there is 43 years.

In 1999 the U.S. State Department agreed to resettle 3,600 young Sudanese orphans, making it the largest-ever resettlement effort of orphaned children. Sending the young men back to Sudan could have meant forced military conscription, forced conversion to Islam or death.

So the young adults, with the help of 10 resettlement agencies, are being relocated in 28 states throughout the United States, including Tennessee.

The first arrived in Memphis last April. A dozen more are expected to join them soon.

"Before I come, I hear America is the land of freedom and equal opportunity. We learn that people can't shoot you because you're not Muslim. I learned this before I come and when I come I see those things are real," said Gabriel Jol, during an interview at his Whitehaven apartment one evening last month.

"In Sudan they can declare everybody Muslim, and if you're not, they can force you or kill you. America is good. I meet people in America who are not Muslim or Christian, they just believe in the universe," he says, still a bit incredulous that such beliefs are allowed without retribution.

Jol was just 10 years old when fighting broke out in his village. He was out tending the cattle when tribal elders told him to flee. He and thousands of other Lost Boys became separated from their families in the chaos, but to return meant an almost certain death since young males who could grow up and revolt were considered a threat.

They were so young when they left that many could not remember the months or dates of their birthdays, so the U.S. government gave them one - Jan. 1.

Several years ago Jol learned that both his mother and father had died, as was the fate of many in Sudan. And though there are some girls among The Lost Boys, most remained in Sudan; many were believed killed or sold into slavery, according to reports from the Red Cross and other humanitarian aid groups.

Jol arrived in Memphis last June with three other young Sudanese men. He hopes to go to school and study physics. Maybe one day he'll go back to Sudan to help his people, he said.

The young Sudanese are surprised so few Americans know about the war that has torn apart their homeland for a generation.

Like Jol, most of the Lost Boys have Christian names like Abraham, Peter and Daniel. They kept their last names, but changed their first names because humanitarian aid workers in the refugee camps had trouble pronouncing them.

"They tell us it is better to have names after names in the Bible," recalled Gatwech Majok, a 22-year-old evangelist who started preaching in Africa and is one of the few who refused to change his name.

The agency provides them with basic necessities and is responsible for assisting them with schooling and job training, and helping them get Social Security cards, food stamps and other services.

But helping them make the transition can be daunting, particularly for a group so unaccustomed to modern amenities.

"Without support from the community, we couldn't do the work," explains Carolyn Tisdale, director of refugee services for Catholic Charities in Memphis. Part of that support is just having individuals to help the Sudanese adjust to everyday living in America.

Even the knowledge of seemingly routine things, such as holiday traditions, cannot be assumed, Tisdale said.

"Can you imagine someone knocks on your door and says, 'Trick-or-Treat!,' and nobody has explained it to you?"

Already the transplants have learned the importance of budgeting and frugal spending.

The State Department pays to fly the young Sudanese from Kenya to Europe to their final destinations in America, but the one-way airfare is a loan and must eventually be repaid, normally $30 to $50 a month.

When they arrive in Memphis, the young Sudanese are given a few days' worth of food and clothes, and they are put in apartments with the rent paid for up to four months - less if they get jobs sooner. Their utilities are covered for a couple of months, and those without jobs are given a $50 weekly allowance for up to four months, after which they are expected to be self-sufficient, Tisdale said.

After living in Memphis nearly seven months, 23-year-old David Majok (not related to Gatwech) most wants to ask a reporter this question: Can you tell me where do you go to get money for school?

It is a question that seems to consume many of the young men who value education above most anything else. The orphaned Sudanese even have a saying, "Education is our mother and father."

Many of them are frustrated and worried they will not get the education they believe was part of the American dream.

Although some completed what is the equivalent of high school in the Kenyan refugee camp, most did not. They all speak the British English they learned at Camp Kakuma, but often have trouble with American pronunciations and meanings.

The boys spent five to six hours a day in UN-taught classes at the camp. Many began arriving there in 1992 after being expelled back to Sudan when fighting broke out in Ethiopia, where they had sought safety.

Many here have heard that their Sudanese "brothers" in other cities already are in school, and they wonder when they will begin.

Special GED classes are expected to start this week at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church. Resettlement officials with Catholic Charities in Memphis say some in the group already are participating in twice-weekly GED classes at the agency and a few have completed the course work.

But the wait is long - sometimes months - just to get in to take the GED test, said Tisdale of Catholic Charities.

In the meantime, those who are employed work as hospital housekeepers, car wash detailers and other low-paying jobs and look forward to the future. Despite being at the age when most young men are dating and marrying, these young Sudanese's thoughts are elsewhere.

"We plan for future. We work, pay rent, go to school. Girlfriend take money from school," Jol explains emphatically.

David Majok is still a bit confused about how marriages work in America. He now understands that marriages here aren't prearranged and dowries are not paid for wives, but what then, he asks, does the woman's family get for paying to raise a daughter?

"In Africa, girl is important," he says. "But there no benefit in America. In Africa, girl parents get a lot of money. What is the benefit of having a girl in America?"

When he's told that requiring a dowry could keep those with little or no money from getting married, he ponders the idea a moment, then smiles and says, "Ah, that is the goodness of America!"

Several young men quickly filled Jol's Whitehaven apartment, an apparent gathering spot for the group. Each time they closed the door, the men were careful to lock the deadbolt.

Though they are thousands of miles from the bombs and gunfire that wracks their homeland, their fear has been replaced by another.

"We left Sudan because of trouble; we came here in order to be safe. But now we do not feel safe," David Majok says, as the others in the room lean forward in their chairs to listen intently.

Several young Sudanese men said they have been threatened at gunpoint by a man living near them in their Whitehaven apartment complex.

The police have been called to the complex to investigate the matter. Catholic Charities' Tisdale said she had not heard about the incident but would follow up on the situation.

According to the Sudanese group, the trouble began several weeks ago when an errant soccer ball hit a tenant at the apartment complex. The Sudanese said they apologized, but the man has been hurling profanities and threatening them ever since.

On one occasion the man confronted Jol at his apartment with a gun, and, "I said, 'If you want to kill me, just kill me. Death is just once. I'm so tired of my life.' When he see that I give myself to be killed, he just look at me and walk away."

The danger of miscommunication and misunderstanding is very real. Last June a 19-year-old Sudanese man, living in America for less than two years, was killed outside the Nashville apartment where he was resettled. He was the victim of a dispute over a parking space.

Most of the Sudanese have become active in area churches, participating in services in English and in their native Nuer and Dinka tongues.

Trinity Lutheran Church downtown has been ministering to Sudanese immigrants since 1996 - even before the arrival of The Lost Boys. Memphis is home to an estimated 300 to 500 Sudanese, including those from the south escaping warfare and religious and political persecution as well as political dissenters from the north, fleeing the oppressive Islamic fundamentalist regime.

At one time Trinity had 50 Sudanese members, said pastor Ronald Wiese. He said most came because of its proximity to the Cleveland-Midtown area where many once lived and because its liturgical services are similar to services held at their Roman Catholic and Presbyterian churches back home.

Historically, the Sudanese community has had close ties with Lutheran churches nationwide, Wiese said. The Lutheran Church is second to Catholic Charities in refugee resettlement efforts.

Another 120 to 150 Sudanese members attend First Evangelical Church in East Memphis, said volunteer April Nelson.

And about 30 attend church at St. Patrick's Catholic Church downtown. Father Pat Hensy, assistant pastor, has worked closely with the group. He returned New Year's Day to Sudan, where he and a handful of other priests take great risk by teaching catechism or religious classes.

"We have to sneak in," Hensy said in an interview before he left for the northeast African country on Tuesday.

On his last trip to a village near Bahr El Ghazal in southwest Sudan, Hensy described how a United Nations plane had to take priests to an old dirt landing strip and drop them off.

"We were bombed several times while there, and the village where I was at was (later) burned down."

A number of the "lost boys" have settled in the suburbs around Boston (sponmsored by local churches) and I'm sure most will do well, but there already has been one case that made the newspapers a few months ago....a 19-year-old refugee from Sudan, who was resettled in Arlington, Massachusettss, part of the ''Lost Boys of Sudan'' group, pleaded not guilty to rape charges after a woman alleged that as she walked past his apartment, he introduced himself and then threw her to the ground and sexually assaulted her.

He was accused of grabbing the woman, burning her with a cigarette, pushing her to the ground and sexually assaulting her with his finger.

The story ran in the Boston papers, but as I do not subscribe to their pay service to look up old articles, I can't give you a link.

If I remember correctly it was someone from the sponsoring group, who said the assualt was just a "cultural misunderstanding", and the local sponsoring church raised approximately $50,000 for his legal defense. I don't think the case has gone to trial yet.

A friend who lives in Arlington tells me that the "lost boys" he has met were courteous and friendly, but he notices that now some of them dress like they were going to be part of some "gangsta video" shoot. I guess they are just belending in to contemporary culture, and copying what they see on the BET Rap videos. The Boston Globe ran a series of articles on the group that settled around here.

Based on things I've read like this article , African immigrants achieve success to the extent that they parallel the patterns of Asian immigrant groups: Strong community ties leading to gradual assimilation into the American society as a whole, strong emphasis on education.

To the extent that they assimilate into African-American society, they fail.

I think most of them will do well. The Boston area "lost boys" have mainly been settled in almost all white suburbs.

In order for them to meet other black people they take public transportaion into Boston and Cambridge. Most are now adults so they can obviously do what they want, but there are some really tough neighborhoods in Boston with gangs and guns (Homicides were up 68% last year in Boston) and all the other urban problems and teptations, and they will need some luck dealing with the street wise people they meet.

The soft, gooey, muddle-headed nature of this story and the pavlovian responses it has elicited in this thread nicely illustrate what is wrong with this country and with "conservatism." Reading this thread is like watching a wardful of lobotomy victims thanking their surgeons for their "fixit" operation.

I'm usually pretty cynical and skeptical, but sometimes you have to lose that outlook. Here are some kids who have lost both parents, who have spent their lives trying to avoid death for having the 'wrong' religious beliefs, who have spent years in refugee camps, who are trying to build a life from scratch in America. Is everything as hunky-dory as it seems from the story? Probably not. But I for one have a good deal of respect for the kids' attitude and diligence in the face of all they've been through.

Reading this story reminds me of a Ugandan pastor I met during the reign of Idi Amin. The pastor told me that a group of men broke into his house one night and killed a guest who was staying with the family. The next day he walked to the police station to report the crime. It was then the pastor learned that the murders were the police. Shooting the guest had been a mistake. They had been trying to kill the pastor.

The pastor took his family and fled from the country. When I met him he was planning on leaving his three daughters in the United States while he and his wife returned to Uganda to continue his ministry.

There is group of these young men in my city. A friend of mine assisted the local church sponsor in helping get the guys aclimated to modern life, took them shopping and helped them set up their apartment.

Starting at the basics she had to show them how to set the AC/Heat, wash dishes, shop, use the kitchen appliances, and general housekeeping. That was several months ago and now the guys are doing great .

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