The Lost Boys - CBS News - 1 views
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It's the largest resettlement of its kind in American history.
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Most were 7 or 8 when their troubles began in 1987. That's when their predominantly Christian villages in southern Sudan were attacked by Islamic forces from the north.
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Twelve thousand boys made it to a refugee camp in Ethiopia, where they stayed four years. But then civil war broke out there and the boys were chased out at gunpoint to the Gilo River. Many were shot. Many drowned. Many were eaten by crocodiles.
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"They feel that education will speak on behalf of them where their parents can't," says Chanoff, the American aid worker. "So they have a saying, it's actually a very important saying that they have, education is my mother and my father."
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The survivors of the Gilo started walking back into southern Sudan. They walked across deserts, over mountains. They had no food or water and ate wet mud.
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For nine years, they've been surviving on one meal a day - wheat flour and maize – in the camp. In 2000, U.S. government began bringing them to America. Before they go, Chanoff gives them a crash course in America 101.
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"Here are these boys that are products of this horrific civil war and they're coming to our heartland and they're coming to our homes," says Chanoff. "And you know what? People are falling in love with them. They think they're the sweetest, most amazing kids in the world and they're going to be a part of America now and that is unbelievable."