A few days ago, they had left a small mud hut in a blistering hot Kenyan refugee camp, where after walking for hundreds of miles across Sudan they had lived as orphans for the past nine years.
Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url
1More
IRC Helps Lost Boys Of Sudan Rebuild Their Lives In The United States | International R... - 0 views
30More
shared by Elisa B on 24 Feb 13
- No Cached
The Lost Boys of Sudan; The Long, Long, Long Road to Fargo - New York Times - 2 views
www.nytimes.com/...g-long-long-road-to-fargo.html
boys sudan new york times resettlement their story lost
![](/images/link.gif)
-
a group of roughly 10,000 boys who arrived in Kenya in 1992 seeking refuge from their country's fractious civil war, which pits a northern, Khartoum-based Islamic government against Christian and animist rebels in the south
-
Many died from starvation or thirst. Others drowned or were eaten by crocodiles as soldiers forced them to cross a swollen Ethiopian river. According to U.S. State Department estimates, during an upsurge in fighting that began in 1987, some 17,000 boys were separated from their families and fled southern Sudan in an exodus of biblical proportions. Yet by the time the Lost Boys reached the Kakuma Refugee Camp, their numbers had been cut nearly in half.
- ...25 more annotations...
-
The majority of the boys belonged to the Dinka or Nuer tribes, and most were then between the ages of 8 and 18. (Most of the boys don't know for sure how old they are; aid workers assigned them approximate ages after they arrived in 1992.) As Red Cross and United Nations relief workers scrambled to find shelter for them, the boys -- which is how they all, regardless of age, refer to one another -- described an almost unfathomable journey.
-
described the Lost Boys, whom he met several times during their itinerant years, as ''among the most badly war-traumatized children ever examined.''
-
repatriation
-
The words describing America had piled up without real meaning: freedom, democracy, a safe place, a land with food enough for everyone
-
he combination of war, famine and disease in southern Sudan has killed more than two million people and displaced another four million
-
They're going from an environment where you've basically been given everything at the camp to an environment where you have to work, you have to produce,'' says Steve Redding, who directs the Kenya and southern Sudan programs of International Rescue Committee. ''It's a huge leap
-
espite their numbers, the lost boys tell stories that are remarkably similar and uniformly disturbing.
-
While they can be strikingly unemotional describing the horrors of their pasts, they nonetheless seem eager for Americans to appreciate the plight of their country. Predictably, those who had been in the United States a month or more were the most comfortable reflecting on what they had been through, while newer arrivals often seemed overwhelmed
-
as many as 74 percent of the boys survived shelling or air bombardment, 85 percent saw someone die from starvation, 92 percent said they were shot at and 97 percent witnessed a killing.
-
Terry Walsh, vice president for a refugee program run by Catholic Social Services in Lansing, Mich. ''For most refugees, education is important. But I've never met a group more dedicated to it. Education has always been the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.''
-
According to psychologists who work with war victims, refugee children who have finally reached a safe and stable environment are often confronted with long-suppressed feelings of fear, guilt and grief over what they have been through.
-
Arguably, whether their parents are living or not, most of the Lost Boys have no choice but to move on
-
Five weeks after his arrival, he was finding life in America to be hard -- harder than anyone had told him it would be
-
Without an American host family or church organization to help buffer the expenses, the three brothers seemed to grow more despondent with each passing week.
-
''When someone first comes to this country as a refugee,'' he says, ''there's a euphoria of starting anew. But when that starts to wear off, a lot of problems can surface.''
-
This is a stove burner. this is a can opener. This is a brush for your teeth. The new things came in a tumble. The brothers' home was a sparsely furnished two-bedroom apartment in the basement of a sterile-looking complex on Fargo's south side, for which they would pay $445 a month. It had been stocked by a resettlement agency employee, primarily with donations from area churches and businesses, and the randomness reflected as much: there were two bundt pans, six tubes of toothpaste and no towels or cutting knives. Nonetheless, it was a good start. A loaf of white bread sat on the counter alongside a bunch of ripe bananas. There were cans of beans, a jumbo box of Corn Flakes, tea bags, a modest collection of mismatched dishes and a gallon of whole milk in the refrigerator.
-
And so began an opening spree. We opened a bag of potato chips. We opened a can of beans and untwisted the tie on the bagged loaf of bread. We unwrapped some I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and dropped a pat to sizzle in a hot pan on the stove. We cracked eggs, each boy taking his turn, erupting into paroxysms of laughter as the shell shattered in his grasp. After the eggs were scrambled and the food laid out, Peter, Maduk and Riak sat down and ate, chewing loudly, not saying a word until most of it was gone.
-
Hornbacher's, a standard-issue Midwestern grocery store, proved to be full of wonders. The electric doors. The grocery carts. The riotous rows of brightly packaged food and the ample-bodied white people who filled their carts with whatever they wished to buy. With the eyes of nearly every shopper in the store on them, the boys wandered tentatively through the produce section, looking but not touching, until Riak discovered a bin of green mangoes, which triggered a round of excited Dinka chatter. As we made our way through the store, they recognized nothing else except a bag of rice, but each new aisle seemed to embolden them, and soon they were moving as a meticulous three-man inspection team, studying labels, squeezing boxes and quietly pronouncing the names of everything from Special K to Velveeta.
-
The next aisle over, Peter touched my shoulder. He was holding a can of Purina dog food. ''Excuse me, Sara, but can you tell me what this is?'' Behind him, the pet food was stacked practically floor to ceiling. ''Um, that's food for our dogs,'' I answered, cringing at what that must sound like to a man who had spent the last eight years eating porridge. ''Ah, I see,'' Peter said, replacing the can on the shelf and appearing satisfied. He pushed his grocery cart a few more steps and then turned again to face me, looking quizzical. ''Tell me,'' he said, ''what is the work of dogs in this country?''
5More
Office Of Refugee Resettlement: Policy Guidance & Reporting Forms - 0 views
-
the U.S. refugee Resettlement Program welcomed a new group of refugees that was unique in many respects
-
many boys left their villages for refugee camps in Ethiopia. Some traveled with friends or relatives, others slipped away on their own at night. Few had any idea of what lay ahead of them, believing that their journey would last only a few days. Continually under threat, they fled for their lives, losing their way in the wilderness. They lost everything en route to soldiers, swindlers, or bandits. Many fell victim to lethal diseases. Others were so weakened by hunger and lack of sleep that they could go no further and sat down by the roadside, prey for lions and other wild animals.
-
n 1983, civil war broke out between the northern Arabic-speaking government of Sudan and southern tribes seeking autonomy. Since then, nearly two million people have died and five million have been displaced. Among those displaced are at least 20,000 children, mostly boys, between 7 and 17 years of age who were separated from their families.
- ...1 more annotation...
-
Hungry, frightened and weakened by sleeplessness and disease, they made their way to camps in Sudan, where they received help from the International Committee of the Red Cross. From there, they then traveled on foot to safety in northern Kenya. Since 1992, UNICEF has been able to reunite nearly 1,200 boys with their families. But thousands more have remained in the dusty, fly-ridden refugee camp at Kakuma, where they have had to scrape for food and struggle for education.