A notable quality among the refugees is their extraordinary ability to cope with chronic adversity and trauma even though some suffer from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
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'Lost Boys of Sudan' - where are they now? | MSUToday | Michigan State University - 2 views
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esettlement experiences based on whether they were minors or adults. Minors had to adjust (and some who are still minors continue to adjust) to American schools and living in American foster families, having lived mostly in peer groups prior to resettlement.
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Adults struggled to become economically independent, working long hours at low-paying jobs and struggling to find time and money to go to school.
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“He is like one of our adult children,” he said. “Both of his parents are deceased, and we try to fill in as best we can as his American parents.
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“In the beginning his needs were great – health issues, learning to take care of basic needs, learning to drive a car, etc. Now, he has become very independent. We have shared his sadness such as when his mother died in 2003.
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The MSU study noted that refugee camp experiences had significant positive and negative influences on the refugees’ adjustment in the United States. For instance, having suffered through hardship, they recognized the special opportunity they had coming to the United States to pursue an education and employment, according to Luster.
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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
shared by Elisa B on 24 Feb 13
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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described the Lost Boys, whom he met several times during their itinerant years, as ''among the most badly war-traumatized children ever examined.''
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repatriation
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The words describing America had piled up without real meaning: freedom, democracy, a safe place, a land with food enough for everyone
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he combination of war, famine and disease in southern Sudan has killed more than two million people and displaced another four million
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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
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espite their numbers, the lost boys tell stories that are remarkably similar and uniformly disturbing.
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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
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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.
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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.''
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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.
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Arguably, whether their parents are living or not, most of the Lost Boys have no choice but to move on
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Five weeks after his arrival, he was finding life in America to be hard -- harder than anyone had told him it would be
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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.
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''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.''
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?''
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The Lost Boys of Sudan: Finding their way in America - seattlepi.com - 3 views
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He was 3 when he fled civil war in Sudan and walked hundreds of miles on foot through the hot desert plains to the refugee camp.
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Yet, despite their name, the Lost Boys are remarkable in that many found their way to safety despite encountering unimaginable horrors.
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In 1999, the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees and the U.S. State Department referred about 3,800 children and young adults to the United States for permanent resettlement. Those under 18 were placed with foster families from Fargo, N.D., to Phoenix, Ariz.
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Since September, more than 100 such refugees have settled in Western Washington. More are expected to arrive by the summer's end.
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The Lost Boys - CBS News - 1 views
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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."
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Lost Boys of Sudan Refugee Resettlement - 1 views
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An estimated two million people have died and four million have been made refugees in the eighteen year old civil war in Sudan.
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hey remained in camps in Ethiopia until a newly-elected government expelled them in 1991, and they were forced to return to Sudan.
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Grouped in threes or fours, the Sudanese young men, now in their late teens and twenties, are being resettled in sites in the US where expertise and special services are provided for these refugees refugees who have been deprived of their childhood and family life. In addition to expert case workers, sponsoring churches make an invaluable contribution to the adjustment of the refugees.
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The three very gaunt and thinly clad young men arrived in the snow of a northern winter to a warm reception from Andrews Memorial UMC, James Street UMC, and the Church World Service (CWS) staff
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foundation on which they can rebuild their lives: an apartment, furnishings, clothing, kindly guidance and friendship, accompaniment to appointments, help in learning to cook for themselves, shop, and prepare for job interviews.
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Lost Boys II: Life In America - CBS News - 1 views
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Joseph Taban arrived in Kansas City and Abraham Nial got to Atlanta four months before Sept. 11, 2001.
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"And I wanted to tell him in the United States it's different, you need to think this way and that way. And basically on Sept. 11, I was re-educated because it wasn't a surprise to him.
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BBC NEWS | Africa | Sudan's 'lost boys' in America - 2 views
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Three years ago, the United States government agreed to allow 3,600 of them to begin new lives in America.
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I don't worry now that if I sleep that people are going to shoot me," says 19-year-old Abraham Maker, who arrived in the US in 2001 along with thousands of others.
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Abraham has been luckier than other lost boys, many of whom have had difficulty adjusting to life in America.
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The unlucky ones, those judged to be above 18, were too old for high school and so had to go to work. As they had no qualifications they were forced to take menial, low-paying jobs.
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"America wasn't paradise and it wasn't as easy as they told you in the camps," says Samuel, who has done the rounds of menial jobs: he's been a security guard and is now a bagger, someone who puts shoppers' groceries in their bags at supermarkets.
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Lost Boys of the Sudan - 0 views
www.lostboyschicago.com/LostBoys.htm
what is the what the lost boys bbc news research africa sudan boys
shared by Molly Sunwoo on 22 Feb 13
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In 2001, intolerable living conditions in the refugee camp gave the United States government reason to resettle some 4,000 of these now young men in America.
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ESPN.com: Page 2 : Walk of life for Lost Boy runner - 2 views
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Yuot's life depended on how fast and how far his tiny bare feet could take him every day, with hot sand prickling every step, for a thousand miles with little or no sleep, day after day, night after night, across Sudan, the largest country in Africa. So he walked. For his life.
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"The physical elements of the desert were extreme. The boys had to deal with hunger and thirst issues along the way. It's hard to believe what they endured. It's certainly a group of young men who are exceptional. What really got these boys through was a reliance on each other.
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During the journey, many died of starvation. Many drowned. Some were shot. Some were devoured by crocodiles.
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"They were young and they went on this trek that was close to 1,000 miles. They had to endure all of the elements. Many of them saw death on their journey and in Kenya.
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To survive, they walked. They marched through their war-torn country, seeking refuge, first in Ethiopia, then Kenya and, eventually, the United States.
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The boys were admired for it. It was really a test of endurance to go through what they did. It's why each one of those boys is so resilient today."
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"There were some areas of the desert when we had no water at all, so we had to drink out of small creeks where animals and other people used to go to the bathroom
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'Lost Boy' Begs US to Help End Sudan Slave Trade - World - CBN News - Christian News 24... - 1 views
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He was a young boy when Arab raiders ransacked his village, killed the men, and bound Dang and his mother to a camel.
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Drunk and abusive, his slave master often beat him. Once, as punishment, he had chili peppers rubbed into his eyes, causing him to go blind.
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Experts say there's really no concrete estimate on the number of slaves in Sudan. They blame the absence of data on a lack of concern in the international community.
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CSI rescued Deng and brought him to the United States, where doctors recently operated on his eyes. It's unclear how much of his sight he may regain.
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"The offspring of those women who are enslaved when they're raped by their masters or their master's sons will become Muslim. They have no choice," Eibner explained.