Seed of South Sudan (15 page)

There were many things to think about in resettling to a new country. The main worry was leaving Sudan and not knowing when we would return. We talked about this among ourselves a lot. But the choice of going or staying was not totally ours. There would be a selection process. The United States would send representatives to talk to us, to see whether we should be among those to be resettled. There would be medical exams to make sure we were healthy enough to go. And there would be training to prepare us for the new country. Most of us had only ridden in minibuses, never a car. We'd not talked on a telephone, much less a cell phone, and had yet to see a television. Our water came mainly from rivers, in our experience, except for the large tanks that held water pumped from many more feet down below us. The idea of cities where miles of pipes carried water across miles and miles of land was beyond anything we had dreamed of.

Many of us wanted to go to the United States. We were anxious to continue our studies. Now that we had been educated in the camp schools, we were ready for more. And we wanted to begin our lives, to learn professions that we could then come back to Sudan and use to build the homes and canals and water systems and electrical grids that the southern part of the country needed.

I had a dream that started back in Poktub, when we saw all the cranes and the equipment building the Jonglei Canal. There were buildings and roads and large tractors and structures like I had never seen. It opened my eyes, those three months we spent making and selling our goods to the people there, to the fact that we had none of that kind of development anywhere in my village or anywhere near Rumbek. The project was now stalled, but even so, there were water systems and buildings and roads and some electricity—all things we did not have in my village.

All those things we needed, but our politicians that we sent from southern Sudan to Khartoum to represent us never brought the things we needed, like water systems, clinics, housing, and electricity, and the politicians just stayed in Khartoum. Meanwhile, the oil that was only on southern Sudan's land was pumped to northern Sudan and the money for that went to and stayed in Khartoum. No wonder my village and all the others in southern Sudan did not have the things they needed!

Reflecting on what I'd seen at Poktub, I decided I wanted to go to college to learn how to be a geologist, so I could find more oil in Sudan. Only this would be oil to benefit my area.

Some discussions began in 1999, but it was late in November 2000 before the possibility of resettlement became real. And then it happened very quickly. Through that process I just mentioned, boys were first selected after they had been identified in the old books from Pinyudo. We came out of our groups. Then we were interviewed by U.S. immigration staff. Mobile clinics were set up along with classrooms to give instruction for those being resettled. Our names came up on a board, and we went through physical exams and an orientation course.

The course helped us understand about cold weather or other conditions and how to prepare for it, we were educated on the money system that was the basis of the economy in the United States, we were told how to prepare for going to school in the new city and many more new things to anticipate in our new homes. We were told about our sponsors and how important they would be and about other agencies that would help us in the transition. We would live together in groups in our first homes, so we would have each other.

Then a plane swept in from Nairobi, landing on a field near where we were. This was the airfield for the town of Kakuma, but it was next to our camp. And then the first Lost Boys—those who were younger than 18 and who would become part of foster families in the United States—boarded the plane and took off for Nairobi and eventually for destinations in the United States. There were two flights a day with a total of about 95 Lost Boys. A total of 400 underage boys and girls left, and they were resettled with families, with a large majority going to Phoenix, Arizona. Another 40 went to Mississippi. Others of the underage boys and girls went to Boston, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

The plane arrived in the morning, and it took a load of 46 or 47. The plane flew to Nairobi, Kenya, and let the passengers out. The plane that had delivered them to Nairobi turned around and came for another load that left at 2 p.m. From Nairobi, the refugees then boarded a flight to Amsterdam. From there they flew to New York and then to their destination cities.

So over several days this unheard of spectacle unfolded—many young men and women walking up a ramp into a plane, their many friends watching from behind a fence as they took off into the sky like a bird or a vulture, disappearing into the sky.

In early 2001, Lost Boys now 18 and over were identified and went through the same process. I was in the first group of the 18-year-old Lost Boys to leave Kakuma. We had interviews with Immigration, and then very quickly we had our physicals and went through a shortened orientation—all this happened in four days. That's when I found out I would be one of six going to Atlanta, Georgia. My three roommates and I would be sponsored by Lutheran Ministries of Georgia, which is now known as Lutheran Services of Georgia (LSG).

The roommates I would have were Tingke Poundak Reec, who was Agar Dinka from the same area I was; Mapuor Mabor Pur, a Cic Dinka from my area also; and Makuol Akuei, a Tuic Dinka from Jonglei province (this is the province where the canal was being built where my original group stayed for three months on the way to Ethiopia). Tingke was actually not in our travel group, but arrived one day after we arrived in Georgia.

All I knew of the United States was the airports we would visit during this trip—New York City and D.C. I knew nothing of Georgia. The only states that I was familiar with at all were North and South Dakota, as that is where some in our camp were resettled during the mid– and late 1990s.

On February 12, we were on the morning plane. On the plane were 43 who would go to several locations: Atlanta, Virginia, Vermont, Salt Lake City, and California. In fact, my cousin Kolnyin Nak Goljok—he is my mother's elder sister's son—was in Kakuma Camp and was on our plane; he traveled with us as far as New York. His final destination was San Jose, California, where he still lives, working for Home Depot.

At each juncture of our trip, there was a representative of the IOM, the International Organization for Migration, to make sure that we got to the next point and that our papers were processed. This happened at each transfer point except for the final connection.

We were whisked off to Nairobi where we waited in the airport for many hours. When we came into Nairobi and saw below us the sprawling city and the tall buildings, I experienced again that anger at our politicians for not working for us in southern Sudan to get the buildings and the businesses and the roads and communications that we saw there in Nairobi. In this country right next to southern Sudan, there was incredible development. In Rumbek, our only large town, there were only one-story buildings. Where were our streets and electricity and all those things that Kenya had?

Then we got on a huge plane that took us to Amsterdam. We stayed overnight in a hotel, and then we flew the next day to JFK airport in New York City. When we were going through customs at JFK, one of our group asked to use the restroom. It was a highly secure restroom, with locks on the outside door, and he was told not to close the door completely. The door closed anyway, and it locked him in, and there was no one in the area at the time with a key. We waited and finally someone with a key came and got him out. We were really worried that he'd never get out.

We spent the night in a big hotel in New York. Another problem happened when we were being collected at the hotel the next morning to return to the airport. We all had different flights because we were going to several U.S. cities. The person who came up and got us called them on the phone, but they didn't pick up. We waited for like two hours, and then they had to make a check on every room that had a Lost Boy. So that was like 43 boys, two people to a room. So we finally got there to the airport.

We flew to Washington Dulles, and here we were on our own. We found our gate, and since there were no papers to process, we did not need assistance. We stayed there for three hours. Then we took off and arrived in Atlanta on February 14 in the evening, about 5 or 6 o'clock. We were met by a caseworker from Lutheran Services of Georgia, a Somalian guy named Mustafa Noor, and he brought us to an apartment at Kensington Manor in Stone Mountain, Georgia. He moved us in with things like dining area furniture and mattresses on the floor and a telephone.

It was really cold, and there was no heat. Our unit was on the first level, way down below, with two floors above us. There was a creek that was going by, so it seemed even colder. Also, the one toilet in the apartment did not work. We had electricity. So there was a stove, and we tried to heat the apartment with the heat from the stove. This was at night when we arrived, so in the morning we tried to find the management office. We went there, and we asked for repairs, and they said they would take care of it, but they didn't. We asked for blankets, and we didn't get that. We were freezing, as it was February in Atlanta, and we were not happy.

We managed day to day, but it was not good. We were cold all the time. We had a phone and we made calls. Lutheran Services of Georgia was our sponsor, so we called them when we needed things. Our names were not on the lease; it may have been our sponsor's.

Our task was to find jobs right away. There was some financial assistance to us for three months, and then we were to be on our own, paying our own rent and utilities. So getting a job was what we tried to do right away. Lutheran Services had caseworkers who helped us find jobs; they also had caseworkers who could help us apply for food stamps. We applied for everything.

One day at our apartment, a lady came to see us who was a volunteer. Her name was Cyndie Heiskell, and she saw how poorly we were living. She also told us that she had heard of the Lost Boys a long time before. In fact, she had dreams about us before much was known in the United States about our civil war. She said she'd been trying to find out about us ever since the dreams. Finally, through a chance meeting at her church with someone who'd been in Sudan, she was able to connect with us.

Cyndie even knew the name of the person from the United States who had died in a plane crash trying to come see us at Pinyudo. It was U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland of Texas, who had made several trips to Ethiopia and Sudan in an attempt to see if he could get the United States to do something to help the refugees. It was a tragedy that he had died. How close we had come to getting aid earlier—maybe even U.S. help in stopping the war! It was interesting to me that Cyndie knew so much about our situation. It was gratifying to hear that some in the United States had tried to help us, even long ago.

Cyndie's father was a former Coca-Cola executive who had started the first canning plant for Cokes. Her parents subsequently founded a private school in Atlanta, and she was the director of the school, the Heiskell School. She was a very powerful person. She talked to somebody in D.C., and that's when they moved all our things to Le Carre apartments. The director of Lutheran Services of Georgia came and moved us to Le Carre, a much better apartment.

In the meantime—and this was all within our first month in Georgia—we got jobs, all at the DeKalb Farmers Market, so we did not need those food stamps after all. The DeKalb Farmers Market was a bus ride away and could be walked as well if need be. We were in the produce area: Table One, Table Two and Table Three. We were in different shifts. Tingke was in the first shift. I was in second shift. Makuol and Mapour were in the third shift, where they started at three and got off at nine.

We set about making a life in Georgia. We worked and shopped and found our way around Atlanta, on a limited basis, for we depended on MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) and rides from others. LSG and other volunteer agencies supplied our apartments with furniture, a TV, and basic needs. We learned how to take a MARTA bus. We were given orientations through LSG and took English as a Second Language classes. About that time, too, we tried to find a Catholic church nearby, and we called Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Stone Mountain. We were referred to Gini Eagen at the church, and she tried to help us find our way by using local buses. We attempted the trip, which involved some bus transfers, but it didn't work out. So we called her again. This time, she offered to come ride with us so we would not get lost.

The lady who showed up to help us was tall and thin and blond, and she was surprised to find so many Sudanese who were Catholic. There were probably 10 of us that day, as in talking to people in our classes or in our apartments, we found there were quite a few local Sudanese. Well, we got on the buses and we transferred, but in the end, we had to walk quite a way, too. So here was blonde Gini leading all of us very dark, sometimes very tall Sudanese, down Memorial Drive and down the next streets to get to church. But we got to hear Mass for the first time in our new country, and it was very welcoming.

After Gini talked to us for a while she learned that there were a number of aid agencies providing a variety of services and food, job advice, English lessons and other needs. She felt the best thing the church could do to help us was to provide a Mass in our community so that we did not have to go through the arduous double bus transfer and walking method to hear Mass. So for several years, from that time on, Father Kenny, pastor at Corpus Christi, Gini, and Father Jose Kochuparampil, made sure that each Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. the Sudanese community in Clarkston heard Mass at Clarkston Community Center. Father Jose was our usual celebrant, and the Corpus Christi parish social welfare fund paid the cost of rental for the building.

Many Sudanese families were able to join us, and we had a community of 70 or 80 on a regular basis. Being dependent on public transportation or our feet, it was a great blessing to be able to walk to our weekly Mass and to worship together as we had in Kakuma Refugee Camp.