Seed of South Sudan (25 page)

The elders in the camp advised a lot of people. Any group of people that was leaving, they called them in, and they made a ceremony. They bought a goat or cow and they slaughtered it and the whole group would come and then they would talk to them. These were not relatives necessarily, but older people in their communities in the camps. The elders each gave something he thought the person could get from the United States. Each elder talked. Those leaving had to listen. That's the tradition during one of these ceremonies. They warned us about drinking, looking for women, forming gangs, and going to drugs. If you are not from that country, don't take the bad things from that country that will spoil your life, they said. Look for what you are going for. If you go to school, go to school that you choose. If you are working, make money and then do something in your life. So that is the advice that they gave to each of the Lost Boys.

They knew that if you go to a different culture or a different place, you have a lot of problems fitting in. They wanted to warn us about that, but then they told us we should go, and we could come back to our country: “You have to remember us and don't forget our country.”

“And don't forget your people,” they said. Then when we would have our community group, the elder would call our name; then we would come and talk to him, and he would give a blessing that nothing would get in our way, and we would be free, and he would say, “Don't forget about us, and we want you to come back.”

And that's why people who have resettled here work hard and supply a lot of people with money so they can treat those who are sick in their families. And those who have resettled do a lot of other things, and they keep talking to their families, and they advise them and see how they are doing. And they also help them.

We who have come here try to tell people what is going on in Sudan. We have spoken before people in churches, in school, and among coworkers at our employers' businesses. Many people thought the war was going on still, that the war kept going and going, and that people still were dying. So when it stopped in 2005 and the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed, we felt we needed to tell people about it. So we did a lot of speaking to groups, and we still do, to educate people about our country. Even though there is peace there is still a great deal to do.

There have been a tremendous number of success stories of the Lost Boys coming to this country, and there have been some difficulties. Without a doubt, we feel there have been strong successes; many have completed advanced education, most are well employed in fields of work that needed assistance: plumbing old houses and assisting in renovating others, working in the processing plants, being distributors of building materials, working in South Sudan in new areas of infrastructure development. Even some of our group in other cities and other parts of the world that I'll describe later have become actors or models. But there has been sadness along the way also.

The commitment to one's people includes making a traditional marriage. This continues no matter what the hardships people endure, and no matter how long the separation from the intended wife. There are many of my friends whose stories are like mine—we work very hard to earn money for cows to pay the bride-prices for our wives, and then we have to wait a very long time to be able to live in the same country, whether in America or in South Sudan or elsewhere. Mostly this is due to the fact that we have to continue to pay for cows purchased, or we have to provide money now for the wife's and family's upkeep in Sudan. In addition, if we hope to bring a wife and family here there is an immigration fee close to the cost of the very expensive plane ticket, around $2,400! So that is the bind that young men such as myself find ourselves in. We do not complain, as the process of creating a Dinka family is our tradition, and we want our wives and families to reflect these values. But it does provide a source of stress for us—for family back in Sudan as well as for the young men here.

Probably no story shows this as much as that of Elder Ber Yuot; he had to wait quite a number of years to get married and live in the same area. Ber actually preceded us to Atlanta. He was here when we arrived, and we met him after Cyndie Heiskell discovered our poor living situation at Kensington Manor and got us moved to a better apartment after our arrival in the winter of 2001. Cyndie worked on our behalf and convinced one of the refugee services organizations to employ people to help us who can talk to us, as there was no Sudanese in that role before. So he worked for one of those organizations, I believe with the Episcopal Church.

We called him “Elder Ber” because he was older than us, and he helped us with every kind of thing. Anytime people needed to move, he would help them. Anytime you come to a new culture and a person has been there and he is one of your people, it helps a lot when you need help.

Ber had been relating to the woman who became his wife when we first knew him, so that was 2001. He had actually come to the United States from Egypt, so he was not a Lost Boy, but he was Dinka fleeing the regime while living in Khartoum, in the north. During the civil war, southern Sudanese people who had moved north were under attack also, but in a different way. The Sudanese government actually took the southerners who were in Khartoum and put them outside in a camp in the desert. The camp was called Jabrona. The government said they were supporting the rebels; that was their justification for rounding people up and sending them to the camp. Anyone who had a name that sounded Dinka or Nuer was accused of being SPLA, of supporting the rebels. They moved them from the city and took them out to the desert. So our people in the north were suffering, especially the Dinka and Nuer tribes as they are the largest in southern Sudan, and so these people were in a terrible situation. If they stayed, they would be incarcerated in these camps.

So Ber fled from Khartoum to Egypt. He made his own way to the United States through the immigration process. Other Sudanese were coming to the United States from Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, or Syria. They went to Egypt and these other countries because they were forced to leave the country of Sudan or be held in this desert camp. Ber and his fiancée had their marriage plans delayed until they could be here together. She stayed in Egypt while he came here. So they had this long-distance relationship. Finally, after a number of years working in refugee services, he joined the U.S. Army, and then he went to Egypt in 2008 or 2009, and they married there a year later. So finally they were married and they were closer to coming here together. But, since he was in the army, he was deployed to Iraq. And he died in a bomb blast two days after he arrived.

So these Dinka marriages still occur, but they have to await many other circumstances—immigration papers, the husband having enough money to support himself, send money home to family, pay for family illnesses, support the wife and children, pay fees to immigration and heavy airline fares. There are many obstacles. But as many of us live in community, we work hard, and we support each other. And we keep focused on why we are here—helping our country.

There were a few people who came forward to help the refugees and to publicly draw attention to our desperate conditions during the Second Civil War that ended in 2005—and since then. Possibly the most prominent of these was Manute Bol, the National Basketball Association player and fellow tribesman from southern Sudan. Manute was an extremely tall figure in basketball as well as to our Dinka people, to the refugees, and to the cause of an independent South Sudan.

What I remember about Manute is that he saved people's lives when we fled Ethiopia during the overthrow of the SPLA rebels' friend, Mengistu, the Communist dictator of Ethiopia. Southern Sudanese refugees had been shot dead in the Gilo River as they fled the camp at Pinyudo. When they finally made it back to a relatively safe area of southern Sudan that was in SPLA hands, Pachala, the refugees were massing outside the town, but did not have food or water. The UN had trouble trying to get food supplies to the refugees.

But Manute chartered an airplane to bring us food. He came himself to Pachala to see to its delivery. I did not see him that time, but I saw him later when he came to Kakuma Refugee Camp during the famine and poor food supplies in 1993 or 1994.

And then later, after I resettled in the United States, I attended a wedding of a fellow Dinka where he was also a guest, in Richmond, Virginia. Manute shared the table where we ate at a dinner the night before the wedding. He was very impressive. I remember that he asked the bride what she would like for a present. She said she'd like a plasma screen TV.

“That's just a small thing,” Manute told her. “That is nothing. I thought you wanted something big, like a car.” Manute was used to donating to his country in a big way. He gave everything that he had, leaving little for himself.

The people of South Sudan are richer for the life of Manute Bol, and certainly South Sudan might not exist without his contributions.

Manute was seven feet, seven inches tall; he played for the Washington Bullets, after being selected in the second round of the 1985 draft. He then played two years for the Golden State Warriors and then the Philadelphia 76ers for three seasons, and returned to Philadelphia after playing for other NBA teams.
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Manute's main advantage was his ability to block and discourage the opposition by his sheer size. According to Phil Jasner,
Philadelphia Inquirer
sports writer, Manute blocked an average of five shots a game as a rookie, and later, in one half, he knocked back 11 shots, eight of those in one quarter.
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“And amazingly, he loved taking threes,” Jasner wrote. “He was an astounding 20-for–91 with the warriors in '88–89, and playing for the Sixers in '92–93 knocked down six of 12 in the second half of a loss to the Phoenix Suns. He finished his career with 1599 points, 2,647 rebounds and 2,086 blocks.”
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Jasner went on: “Bol would donate virtually all of his salary to the rebel movement in Sudan, and to feed the hungry there. He would make personal appearances, then donate the fees. He beat the Chicago Bears' legendary Williams “Refrigerator” Perry in a celebrity boxing bout.” He even contracted for one day with an Indianapolis minor league hockey team even though he was unable to skate.
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Writer Alan Sharavsky said reports were that Manute donated $3.5 million to Sudanese causes along with “endless time and effort which I witnessed first hand.” Manute died of kidney problems and Stevens-Johnson syndrome in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was believed Bol fell victim to the skin disease after either taking kidney medication in Africa, or delaying treatment for the kidney condition while he was in South Sudan. He was there helping construct a school as part of his Sudan Sunrise charity and had been convinced to extend his stay until after the Sudanese elections. On his way back from southern Sudan, he'd stopped in Dulles, Virginia, and he was hospitalized in Charlottesville, where he succumbed.
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Bol was known for his practical jokes and his sense of humor. Once, he jumped center against Mark Eaton, of the Utah Jazz—who is 7 feet, 4 inches. Eaton told him, “Man you are big!”

“No, mon,” Bol told him with characteristic Dinka inflections, “You are big, I am just tall.”
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The Associated Press carried the story of Bol's funeral at the Gothic National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where 100 mourners gathered and the Republican senator from Kansas, Sam Brownback, eulogized him:

“I can't think of a person I know of in the world who used their celebrity status for a greater good than what Manute Bol did. He used it for his people. He gave his life for his people.”
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According to the AP, Bol lost some 250 members in the Sudanese civil war. He was buried in his home village of Turalei in Warab State of South Sudan, where he wanted to be buried, next to his grandfather. It was a long trip back. His casket arrived in Juba, South Sudan, on one day; the next, his family accompanied the body aboard a two-hour flight, followed by a four-hour road trip through the relatively unpopulated area.
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“Hundreds of people from surrounding villages walked to Turalei for the burial and lined the road from outside the settlement right up to his family's mud-walled hut,” Reuters reported. “Young men carried pictures of the sports star and a local basketball team accompanied the coffin that was lowered into the grave lined with cattle hides.” The ritual slaughtering of bulls—a high tribute—would continue for the next two or three days.
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Manute Bol's effects would long be felt in U.S. basketball. Shortly after his death, a young man from his home town who was a Lost Boy was playing basketball in New York, at a Lutheran international exchange school. Ring Ayoel followed Manute's example in immigrating to the United States to use his size to advantage in basketball. A 7-foot-4 center, together with three other young men from Sudan, also very tall, caused the exchange school to have the tallest team in basketball.
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