Citizen Akoy

by Steve Marantz

  Winter came, and the Agaus experienced frigid temperatures and snow for the first time. “A lot of snow,” Adaw said. “The children played in it—they liked it. We didn’t like it. We put the heat up to 80. We said, ‘We have to go somewhere else.’” They yearned for a warmer clime.

  In the spring Adaw and Madut heard Manute Bol speak at a local college. The 7-foot-7-inch Bol had been Sudan’s first NBA player and came from Turalei, in the northwest of south Sudan, about eighty-five miles on a dusty road from Madut’s hometown of Gogrial. Born into a traditional and prosperous Dinka family in 1962, Bol tended cows as a youth and once killed a lion with a spear. He twice ran away from home to avoid ritual scarification of his head and the removal of six lower teeth but then gave in to appease his father. (As an adult in the United States he wore false teeth.)

  Bol did not touch a basketball until he was seventeen, after which he played on teams in Wau and Khartoum and for the Sudanese national team. He was persuaded to come to the United States, where he put in one season at the University of Bridgeport, was taken by the Washington Bullets in the 1985 draft, and as a rookie set a record for blocked shots, averaging 5 per game, thanks to his fingertip-to-fingertip wingspan of 8 feet 6 inches. His NBA career spanned ten seasons with four teams. Limited on offense due to his skeletal two-hundred-pound frame, Bol specialized as a defender and twice led the NBA in blocked shots, ending his career with 2,086 block shots and 1,599 points—the only player with more blocks than points scored. For most of his career Bol was the tallest player ever in the NBA, until 1993, when the Bullets drafted Gheorghe Muresan, a Romanian who was a few centimeters taller.

  Near the end of his NBA career Bol began to speak out against the Khartoum government. “If I were in Sudan right now I would be starving with the rest of my people,” Bol said at an Oxfam America fundraiser in Washington. “I eat good food here in America and I go to sleep at night and then when I wake up in the morning I see something on TV and feel really terrible. There’s nothing I can do. I have about seventy of my people right now homeless in the capital of Sudan. They have no place to go.” After he retired in 1995, Bol immersed himself in humanitarian work for south Sudan and settled in Egypt.

  Bol returned to south Sudan in 1998 and donated an estimated $3.5 million to a Dinka-led rebel group, lost money in business deals, and divorced his Dinka wife and mother of his four children. In south Sudan, where plural marriage is not uncommon, Bol married two younger women and had five more children.

  Then Bol was invited by the Sudanese government to become the minister of sports and culture. Seeing it as an opportunity to advocate his people’s interests to the Islamic government, Bol accepted. But once in Khartoum, he was told the job would not be his unless he renounced Christianity and converted to Islam. When he refused, the government seized his travel documents and detained him in Khartoum for three years, during which time his health deteriorated. He finally escaped after he paid a bribe, according to one account. Another version was that he went to the Khartoum airport in a calculated gamble that the government wouldn’t stop him in front of BBC cameras and reporters.

  In 2002 Bol was admitted to the United States as a religious refugee and settled in West Hartford, Connecticut. At that point Bol was almost destitute, and his rent was paid by a Catholic charity. To raise funds, he traded on his celebrity on the lecture circuit and as the world’s tallest jockey, hockey player, and boxer. He was a sideshow with a smile on his face because the money was going to his people. When the Sudanese Army sent murderous Janjaweed militia on horseback to attack the Darfur region in 2003, Nicholas Kristof wrote in the New York Times, Bol “was one of the southern Sudanese who led the way in protesting the slaughter.”

  Bol suffered a broken neck in a car accident in 2004 and struggled to regain his mobility. Despite his financial and health problems, Bol’s dream was to build coed multi-faith schools in which Christians in south Sudan studied alongside Muslims from northern Sudan. The first school was being built in Turalei when Bol died in June 2010 from complications of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, a rare skin disease that came from medication he had received in Africa. A memorial service was held at the National Cathedral in Washington, where his body lay in a custom-built eight-foot casket. Bol was, Kristof wrote, “a moral giant who was unsurpassed in leveraging his fame on behalf of the neediest people on earth.”

  But on that April evening in 2003 Bol was in Maryland to raise funds. He spoke in Dinka and English and urged the refugees in the audience to work hard and to adopt good models of behavior so that Americans would respect them and admit more south Sudanese refugees. After the event at the college, Adaw and Madut were introduced to Bol. They talked about the strife at home and about Egypt, where Bol had lived after his retirement from basketball. They connected as refugees and parents. “We talked about the futures of our kids,” Adaw recalled. That evening Adaw regaled Akoy with her account of meeting south Sudan’s most famous athlete. She upgraded her opinion of basketball, and he gave Manute Bol a cherished place in his heart.

  By spring Madut was dissatisfied with his job; he wanted work that paid more but was held back by his limited English. Then their friend Joseph told them about Omaha. Joseph’s wife and three children already had moved to the Nebraska city on the Missouri River to join relatives. Omaha had a growing south Sudanese community of 3,000–4,000 refugees. There were jobs in meat processing that paid up to twelve dollars an hour and required minimal English. Housing costs were lower, and some south Sudanese actually had bought their own homes, which was Adaw’s fantasy. The public schools were well regarded. Joseph told them he was moving to Omaha. “You should move to Omaha too,” Joseph said.

  Omaha was on the Agaus’ radar when the third World Refugee Day was held in June 2003. It paid tribute to “Refugee Youth” between twelve and twenty-four, a group that accounted for about one-third of 20 million refugees worldwide. “A refugee’s life is never an easy one, but it’s especially tough on young people who are robbed of what should be the most formative, promising and exciting years of their lives,” said Ruud Lubbers, UN high commissioner for refugees. “At a time when they should be full of hope and dreams for the future, they are instead faced with the harsh reality of displacement and deprivation. If refugee situations drag on for years with no political solution in sight, the enormous potential of whole generations can be lost in the dust of a forgotten camp. This is a real tragedy.”

  The long-term solutions, Lubbers said, were repatriation, integration in countries of first asylum, or resettlement to third countries. “We must also ensure that young refugees are given every opportunity possible to develop their potential through a stable environment free of exploitation, abuse or forced conscription; through education and skills training to prepare them for the future; through proper nutrition and health care; and through nurturing the family unit and ensuring that those who are alone get the special help and protection they deserve,” Lubbers said.

  World Refugee Day came and went, and soon enough Adaw and Madut decided to move to Omaha, in part because they believed it offered a better future for their children. “The children were happy in Maryland—they didn’t want to leave,” Adaw said. “Maguy used to say, ‘Why we need to leave America now?’ He thought Omaha was another country. We say to him, ‘It’s still America—just a different place. A better place.’”

  The Agaus were blissfully unaware of Nebraska winters when their flight touched down in Omaha in August 2003. Their friend, Joseph, welcomed them. They started anew—again.

  3

  Street of Dreams

  In Omaha Akoy’s family moved into Mason School Apartments, a nineteenth-century, two-and-a-half story Romanesque Revival fortress of brick with pressed metal ceilings and transom windows. The Mason, as it was known, was a Nebraska version of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, minus the gothic spires. To Akoy, a fan of the Harry Potter series, this was a good thing. Harry Potter’s wizardry was what Akoy needed to h
elp his family and himself. Harry Potter’s defense of “mudbloods,” outcasts stigmatized by evil Lord Voldemort, was a kindness all refugees and immigrants needed.

  The Mason had been an elementary school from 1888 to 1983 and was converted to residential housing in 1987. Its address on South Twenty-Fourth Street, on a depressed edge of downtown, connected Akoy’s family to prior waves of immigrants and refugees. Twenty-Fourth Street was known as the “Street of Dreams” for its cherished place in Omaha’s history and imagination. North Twenty-Fourth had beckoned Irish, Scandinavians, Germans, Jews, and Italians through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and African Americans from the South after World War I. South Twenty-Fourth, a few miles down from the Mason, was close to Omaha’s stockyards and meatpacking industry, which had attracted the Irish, Italians, Poles, Czechs, Germans, Lithuanians, and—after World War I—Mexicans. Central and South Americans came later.

  In the 1970s public education “refugees” came to Twenty-Fourth Street when Omaha designated the Mason’s south annex—when it was still a school—as a special education facility for troubled students. “We got the kids that other schools couldn’t handle or didn’t want,” said Mabel Boyd, the school secretary from 1969 to 1983. “Some of them had terrible problems. Some were violent. They came to Mason for help.”

  Now south Sudanese refugees occupied one-third of the thirty-two residential units at the Mason, among which was the three-bedroom unit of Joseph and his family. “Joseph gave us one of his bedrooms; Akoy and Maguy stayed with some other south Sudanese in the building,” Adaw said.

  South Sudanese arrived in Omaha in the mid-1990s, some as secondary migrants from cities in New York, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Iowa that were too cold or expensive or lacked community support. Several churches provided necessities, while a nonprofit agency, Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska, assisted new refugees, although it had no services for secondary migrants until 2007. One of the early arrivals was Tor Kuet, who had spent two years in a Kenyan refugee camp and three years in South Dakota before he resettled in Omaha. A Seventh Day Adventist with an activist instinct, Kuet founded the nonprofit South Sudanese Community Association (SSCA) in 1997 for both new refugees and secondary migrants. Kuet organized volunteers to teach English and translate for courts, hospitals, human services, and housing, as well as to help with job interviews and applications.

  Soon the SSCA, with a grant from the Ethiopian Community Development Council and federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, hired Sudanese caseworkers. A collaborative of service providers that included the SSCA formed the Omaha Refugee Task Force in 2000. Omaha Public Schools and City of Omaha Workforce Development offered assistance by 2001. Programs for health, parenting, and women were added as refugees from Burundi, Congo, Ethiopia, Liberia, and Somalia made their way to Omaha, though in fewer numbers than the south Sudanese. In late 2002 a program called Project Welcome, started by a Creighton theology professor, Joan Mueller, began to offer academic instruction and legal and dental services to south Sudanese in cooperation with Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in South Omaha.

  The SSCA’s on-site English and driving classes were the first services accessed by Adaw and Madut upon their arrival in Omaha. Madut was hired to cut and trim meat at the Tyson Foods plant, where Joseph worked, across the river in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Adaw was hired to clean rooms at a Hilton Hotel where Joseph’s wife worked. Akoy and Maguy were enrolled in elementary school. Within a couple of months the Agaus rented their own three-bedroom apartment at the Mason—no. 207—for $700. Adaw and Madut worked opposite schedules so that one could be home with the kids, but when neither was home, Akoy, who turned nine that November, was in charge.

  Adjacent to the Mason was a modest wood-frame Baptist church. Across the street was a Habitat for Humanity “ReStore” that sold used furniture, appliances, and building materials. Up the block on Leavenworth Avenue was the Four Aces convenience store. A bit further, at Twenty-Fifth and Farnam, was the south Sudanese commercial hub: a small restaurant and grocery; a few storefronts; and the Sudanese Center, a social club. The surrounding residential neighborhood, abandoned by the white middle class in the 1970s, was in various stages of blight and reclamation.

  Akoy was drawn to a basketball court in the parking lot in front of the Baptist church. He joined the pickup games and met a south Sudanese boy, Tarir “Ty” Gatuoch, who lived at the Mason. The two squared off in one-on-one or two-on-two games, and Ty, who was older by three years and perhaps more, had the upper hand. “I used to beat him bad,” Gatuoch said. “But he wanted to keep going no matter how many losses. He played against guys that were bigger and stronger, and he was competitive. He pushed me because he wouldn’t quit.”

  Off the court Ty and Akoy struck up a friendship based on mutual needs. Akoy needed a big brother figure; Ty, a family. “I never had a mother; she died when I was young,” Gatuoch said. “My dad wasn’t around much. When I first met Akoy, we didn’t have food at home. I would go to his place; his mother became my mother.”

  The Mason proved to be hospitable and nurturing. It opened a room with computers and internet where kids did homework and parents looked for jobs and filled out applications online. It built a new basketball court along Twenty-Fourth Street that was an upgrade on the Baptist church court. The building manager set up a volleyball net and bought volleyballs. In cold weather Akoy and his pals—Ty, Mohammad, Bolus, and Sam—played soccer and football in the double-wide hallways laid with thin carpet—to the annoyance of parents. Murals and pastorals of African life brightened walls in the common area. Next door the Baptist church offered activities and classes and even arranged an excursion to Six Flags amusement park. Akoy had warm regard for the ministry of “Pastor Bob and Becky.”

  The Fourth World Refugee Day in June 2004, with a theme of “feel at home,” was the first for the Agaus in Omaha. It was observed after Sudan’s government unleashed Islamic militia, known as Janjaweed, in the Darfur region. The resultant massacre killed 30,000, left 300,000 more at risk of imminent death, left one million homeless, and forced 180,000 refugees to eastern Chad. Adaw was terrified for her mother and grandmother, who had remained in south Sudan, unwilling to leave. Madut worried about his brother in south Sudan. In Washington, Colin Powell said, “Today, together, we pledge to support and to protect the world refugees as they seek a new life, a better life. . . . We vow to help them ‘feel at home’ within the international family, within the international community.” Alongside Powell was actress Angelina Jolie, who held the honorary title of UNHCR goodwill ambassador after her trips to Chad and other countries to help refugees. Jolie said, “If you’ve never met a refugee, you don’t know what you are missing. They are some of the most amazing people you could ever meet. I continue to be in awe of their courageous spirit and their ability to go on despite the difficulties they face. It is that strength of spirit we celebrate today.”

  At a worship service at Omaha’s First Lutheran Church, attended by about 120 south Sudanese, the Rev. Goanar Chol told the congregants to be proud of their dark skin. “Accept yourself as you are,” Chol said. “God wants you as you are. If one body is not reconciled to itself, there can be no peace.” In other words, “feel at home” in your skin.

  If Omaha wasn’t exactly home, its south Sudanese population now was estimated at six thousand, the majority of whom were from the Nuer tribe. In September a crowd of south Sudanese gathered at Memorial Park in central Omaha to pray for an end to the crisis in Sudan. Those prayers were answered, sort of, when the Islamic government and rebel groups signed a peace accord in January 2005 that gave south Sudan autonomy and the promise of a popular vote for independence in 2011. Cautious hope replaced despair as south Sudan became Southern Sudan Autonomous Region and lower-case “south” was replaced with upper-case “South.”

  Adaw gave birth to Atong, her fifth child and second daughter, in December 2004. Adaw and Madut, with English honed at the SSCA, passed the Neb
raska drivers’ test. Adaw left the Hilton to cut meat at Tyson Foods, where Madut worked and the pay was higher—about eleven dollars an hour. They wielded sharp knives and wore protective gear to carve cattle that, in many parts of South Sudan, were slaughtered only for sacred occasions. The work was perilous: a South Sudanese woman would lose part of her right arm at a frozen foods plant in Council Bluffs in 2006. Bathroom breaks were limited. Repetitive stress and carpal tunnel injuries were common. Each workday Adaw and Madut stepped into a refrigerated room and were reminded of how far they were from semi-arid South Sudan. “It was so cold,” Adaw said. “You work in a freezer for eight or nine hours. You come home shivering and put [the temperature] at 80 degrees, and you still cold. You take a shower in hot water, and you still cold.”

  Madut’s knees grew swollen and painful from long shifts in the cold. Adaw wasn’t as stoic. By now her English had improved to the point that she could apply for a wider range of jobs. She got hired in the mail room at First Data Corporation, which paid as much as Tyson Foods and was passably heated. She rewarded herself with her first car, a Honda Pilot. “The car change my life,” Adaw said. “Now I can get to school, go shopping, get food, go to the doctor. It help a lot.”

  Adaw’s enthusiasm was tempered when she learned that her great uncle, Emanuel Bol, had passed away in her hometown, Wau. She cried and told her children, “He was a good leader and father to us.” Then she led them in the Lord’s Prayer. More sadness came with the death of Joseph Madut Kuot, the trusted friend who had lured them to Omaha and brought them to live in the Mason. “He had been sick a long time and didn’t know it,” Adaw said. But then Adaw’s sister, Teresa, arrived in Omaha with her husband and four children, and Adaw’s spirit revived.