by John Bul Dau
My foster mother began arranging weekends at her house where other Lost Girls in the area would come. There were about eleven of us, and we would listen to music together and braid each other’s hair and cook Sudanese food. Socializing had been such a big thing in Kakuma. We had always been with other girls. Getting together again and reliving some of our past helped us a lot.
Slowly, I began to feel better and get used to life in America. I was even back in touch with Yar, my foster mother in Kakuma. She had learned where we were and written a letter explaining that when she first heard we had escaped to America, she had been worried that we were being taken into slavery. But now she had heard of other Lost Children doing well in America and she was relieved, knowing we were okay.
I managed to graduate from high school, and I began taking classes to be a nurse. While I did this, I supported myself by being a nursing assistant in a nursing home. Some of the people there were pretty cruel to me because I was a black person and they weren’t used to that, but others were very kind.
Tabitha was still in high school, and she was finding the same thing. Some of the kids made fun of her because she was different. But she was feisty and tough, so she kept going and graduated from high school, too, a few years after I did. Then she started working and going to school at the community college.
Just before I turned twenty-one, I moved out of my foster parents’ house and in with two friends—one a Lost Girl and another an American. I finally had a place of my own! It was exciting, but from month to month we worried about how we would pay for the rent, the groceries, and anything else we needed.
During those first years in America, I had been in contact with other Lost Kids who had left Kakuma and come to the United States. One of them was John.
Even though we Dinka people had had to leave our homeland in Southern Sudan years before, we had managed to keep our connections going through a kind of Dinka “grapevine.” It helped that our names identified our clan and the area we were from. When I first got to America, I had gotten a call from some of John’s cousins who lived in Texas and who had heard through the Dinka grapevine that I was in America. John had told them about me, and following Dinka custom, they had called me to continue the connection, telling me that John was still planning to come to America and that he was a good man and that he really liked me.
John
Refugees accepted for immigration to America kept watch on a camp bulletin board. Lists of names were regularly posted, and refugees could learn when they would leave and where they would go. I always rushed to check the new lists. Even if my name was not on it, I wanted to see which of my friends might be leaving soon.
The day my name was posted, my life changed forever. I was thrilled to learn I would be heading to an American city called Syracuse, New York. But that was just the first surprise. The second came when I looked around at the crowd of people near the bulletin board. I saw a man holding a big video camera on his shoulder. A second man carried a second, smaller camera. A third man stood nearby and seemed to be in charge of everything they did. He asked questions of the refugees gathered around the bulletin board while the first two men shot video. I did not know who the men were. I thought maybe they were from the American government.
I introduced myself to the man in charge. He turned out to be an American documentary filmmaker named Christopher Quinn. As I started to turn away, he asked if he could interview me on camera about my going to America. I agreed. I answered everything he asked, and when I went back to my hut, Christopher and the film crew followed me.
Thus began an association that lasted several years. Christopher filmed my preparations for traveling to the United States, along with those of two other Lost Boys. He followed us as we said goodbye to our friends and boarded a plane for New York. And he followed us for several months afterward, as I settled into Syracuse and the other two boys adjusted to life in Pittsburgh. The result of his work was a documentary film, God Grew Tired of Us. Through that movie and a book of the same name, lots of Americans got to learn about the Lost Boys for the first time. I was glad to be a part of that film and book because of what they did to raise awareness about Sudanese refugees. Eventually, the film prompted many viewers to give money to help the Lost Boys still in Africa.
I arrived in Syracuse in August 2001. All I had with me were the clothes I wore, a few photographs, my official immigration papers, and fourteen cassette tapes. I had tape-recorded the voices of some Dinka elders at a going-away party. They gave me advice on how to succeed in America, yet cling to my Dinka ways. I did not have a tape player. I figured maybe I could earn some money and buy one in America. I certainly did not have any money on me. I didn’t even have a dime in my pockets.
Nothing I had learned in Kakuma had prepared me for the fast pace and richness of life in America. My first glimpse came at JFK Airport in New York City. There were huge crowds of people going in every direction. And they all moved so quickly! I made my way to a connecting flight and landed in Syracuse. A group from my sponsoring church met me outside the terminal and drove me to an apartment I would share with other Lost Boys. There were several Lost Boys in Syracuse, and I made new friends. I also had friends from my new church, who helped us settle into our apartment and our new lives.
I began working right away. I worked several jobs during my first year in America, sometimes two or more jobs at once. I worked in a factory, at a fast-food restaurant, and at a parcel shipping center. I eventually got my best-paying job, as a nighttime security guard at a hospital. Meanwhile, during the day, I got an associate’s degree from Onondaga Community College and began work on a degree in public policy at Syracuse University.
I had never given up hope that I might one day reconnect with my family. Though it seemed likely that they had died during the shelling of Duk Payuel, I never actually saw their bodies. While I was in Kakuma, I had written letters to the International Red Cross, asking for help in finding my family. I had no luck while I was in Africa. However, things began to change after I settled in Syracuse. I wrote letters to my friends who were still in Kakuma. I told them about my having arrived safely in America and about my new life. One of my friends in Kakuma got to leave camp and spend some time in the nearby country of Uganda. He told people he met about his friend John and his new life in America. That story got picked up and spread by other people. By sheer coincidence, the story eventually reached a man named Goi. My friend and Goi met, and Goi asked about John in America. My friend gave Goi the name of my clan, the Bor Nyarweng.
Little did he know that Goi was my brother. On that tragic night of noise, confusion, and darkness in Duk Payuel, I had run one way, and the rest of my family had run another way. They walked to Uganda to get away from the fighting, going south as I went east with Abraham. They had all survived.
Goi told our mother, “I found a man who talked about a Nyarweng named John today. He said John is alive.”
“No,” my mother told Goi. “John is dead.”
Goi had hope. He and my brother Aleer decided to contact me. Aleer wrote me a letter. I got it on October 18, 2002.
“John,” Aleer wrote, “if you are my brother, please, can you write to us? And if you are not my brother, please throw this letter away…. If you are my brother, we are still alive—mother, father, and all of your brothers and sisters, plus a sister born after you left, named Akuot. Unfortunately, our three uncles were killed in the shelling, along with their families.” Aleer gave a few details about how they had ended up in Uganda and closed with his phone number.
I could not believe my good fortune. After fifteen years of believing my family had died, I would soon be talking with them. One of my friends gave me a plastic phone card to pay for long-distance calls, and I used it to call the number Aleer had given me. In Uganda, Goi answered the phone and handed it to Aleer. After only a few seconds, the connection was cut. Silence. No matter what I did, I could not re-establish the line. It was 1 a.m. I decided to wait until d
awn, when it would be twilight in Uganda, and tried the call again.
Once again I spoke with Goi and Aleer. We shared our stories. I told them of my years in refugee camps and how I had come to America. Goi and Aleer started crying. I cried too. But my mother refused to speak to me. She refused to believe I was her son. She thought I was dead and that some impostor was trying to pull a cruel joke, or that Goi and Aleer were lying to her to make her feel better. They could not convince her to talk to me, so I had to hang up the phone.
Two days later, I tried again. I spoke again with Goi and Aleer. This time they got my mother to put the receiver to her ear.
“Mother, this is John. I am the one.”
“No,” she said. “You are not my son…. If you are my son, tell me the other names I used to call you.”
Every Dinka mother has a secret name or two for her child. I remembered mine. I said, “Did you call me Makat? Did you call me Runrach? Did you call me Dhieu?”
Makat means “born when people are running away,” Runrach means “bad year,” and Dhieu means “cry.” My nicknames referred to my being born during a bad year when two of my father’s brothers died in a raid. There was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment, and then my mother knew the truth.
“It is you! But your voice seems different,” she said.
She last had seen me when I was thirteen. Here I was now, nearly thirty. “I’m now a grown man,” I told her. “Today, I’m tall.”
We talked some more, and I decided to send her some money. After that, we talked at least two or three times every week.
I started a campaign of phone calls and e-mails to get my mother to come to join me in the United States. After two years, I won the battle. My mother and little sister flew to Syracuse in February 2004 to live with me.
So life settled down for me in America. And after so many years of despair in East Africa, things started to look up there, too. While I was a student at Syracuse University, I set up a foundation to help improve the lives of Sudanese refugees still in Africa, as well as Lost Boys who had moved to America. I began speaking publicly about the plight of the Lost Boys and Lost Girls. With many of my new American friends helping me, I raised enough money to open a medical clinic in Duk County, where I grew up. It is the first medical facility of any kind in Southern Sudan.
Life was so much better, but not quite complete. For all of the blessings I had received, there was one I still yearned for. I wanted to marry Martha.
Martha
One day in 2001, I got a call from John’s relatives in Texas saying he had just arrived in America. I told them to call me back when he was settled in and I would call him. I had a lot of things going on then, as I tried to make the adjustment to America, but I followed through on my promise. I called to welcome John. He was all the way on the other side of the country, but he kept calling me. We had many long conversations, and over the phone we got to know each other again. John seemed like a good man, a very responsible man. After about a year, he came to Seattle to see me. After a couple of years of phone conversations and visits, I agreed to marry him. That meant a lot of negotiating began back in Sudan
John
I knew I wanted to marry Martha in the Dinka manner. She agreed, but there were many details to work out. My father, back in Africa, arranged for a marriage dowry of cows. I would have to pay some cows to people representing Martha’s family before I could marry her.
Martha
Through the Dinka grapevine, I knew I had an uncle, my mother’s brother, in Kakuma, even though I had never met him. Since I had no father to represent me, my uncle became the person that John’s family in Sudan had to negotiate with. After many months they agreed to a dowry. Normally, the husband’s family would give the wife’s family a dowry of cows, but in this case, John agreed to send money worth the equivalent of eighty cows. In the winter of 2005, once the dowry was settled, we were considered married in the eyes of the Dinka tribe
John
By then, my mother and sister were living with me, and my mother spoke no English. I convinced Martha that moving my mother across the country would have been difficult for her. Martha agreed and moved to Syracuse. Her sister, Tabitha, came later, and we moved into a new house with my mother and sister.
Martha
When I got to Syracuse, John’s mother and sister cooked for me for the first few weeks, to welcome me to the family. That is Dinka custom. New brides don’t cook at first. After those first weeks were over, there was an official day when I cooked and we had a celebratory meal with other Sudanese friends. If I had had female relatives of my own, they would have helped me prepare the feast, but instead other Dinka women came with food. My status as a Dinka wife was now official.
We decided to have an American wedding, too, at the First Presbyterian Church of Skaneateles, outside Syracuse. The members of this church had sponsored John to come to America and had helped him so much.
On June 2, 2006, the church was filled with our new American friends and with Lost Boys and Girls from all over North America. Even Mary, my friend in Canada, who had helped me make my first visit to Nairobi, was there. It was a day of great celebration and dancing, in American and Dinka style.
The wedding was exciting, but the most exciting day for me was when my daughter, Agot, was born. A daughter I could take care of and make happy seemed to heal some of my pain at having lost my own childhood. But things were about to change even more.
Late at night in November 2007, the phone woke me up. When I answered, I heard the voice of a cousin I had re-connected with—a Lost Boy now living in Sydney, Australia. His voice sounded excited, and he began to explain that he had been at a church service in Sydney, a church that other Dinka people also attended. When new visitors were asked to introduce themselves, a man stood up and said that he and his wife had just come to Sydney from Egypt and that their name was Akech. The man said, “We just keep praying that we will connect with our daughters, who were lost years ago.” The man said he knew that some people at the church came from Kakuma, and he thought they might have heard something about two little girls on their own. My cousin recognized the man’s name—it was his uncle!
After the service, he walked over to introduce himself to the couple, and there was a big reunion right there, with his aunt breaking into tears and hugging and hugging him, her lost nephew, her sister’s son. Finally my cousin broke the big news. He knew where the lost daughters were! They were in America!
I held the phone in my hand, listening to his voice, but I just couldn’t take it all in. It was as if my mind was numb, as if I’d had a good dream that I would wake up from. I had to keep touching my arm, testing to see if I could feel, if I was really awake. We had always been hoping to find our parents, but I had almost given up that hope.
The next month I flew to Australia with my new baby and reunited with the parents I hadn’t seen for more than twenty some years. My father came to the airport to meet this daughter who was now a woman, with a child of her own. He didn’t even know how to recognize me. Any young woman walking off a plane with a little girl could have been me. But he found me, and I found my parents.
We spent a month getting to know each other again, and I discovered that I had a brother and a stepsister. I also discovered what I had lost years ago in that village in Southern Sudan: a parent’s love. Your own mother and father are full of this natural love for you. You can feel it, and with them you can feel at home, secure, taken care of, loved no matter what.
Now as I go through my day, I know I have parents, and that changes everything, even if they’re on the other side of the world. I’m a parent, too—with three children now—and that changes everything as well. For so many years, I was a Lost Girl, but I’m not lost anymore.
John
Remember how I said that we Dinka are storytellers? As Martha and I get our children ready for bed, I tell them many stories from Southern Sudan. I want them to understand their culture and the
ancient roots of their family.
Sometimes I tell them of my father. When he was young, he became famous as a wrestler. People knew his name far and wide, and they respected his talent. He had a thick chest and powerful arms and legs, and he could throw any man to the ground. He went from village to village and defeated every local champion. The Dinka admired him as much as any American sports fans look up to an athlete who scores a touchdown or hits a home run.
But my father had another side, and not everyone knew about it. He liked to sing songs just for fun. He would make them up as he worked, and he sang them beautifully. Eventually he gave up wrestling and became a well-respected judge. But he never stopped singing.
When I introduced myself to people when I was young, I said I was the son of Deng Leek. They often gasped in surprise and delight and said, “You are the son of the man who was the great wrestler!” But my wrestling career was not meant to be. I grew up very, very skinny. I did not have the muscles of my father. Still, people thought I might grow strong someday. They hoped I might keep the family tradition alive.
I never did grow as powerful as my father. But like him, I became a very good singer. I made up lots of songs, and my singing made people happy. One day, my aunt made me an ornamental Sudanese bracelet of sinews and low cow hairs. Many Southern Sudanese men wear such bracelets to show they are stylish and manly. The tufts hang down, and when you dance with a girl you flick your arm and make the cow hairs move. We say it is like flashing your cow’s tail. My aunt thought it would look good if I flicked the bracelet while singing.