by John Bul Dau
“Now that you know how to sing a song, will you not be a good wrestler like your father?” she asked me.
I said, “I will do both.”
And I have. I have not fought men like my father, and I have not become a professional singer. But I have fought many, many times to stay alive, and I have won that wrestling match every time. I am blessed. Today, living in America, I sing my new song of joy and hope.
Afterword
As I look into the future, I see so much more work I can do to help in Southern Sudan. The civil war finally ended with a comprehensive peace agreement between the north and south in January 2005, just about the time Martha and I were married. Life in Southern Sudan began to return to normal—or as normal as can be after a war that killed more than 2 million people and forced millions of others out of their homes forever. But of course there is still an enormous amount of work to do to bring prosperity back to Southern Sudan.
In addition to the clinic, I also have plans for opening something called the Southern Sudan Institute. It will combine a school for agriculture, a peace and reconciliation center, and a library. To stock the library, I already have received donations of thousands of books from a charity called the International Book Bank. The reconciliation center will promote peace, and the agricultural school will teach people how to cultivate crops. Those who were born after the start of the civil war in 1983 probably did not get much education about how to grow food and need to learn that skill scientifically.
I do these things because I have benefited so much from my life in America and I want to share that goodness with my homeland. I want to help make a better future for Southern Sudan and particularly for the Dinka.
I have gotten a lot of help from many generous Americans. Christopher Quinn’s film won a major prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006 and appeared all over the country in movie theaters the following year. Many who saw the movie donated money, volunteered time, or otherwise helped ease the suffering of the Lost Boys and Girls. The executive producer of God Grew Tired of Us and his wife gave my foundation a big donation. I did not know who they were when I met them, but I do now: American actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
Selected Timeline of Sudan
1956: Sudan becomes an independent nation. The government pushes Islamic rule that the southern tribes are against.
Late 1950s: Civil war begins when the north tries to stop a southern rebellion by burning villages.
1969: Southern Sudanese continue to revolt, fearing the government will make Sudan a Muslim country.
1972: Northern and Southern Sudan reach a compromise with help from the United Nations and the World Council of Churches.
1973: The Socialist Republic of Sudan is formed. The south becomes self-governing and the north makes Islam the state religion.
Late 1970s: Southern Sudan’s self-governing begins to fall apart.
1983: A second revolt begins when the north begins a policy of rotating soldiers between the south and north. Southern soldiers do not want to leave their families. A Muslim legal code is put into place.
1984: The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement announces it will bring down the government with help from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). The SPLA attacks northern army and government stations in Southern Sudan, resulting in open warfare.
1987: Northern armies raid John’s village. John flees.
1989: Northern armies raid Wernyol, the village where Martha and Tabitha are staying with family. The two little girls flee.
1992: The forces of Sudan’s ruling government begins the largest offensive of the long civil war.
December 19, 2000: After years as refugees, Martha and Tabitha arrive in the United States.
2001: Negotiations begin between the SPLA and the government in Khartoum.
August 2001: John arrives in the United States after years of life as a refugee.
2005: A peace agreement ordering a permanent cease-fire is signed. Humanitarian organizations begin helping to bring hundreds of thousands of refugees home.
May 2007: John Dau opens the Duk Lost Boys Clinic in Southern Sudan where thousands of Sudanese receive lifesaving medical care.
Photographic Insert
A typical Dinka village in Southern Sudan, similar to John’s village of Duk Payuel
A young Dinka boy milks a cow near his home in Sudan. With their long horns and slender bodies, cows in this part of the world look very different from the dairy cows many people in North America and Europe are used to seeing.
Here, more than 3,000 lost children arrive from a refugee camp in Ethiopia back to Sudan after walking hundreds of miles without sufficient food or water
A group of Lost Boys gather to listen to caretakers at the Pinyudu camp in February 1989. John is somewhere in the back of the group.
Martha (standing, left) with her friends at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya in 1998
John (second from the right) and his friends drink porridge after school in Kakuma in 1999.
John and Martha walk out of the church after their American wedding ceremony on June 2, 2007.
Martha and John with their children: daughter Agot and son Leek. They welcomed a third child, a daughter named Akur, in May 2010
Copyright © 2010 John Bul Dau and Martha Akech
Published by the National Geographic Society.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dau, John Bul.
Lost boy, lost girl : escaping civil war in Sudan / by John Bul Dau and Martha Arual Akech ; with Michael Sweeney and Karen Kostyal.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-4263-0729-4
1. Dau, John Bul--Juvenile literature. 2. Akech, Martha Arual--Juvenile literature. 3. Refugees--Sudan--Biography--Juvenile literature. 4. Sudan--History--Civil War, 1983-2005--Juvenile literature. I. Akech, Martha Arual. II. Title.
HV640.5.S9D39 2010
962.404’3--dc22
[B] 2010017960
Illustration Credits:
Cover: Background photo, Gerry Ellis / Minden Pictures. Artwork by Jonathan Halling.
Insert: All photos courtesy of the authors, unless otherwise noted below:
Dinka village, Paul Almasy / Corbis ; Boy Milking cow, Wendy Stone / Corbis ; Refugees walking,
Wendy Stone / Corbis Sygma ; Lost Boys, M.Amar / UNHCR
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