This semester, I'm taking Geography, right? Well, our first subject is East Africa. And since the countries in East Africa include places like Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, we began studying the topic of The Lost Boys of Sudan. This is really what got me to start thinking about looking at the world outside of the places that I know directly.
The Lost Boys of Sudan are a group of boys, originally from Sudan, who were chased from their homes during a civil war in their country. The north came down and attacked the south, decided to kidnap all the women and children into slavery or adopt them into their families, and kill off all the young men, or make them sterile to prevent the breeding of Christians.
There were about 27,000 boys traveling together through Sudan with no food, water or shelter. They had nothing but the clothes on their backs and each other to rely on. They would eat the leaves of the trees and sometimes they would have berries. As for what little water they had, they would drink it from small pools of sitting water, which were normally contaminated. Many of the boys died of starvation as they walked. Others died of the parasites from the water.
Finally, after they finished their 700 mile walk, they reached a refugee camp in Kenya. No one knew how long they had been walking. Was it two months? Two years? It felt like centuries to them. At the refugee camps, the boys didn't have much of a better life. Some of the advantages were that they had the option to get an education, they got food and there was a place to sleep at night. The disadvantages were that there was only one meal a day and it was almost like a prison for the boys. The same old thing every day.
Many of the boys stayed at the refugee camp for nearly ten years. Until the camp decided they had been there too long. That they could not support them anymore. Many of them had no where to go. No one had any idea as to if their families were alive or not. All they had was their fellow Lost Boys.
Some of these boys got lucky though. The U.N. offered some of them the opportunity to move to America and live among us, and pay off their debt as they work and become citizens. Many of these boys suffered from a huge culture shock. Never having running water, electricity or even things like potato chips.
I got the chance to meet one of these Lost Boys today. His name is Ting Mayai. He goes to University of Wisconsin Madison and is going to get a PhD. He's only lived in America for 8 years and he's already come so far. But he cannot forget all of the things that happened to him back in Sudan. And no one can blame him.
This act of genocide started over twenty years ago and still continues today. This is what opened my eyes and made me realize how many things are going on in this world that I don't know about. So, I think it's time for me to declare my New Years resolution... Even though I'm a month late.
My New Years resolution is to be more informed about global events. Watch the news as much as possible, read the paper and discuss these things with other people. I'm sick of being ignorant. It's time to turn things around.
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