Seed of South Sudan (17 page)

Majok and friend decorate apartment for Christmas 2009, Atlanta.

Now we knew that just as the United States went after Osama, there was little hope for those many other boys in camps like Kakuma. The closing of the door to them left us feeling that we needed to do whatever we could to help. And it pushed us to become the best that we could so that we could make the refugee camps no longer necessary in East Africa.

While there were great needs overseas, we found that our minor celebrity in the Atlanta community helped to create bridges and more understanding of our country and its plight. People in the Atlanta community helped us with finances and came forth when there were difficulties among our members. Gabriel Buol, one of our boys, was diagnosed with liver cancer. He died in 2005 in a Hospice Atlanta facility, after receiving many, many visits from us, his volunteer “mother,” Janis Sundquist, and loving care from his Nigerian nurse, Matthew Ojo. It was difficult to see Gabriel die after he had survived so much in Sudan. The news media wrote stories about him that went around the country, and his death greatly saddened all of us. Corpus Christi helped us raise the money that is necessary for a funeral in the United States—even a very simple burial. Our profile also helped the other Sudanese in the Atlanta community. When a mother lost a daughter to a stabbing death in Michigan, the body needed to be returned to Atlanta and a funeral provided. A three-year-old Sudanese boy, here only a week, was struck and killed by a car. The Lost Boys, who knew English and who now were becoming skilled in working with organizational structures, were able to access aid and translation help for the Sudanese newcomers in their dealings with local authorities.

With the assistance of Mama Gini at Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Stone Mountain, we began meeting to find ways of helping our communities back home. Lost Boys from other cities who were from Dinka tribes gathered several times in Stone Mountain. We formed an organization called Rumbek Youth Vision, as most of us were from villages in or near Rumbek, and most of these are from the Agar Dinka tribe. The association was incorporated with the assistance of a lawyer in Nashville, Tennessee. We used the foundation as a means of assuring donors that we were not taking the contributions for ourselves, but to directly benefit our home community.

In Sudan, each of us lived in villages without water wells. All of us could have easily said that was the most pressing need. The cost of drilling a single well, because water is about as deep as an 18-story building is tall, is about $50,000 to $100,000. We also need medical clinics in our areas. All of those expenses are far beyond what we can provide. But we raised funds anyway, knowing that whatever we gathered would be more than what was available to young people in southern Sudan at the present. The enthusiasm of the boys to help those back home was very high.

During this time, about 2004, we were befriended by another of our American “mothers,” Judy Maves. Judy and her husband, Bill Snodgrass, were very helpful to us over many years, and she helped the boys with immigration papers for themselves and the wives, when the marriages occurred. Judy helped me buy a car, my used Toyota that has been so necessary for work. She and others also were a key part of another important history-making event for the Lost Boys, an incident I'll relate here soon.

John Manyok Anyieth, with parents Bill Snodgrass and Judy Maves at May 2012 graduation from Georgia Perimeter College.

Judy became so involved with us that she and Bill adopted John Manyok Anyieth, one of the boys she met when she volunteered to mentor Lost Boys. Since then, after many years of assisting us, she and Bill have retired to Kenya, near Mombasa, hoping to be closer to boys returning to South Sudan. John has begun work on his bachelor's degree at Clayton State University after finishing his associate's degree at Georgia Perimeter College.

Judy Maves was an Atlanta-based sales representative and traveled by air a great deal when 9/11 occurred. Like many Americans whose work lives were affected, she flew less and made some career changes afterwards. In 2004, she said, “I read a little article in the
Dunwoody Crier
looking for mentors for the Lost Boys.”

She was given two names to call, and one was John Manyok Anyieth, a now 30-year-old man but at the time a young refugee with a need for assistance negotiating the complex American systems. During Sudanese Army attacks in 1987, he had fled his home area of Bor in southern Sudan, lived in refugee camps for many years, and survived many traumatic events. In 1991, Bor in South Sudan was the site of a two-week long massacre in a feud between two groups fighting for control in the rebel SPLA.
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“John ended up living with us, and we adopted him,” Judy said. She met Majok and many of the young men in their circle. She and her husband provided financial assistance for many needs of the other boys as well.

“I spent my own money and time helping the guys out,” Judy said. “Day or night. Clothes, doctors, car purchases. I used to joke that I have become everything from a lawyer to a mechanic.”

John recently completed his associate's degree at Georgia Perimeter College and is now studying for a bachelor's degree in business at Clayton State University in Morrow.

Judy and Bill have retired to an area near the Indian Ocean outside of Mombasa, Kenya. But it's probably more a location from which to do more for South Sudan.

“After working with the Lost Boys, I grew to love South Sudan and Africa and wanted to live there,” she said. “I knew we'd need to make the transition before we got too old to make that change because living in Africa is a very different experience. I hoped to be near South Sudan when the boys came back.” Yet she finds herself coming back to Atlanta frequently due to the boys continuing to live here rather than in their original home. And she needs to visit her son, John.

“After having John live with us for nine years, leaving him to finish school was the hardest thing I have ever done,” she said of her only child.

In 2011, she helped organize the caravan of cars traveling back and forth from Nashville when the men went to vote in the historic independence referendum. Hit with a historic snowstorm on their return to Atlanta, they slid into a car at the highest point of the elevated freeway ramp leading from I-75 South to I-285 and got stuck with many other cars on that ramp.

“Eighteen-wheelers were just barely missing us, we were really frightened,” she said. “We pulled the cars out, then John drove the car down to 285 going five miles an hour. Then 12 of us—including Majok—locked arms and walked very slowly down the ramp to get in the car and the other one we'd freed.

“There are several of the guys that I have helped with immigration papers for themselves and their wives,” she said. On the ways she was asked to help: “The list is endless, but rewarding. I helped solve problems with some I never thought I was capable of.”

Her many efforts have extended to South Sudan itself. She represents Raising South Sudan from Atlanta, a nonprofit project with support from Mothering Across Continents, a Charlotte-based collaborative that works to bring schools, water and other needs to third-world countries. Patricia Shafer, who also was on the trip to Nashville and hired a professional film crew to accompany the group, is the chief catalyst, or executive director, of Mothering Across Continents. She actively provides technical resources and development assistance for needed facilities in South Sudan.

So far, one school with four classrooms, two offices, latrines and a rehabilitated well has been built in one location in Unity State, South Sudan, and another is under development. Both of these have Southern U.S.
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based Lost Boys, James Lubo Mijak and Ngor Kur Mayol, working with the local villages on the schools and raising funds in the United States.

“I wanted to try to help each one achieve his goals, whether it be in education, to marry, help their people back home or just find a job,” Judy said. Her desire to help led to a new home in Africa, becoming a mother, and providing hundreds of acts of assistance to the Lost Boys as they continue their journey both in America and South Sudan.

Finally, in 2005, a cease-fire was declared in the war with Sudan, a war that had started when the Sudanese government tried to enforce sharia law throughout the country. The Sudanese Army and the Sudanese Liberation Peoples' Army reached an accord, called the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), that laid out a plan for ending the fighting. In the agreement, it was stated that in five and a half years, in January 2011, there would be a referendum that would allow the people of southern Sudan to decide if they wanted to be an independent country. There was great rejoicing—not only in southern Sudan, but in Clarkston, Syracuse, Nashville, Greensboro, California, Vermont, Mississippi, Kansas City, and all the places where Lost Boys and other large Sudanese communities lived. Now peace had come, and there would be a new country. We could plan a future that included going home. We would possibly be in the United States for a while yet in order to become educated with skills to lead the new country of South Sudan. But we would be able to go home.