Lost Boys

*By Nickolas Furr and Paola Gonzalez

Alephonsion Deng was living joys of childhood. Life was simple for a boy from a large family in the village of Duou, Sudan.

“It was a huge family,” he said. “I was a happy kid, just like any other kid. I’d wake up in the morning, play with my friends and come back later in the evening, exhausted. My mother would bathe me and feed me. There was no education. The education that I had was my father telling me stories or my mother telling me stories.”

Harmony was destroyed one fateful day in 1989 when fire poured in from the sky and his village was engulfed in the Second Sudanese Civil War.

“All that I knew one day fell apart when the army came to our village and started shooting everybody,” he said. “Shooting animals, killing people. They set houses on fire. Some people died. I ran for my life. We ran for our lives. I thought I was going to see my family again, but I never did.”



Deng reached Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya in 1994, following years of traumatic tribulations detailed in his book, “They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky,” about the Lost Boys of Sudan.

Deng experienced a common journey with thousands of other children. During the Second Sudanese Civil War, these groups of primarily young boys were displaced from their homes and most were orphaned, others forced to fight for the very group that slaughtered their families. Fleeing death and slavery, the boys traveled for years on foot during the late 1980s and early ‘90s. They journeyed sometimes more than 1,000 miles in search of refuge and travelled from Sudan to Ethiopia.

But war is without borders and a change in the Ethiopian government endangered the children who had to flee back to Sudan, then on to safety in Kenyan refugee camps. It is estimated that only half those who began the journey survived. About 20,000 lost boys found their way to permanent refuge and stability, according to a 1996 UNICEF report.

“What makes us strong is not the absence of fear,” he said. “It’s the acceptance of fear. Sometimes people think that when they have fears they lose hope, or they are not good because … they fight the fears. Don’t fight them. Accept your fears. That’s what I did.”

In 2001, as part of a program established jointly by the United States and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Alephonsion, Benson Deng and Benjamin Ajak were among about 3,800 former Lost Boys who were allowed to resettle in the United States. The IRC helped all three relocate to San Diego County and its modern day society.

Through the IRC they met Judy Bernstein, who encouraged them to write about their experiences. Their book, “They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky,” was published in 2005. Since then, like Bernstein, they travel and speak to schools, organizations and clubs about their history in Sudan. This was Deng’s third time speaking at Southwestern College, this time as part of the Guest Writers Series.

“I’m happy that the book has contributed to the world trying to understand our problems in my country,” he said. “That part of it makes me happy. I still think there’s more I could do, but let’s start with a little and the rest will follow.”

Deng worries, though, about the state of humanity.

“If we look around us today,” he said, “we see there is so much violence in the world. There’s so much hate. There’s so much hurting. We look at our differences, but we don’t look at ourselves as human beings.”
Deng said to maintain our humanity, people need to get to know each other so we can chisel away the fears of misunderstanding.

“We can break down the barrier,” he said. “Knock down the wall of contempt. All of us have the power to do the same thing – to break down barriers between us and be equal, instead of focusing on the skin colors and differences and those things that won’t let us move forward.”

Story at the Sun.