The Lost Boys of Sudan

An American Story of the Refugee Experience

Mark Bixler

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780820346205
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 21st Century History
• Index: History

In 2000 the United States began accepting 3,800 refugees from one of Africa's longest civil wars. They were just some of the thousands of young men, known as "Lost Boys," who had been orphaned or otherwise separated from their families in the chaos of a brutal conflict that has ravaged Sudan since 1983. The Lost Boys of Sudan focuses on four of these refugees. Theirs, however, is a typical story, one that repeated itself wherever the Lost Boys could be found across America.

Jacob Magot, Peter Anyang, Daniel Khoch, and Marko Ayii were among 150 or so Lost Boys who were resettled in Atlanta. Like most of their fellow refugees, they had never before turned on a light switch, used a kitchen appliance, or ridden in a car or subway train—much less held a job or balanced a checkbook. We relive their early excitement and disorientation, their growing despondency over fruitless job searches, adjustments they faced upon finally entering the workforce, their experiences of post-9/11 xenophobia, and their undying dreams of acquiring an education.

As we immerse ourselves in the Lost Boys' daily lives, we also get to know the social services professionals and volunteers, celebrities, community leaders, and others who guided them—with occasional detours—toward self-sufficiency. Along the way author Mark Bixler looks closely at the ins and outs of U.S. refugee policy, the politics of international aid, the history of Sudan, and the radical Islamist underpinnings of its government. America is home to more foreign-born residents than ever before; the Lost Boys have repaid that gift in full through their example of unflagging resolve, hope, and faith.

NOTES

Preface
p. xi	“Lost Boys”: Some individuals in the group of refugees known collectively as the Lost Boys of Sudan point out the imprecision of that title. They are not lost in the most literal sense of the word, nor are they boys. The name is used here and throughout the text because it has become such a well-known identifier for a group that has much in common but is not, as few groups are, a homogenous whole. The text similarly refers to refugees resettled “in Atlanta” for the sake of simplicity. As noted in the text, most were actually resettled in and around the city of Clarkston, a part of metropolitan Atlanta that is about twelve miles northeast of downtown Atlanta.
p. xii	“best obtainable version of the truth”: Bernstein often is quoted in lectures and articles as saying that the news media has abandoned its traditional purpose—pursuing the “best obtainable version of the truth”—in favor of a focus on topics of trivial and fleeting importance. One of many such references can be found in the Winter 2003 issue of Richmond Alumni Magazine, produced for alumni of the University of Richmond.
p. xiv	“multiple and recurring civil wars”: Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars, xiii.
p. xiv	“the most long-lasting and devastating war in the world”: Former president Jimmy Carter made this comment in an interview with the author on October 27, 2003. Carter noted that the death toll in fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo recently exceeded that of the war in Sudan but that for many years, the Sudanese war was the “most … devastating” in terms of human suffering.
Landing
p. 4	“In the United States, education is accessible to everyone …”: Center for Applied Linguistics, Welcome to the United States, 53.
p. 5	“they first saw a moving staircase”: This account is based on interviews with several refugees who were at the Brussels airport that day.
p. 5	“teenagers and young men”: Refugees who came to be called the Lost Boys of Sudan were assigned ages by relief workers. They traveled without birth certificates and cannot be certain of their ages.
p. 6	“with 56 ethnic groups split into more than 570 tribes that speak at least 100 languages”: Peterson, Me against My Brother, 178.
p. 6	“Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland …”: This list of resettlement sites was supplied by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.
p. 6	“dying young boys” and “walking skeletons”: The march of thousands of “dying young boys” across southern Sudan, toward Ethiopia, was described in Sydney Morning Herald, ”New Ethiopia Famine Takes Toll Of Young,” as it appeared in the Washington Post, April 18, 1988. An account by the Associated Press, appearing under the headline “Civil War Refugees: Sudanese Swamping Ethiopian Camps,” appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 29, 1988. It quoted the head of the Ethiopian desk in the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees office in Geneva as referring to the boys as “walking skeletons.”
p. 6	“walking hundreds of miles …”: Boys walked various distances, depending on their starting points. Those who walked the farthest typically came from villages in the Bahr El-Ghazal region of southern Sudan. As noted elsewhere in the text, many walked roughly 450 miles, about the distance from New York to Cleveland.
p. 6	“all had the dull concentration camp stare …”: Quoted in Roger Rosenblatt, “The Last Place on Earth,” Vanity Fair, July 1993, 116.
p. 6	“some estimated that three in five boys … died”: Precise and reliable counts of the death toll are impossible to come by. This estimate is drawn from Victor Malarek, “Eyes of Dinka Boys Reflect Journey to Hell and Back,” the Globe and Mail, March 31, 1990. That articles identifies Kingsley Amaning as head of the sub-office for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Gambella, Ethiopia, and quotes his estimate that three of every five boys who left southern Sudan died along the way to the camp at Panyido, Ethiopia. Other sources estimated that 20 percent of the boys who left homes around southern Sudan died en route to Ethiopia.
p. 7	“Jacob said he was five or six …”: This account is based on several interviews with Jacob Magot conducted in 2001 and 2002. The goal here is to present his account without embellishment. It should go without saying, for obvious reasons, that corroborating his account is impossible, but there is no doubt that southern Sudanese boys like him experienced horrors in 1987 and 1988 almost identical to what he describes.
p. 10	“nearly 250,000 … fled”: The exact number of southern Sudanese refugees who fled Ethiopia in May 1991 is im...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Landing
• Bread in the Dishwasher
• The Spoiling of the World
• A Bitter Wind
• Selective Compassion
• The Level of Responsible People
• Are Y’all Resettling Any of These Guys?
• Body Language in the Workplace
• September 11, 2001
• Chasing the Wind
• Can You Name Your Sisters?
• This Is Your Future
• Driving
• Don’t Get Obsessed
• Peace?
• Gentlemen of the Future
• Epilogue. November 2004
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• Index