Sudanese refugees speak
By Mary Czarsty, asst. news editor
Posted on April 10, 2006

It’s not every day you hear a first-hand account of someone who has witnessed lions eating people on a daily basis.

“The life we have experienced begs to be forgotten, but it is alive with nights like this,” Bul Dat said of his experience as a Sudanese refugee.

Wednesday night, the documentary “Lost Boys of Sudan” was shown in Transitions. The documentary followed the lives of Peter Dut and Santino Chuor who were among those forced to flee Sudan during the rebel uprising in the south that killed at least 2 million and displaced over 4 million people in the early 1990s.

Dut said, “The U.N. calls us lost boys because they found us without parents. We are going to the United States because we are the future of the Sudan.”

In August of 2001, the boys left for the states to find work and an education to send money and support back to their remaining family and friends. Upon arrival in Dallas, the boys were received by the members of the YMCA which helped the refugees by providing rent, spending money and help finding a job during their first few months here.

The boys in the documentary were unsure of their ages because they were not born in hospitals, but to the best of their knowledge they were 18 to 20 years old. Dut and Chuor took very different paths once they reached the United States. Dut left Dallas for Kansas to enroll in high school, where he entered as a junior. Chuor stayed in Dallas and worked the night shift at a plastics factory.

 “People just look at me. I look so odd. Even the black people look at me differently; I am just so black,” Dut said.

Santino said he anticipated an easier time in the United States. “When you come here, you make it alone,” he said.

Peter also grappled with trying to fit in with his new classmates. Despite speaking foulanguages and succeeding in his classes, he was disappointed when he didn’t make the basketball team. Social gatherings and Bible study were also difficult. “I am like a poor person among rich children. What can I do among them?” he asked.

Both Dut and Chuor remained determined to contribute something to their homeland. While taking a video course on electricity, Chuor said, “Maybe I’ll be the one who brings electricity back to our village.”

“I didn’t come here for this beautiful house and car, I came here to do something for my people,” Dut said.

After the documentary, two former refugees, John Majok and Bul Dut, talked to the audience about their experiences.

 “We all have similar stories with differences in the details,” said Majok. “We were all forced to leave our homes at a young age, and see things we did not want to see.”

Majok recently graduated from the University of Arizona and Dut is currently enrolled at community college in Norfolk. They expressed a similar desire as Dut and Chuor did to give something back to their country.

“We will not let this happen to the future generation of the Sudan,” Dut said. While he suffered the loss of his parents and his oldest brother, he is working to earn enough money to reunite with his remaining brothers and sisters.

Majok worked as a congressional intern in 2004 and helped pass the Genocide Act. Both encouraged the audience to write to their congressmen and let them know that it is important to Americans that the terms of the act be fulfilled. “This is the time to do it. We are talking about human life,” Majok said.

When asked if he ever planned on returning to the Sudan, Majok replied, “If you go back and you cannot help, it doesn’t matter. You go back if you can change and help.”