Seed of South Sudan (16 page)

The church's funds also paid for special needs in the Sudanese community over the next several years. Gini became our sounding board when we had difficulties or needed help making an important decision. Because she was an older woman and because she did so much for us, it was natural for us to start calling her “Mama Gini.” She reminded us so much of our mothers and grandmothers in the villages we came from. And Mama Gini made a special contribution of her own energies which I'll write about later on.

On the evening of September 11, 2001, we were at our apartment, except for Makuol. We heard the news about the attacks on the World Trade Towers during the day, and we watched television news about the event. We were surprised we had come so far to get away from such attacks, and now they were happening here in the United States. Makuol was coming home from the market after his shift ended at 9. A friend had given him a ride to Clarkston, and he got out of the car and turned onto our street, a few blocks from our apartment. When he got near our apartment, he was jumped by six toughs.

“You from Africa?” they yelled at him as they started beating him. “You bombed the towers?” Makuol ran away, up to our apartment, and was breathing really heavily when he came in and told us what had happened. But he'd gotten away. One thing Lost Boys can do is run—fast.

That night someone broke the glass in the patio door of our balcony. The next night six cars all had glass broken. We called our LSG contacts, and some of the people we knew at a local foundation that was being created, the Lost Boys Foundation. Before we knew it, we were being interviewed by CNN and the local television news stations and there were stories about us everywhere—Lost Boys beat up because people thought we were Islamic terrorists! And we were fleeing the war caused by Islamists ourselves!

Even the FBI came in. Cyndie called them, and an agent came with her. Within one week they caught the guys, but Makuol declined to identify them. Three guys came three times trying to get him to identify the suspects, but he wouldn't.

We had had people like Cyndie and Lutheran Services and Corpus Christi and others helping us, but now there were even more volunteers. One lady came to visit at our apartment when she heard about the attack. Her name was Ann Mahoney, and her husband, Fred Rossini, and she provided a great deal of assistance to our boys. Ann tutored us in our English, and her husband gave us the gift of mobility. He taught each of us how to drive! That was very exciting, because we knew from our experiences that having a car was very important in Atlanta. For some of us, it took a while to pass the test—we could get much of what was required, but some of it did not come so easily. But eventually we all passed and got our drivers' licenses.

On September 11, 2001, Ann Mahoney was a volunteer ESOL tutor interested in helping people who were truly marginalized improve their English. She lived in the Little 5 Points neighborhood of Atlanta, and after the fall of the Twin Towers, she saw a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about Makuol Akuei being attacked near his apartment in Clarkston after the terrorists' attack.

“It seemed in the article he'd been targeted as a non–American,” she said, “and he looked vulnerable to some other people, too. He was caught in that violent response by some desperate people following 9/11 of ‘getting even.'”

Ann met Makuol and his roommates at that time, including Majok Marier. Makuol later went to live with Waal and Mading, “who were from his clan,” she said.

Ann worked with Makuol on his English skills. Fred Rossini, her late husband, a Georgia Tech physics professor and former provost of George Mason University, “taught several of the guys to drive. They did the practice things so they could go take the test”—no easy task for men who'd never even ridden a bicycle.

Makuol's front tooth was abscessed and Ann took him to their dentist, whose heart was touched by his situation and discounted her services.

After Makuol got training as a nursing assistant (CNA
),
the couple tried to help him get a job in a nursing home in the Atlanta area.

“That was difficult,” she said. “Sometimes he would know they'd hired other people…. He recognized the prejudice here.” Eventually, he moved to Iowa where he could get financial aid for college classes, and was successful in working in a nursing home there. Ann said she felt this was due to his love and respect for old people, a key element of Dinka culture.

Ann said there were problems in the jobs the boys held early in their lives in Georgia. At the farmers' market where they worked, there was a dispute with an Ethiopian in the area where one of the boys worked.

“There became a bad scene with bad feelings, and they all walked out in solidarity,” she recalled. From there, some went to work at a meat-packaging plant south of Atlanta.

“They'd be picked up early to go to the plant. They'd have to stay until the very last person was allowed to leave at night—often very late at night.”

After Majok finished training as a plumber's helper, Ann asked her plumber about openings in his business, and as he did not offer benefits, he referred Majok to his current employer, M. Cary and Daughters, where he could earn benefits, which they all thought important.

“That's what people who transplant themselves from a different culture come and arrive without,” Ann said. “The scariest thing is that there's nobody to fall back on if you're in a pinch.” She became that backstop for Makuol, paying for his travel to Sudan and back a couple of times as, after the war ended, he married a Dinka wife and had a son. Tragically, this baby died of malaria. Makuol is currently studying at the University of Northern Iowa and is close to completing his bachelor's degree. He and his wife had another son earlier this year.

One of the things Ann noticed when she went to the boys' first apartment was that they laid down textiles—all colors, not just bright colors—on the floor.

“It made me wonder if that's what you do when you have a dirt floor,” she said, referring to their homes in South Sudan. “It did create a feeling of coziness.

“They cooked these big pots of soup or stew for everyone.” Ann was impressed “that they knew how to take care of each other. I know there were four people in the original apartment. Eventually when Simon [Makuol] was staying with Mading and John, it impressed me that it was somewhat flexible who would be staying there. I kinda had the sense that they didn't have this wall around ‘these are who live here.' Different people would be there at different times.”

Ann admired the Lost Boys' basic skills and mindset of survival that caused them to overcome extreme hardships in their trek across East Africa. Now she sees the “element of being really vulnerable and not having most of our American-style defense mechanisms—all those things that worked so well for them in the beginning part of their life,” and wonders, “how are they working now in our culture?”

Those good qualities—the reliance on elders for guidance, perseverance that helped them survive, their lack of defense mechanisms—“those are what people in this country overlook when they speak negatively about immigration,” she said. “We have to learn to notice these values, for goodness' sake. It seems like our [American] culture is getting impoverished in a lot of human ways, and I think an infusion of people who are so close to what's really basic to the heart and survival” is good for the United States.

“I feel enriched by knowing these guys,” Ann said.

About a year after we'd arrived, we four left our jobs at the DeKalb Farmers Market. Mama Gini was a big help when I was looking for work and planning to go to school. She helped me find a job fair for part-time jobs, and I worked a little while for Regal Cinemas. Mapour found another job with Walmart. Tingke went with Makuol to work at a meat-packaging company in Newnan. I later got a job with Grand Hyatt working in banquet services.

One of the volunteers who was working with us found out about the Job Corps program. Makuol and I went for the training that they offered. It was in Washington, D.C.; I attended from May 2002 until the end of 2003, and I was able to complete high school and to get diplomas in plumbing and in data entry. Makuol was able to complete high school and to get a diploma as a nursing assistant. One of the good things about Job Corps was that we could get some training, and then we could stay at the Job Corps Center and eat our meals there and work during the day while stopping out of the Job Corps programs for a while. That way we could work and use the skills we were learning and not lose our place at the school. Then we could finish high school and graduate.

Once we returned to Atlanta, Ann Mahoney knew we were looking for jobs, and she offered to help. It was through Ann that I met my current employer, M. Cary and Daughters Plumbing Company, where I'm a plumber. Makuol tried to get a job in a clinic or hospital, but he was unsuccessful. So he left for Iowa, and he is working in nursing there even today. One of the things that I am grateful for in my employer is, first, I am able to work in the field for which I was educated, and second, my employer allows me to travel overseas for an extended visit when I am able to save money to travel so that I can be with my family. As long as I am back on the job when I say I will return, they allow this leave of absence.

When I was a young boy, I was lucky to survive the bombing and gunfire at my village, the long walk to Ethiopia, then back to Sudan, and then to Kenya, even though thirst and starvation and wild animals and enemies with spears or guns and bombs threatened us. As young men, we had difficulties in our transition in Georgia, but we survived this also with the many volunteers and organizations who helped us. There were so many who helped whose names I do not recall, and many whose names I never knew. With their many actions and gifts of generosity and God's aid, we are here today. But we think constantly about our brothers and our families back home and what to do to help them.

After my companions and I lifted off from Kakuma, many others followed. In time, 4,000 Lost Boys, including the 400 underage boys and girls who left in 2000, were flown out of the camp. Lost Boys went to cities all over the United States as various groups sponsored their resettlement in their towns. While many agencies we knew were providing us assistance in Clarkston, similar aid was going to the boys in those other cities.

A network among all the boys was begun through their sponsoring organizations. As our sponsor was the Lutheran Services of Georgia, and they had associated ministries in other states, they were able to tell us where other Lost Boys were and how to contact them. We had telephones in our apartments, and as soon as we knew where some of our friends had resettled and we got their phone numbers, we called them. Today, we still keep in touch, either by phone or the Internet. Or sometimes we hear through visits of others to those other cities. In a few cases, we have visited other large groups in other cities. For instance, we traveled to Syracuse and to Nashville. We stay in close touch with groups in Greensboro, North Carolina, and other cities not too far away.

The War on Terror had great implications for us. This was the United States going against the types of enemies we had suffered from for decades. There was an instant recognition that this was our fight as well.

On the other hand, because of the nature of the attack and the fact that it had come by terrorists using commercial airlines, the airlifting of Lost Boys stopped. Perhaps another flight or two came in, but that was it. It was as though the terror brought to the U.S. shores also brought a heightened fear of those from the continents where Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula had been active. Again, Sudan was not Somalia. But it was close enough to be caught in the group of nations from which the United States now wanted to protect itself. It definitely shifted the focus of U.S. efforts to resettle more Sudanese. It was a dramatic change, to say the least.