On a Path to Promise

By Judy A. Bernstein

“You can just show a couple of them around San Diego,” Joseph, a refugee resettlement caseworker, had told me several days before I was to meet my co-authors. “They need acculturation.”

Back then, in 2001, they were just nineteen years old and arriving as refugees in San Diego from a camp in Kenya where they’d lived the last ten years without electricity or running water.  In fact, they had not experienced either their entire lives.  Adapting to our way of life would present huge challenges, not to mention what they’d been through that put them there.  War in Southern Sudan had driven thousands of boys from their villages and families. Many of them no more than six or seven years old, fled to escape death or slavery.  They walked a thousand miles across Africa’s largest nation, through lion and crocodile country, drinking urine and eating mud to stave off thirst and starvation.  Wandering for years, half of them died before the others at last found sanctuary in a Kenyan refugee camp.  Those survivors became known to the world as the Lost Boys.

I met them on their third day in the United States.  They weren’t interested in a tour of the city as Joseph had suggested, they wanted to get a job and register in school.  Education was of paramount importance to them.

Being able to support themselves and go to school at the same time proved more difficult than any of us anticipated with hour bus rides each way and dealing with a new culture.  Even simple things for us, like doing laundry or using a stove, first required a learning process.  Even with all of this on their plates, they had been writing since their first week in America.  They wanted to improve their English and become more familiar with the computer.  After a year of struggling for their education they decided to write their memoir which was published in 2005 and is entitled They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The True Story of Three Lost Boys of Sudan.  
 
That first year the book was out we spoke on radio, at book stores, Rotary Clubs and a few schools.  As most authors know, unless a book is a runaway best seller, the income is modest, so their primary motivation for writing their memoir – money in order to get their own education – was not being achieved.

It was about that time that I was contacted by a woman who had read our book and worked at the juvenile hall in one of California’s toughest cities.  She wanted one of my co-authors to speak to the teenage boys in the jail and I convinced Benjamin to come with me.  

We were already in the room as twenty or so boys below eighteen years came in.  They took their seats.  Most acted bored or apathetic to our presence; some even turned their backs to us and the screen.  We started a brief DVD that describes the war and the hardships the Lost Boys’ faced on their journey.  At the mention of dodging bullets and bombs and having to drink urine to stay alive, I noticed some of them swivel in their chairs to see the screen.  At the conclusion of the DVD, Benjamin, who had been alone and only five years old at the time, shared his personal experience.  He spoke of the journey and how when they reached the refugee camp years later, they created their own schools under trees where they sat on a rock and learned to write English in the sand with their finger in hopes that education would change their lives.  
  
As Benjamin, who is now 6’ 4” now, told his story, I watched this toughest of audiences. Even the most indifferent were now focused on him as though Denzel Washington had paid them a visit.  When he finished his talk, he asked for questions.  A young man raised his hand but instead of a question he explained how he’d grown up in this neighborhood, thought he had family troubles, had ignored schoolwork, got into the wrong crowd and got in trouble.  As he spoke, tears welled in his eyes, and then he said, “But, Dude, you had it far worse than me. At least I had family! I didn’t appreciate them or the school with chairs, books and teachers…”  By then I had tears too.  Benjamin had more testimonials that day than questions.  We both went home moved by the experience.  Benjamin, the eager student, had become the teacher.

The next day Benjamin called me.  “I couldn’t sleep all night.” 

“Why?,” I asked.

“That’s what I want to do,” he said.

He’d tried many things, from courtesy clerk in a grocery store, to a part in a movie and modeling (he found both boring) and eventually a full year driving a semi around the US. None had completely satisfied him.  Now he and his co-authors speak to many schools; from upscale private boarding academies to inner-city schools with chain-link fences, or just your average suburban schools.  By their questions and reactions, I can see the students get many messages from these young men who are so close to them in age.  They are encouraged to share their own stories, empowered to change their lives, inspired to help others and grasp that education is a privilege we should all cherish. 

Judy A. Bernstein is the co-author of They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The True Story of the Three Lost Boys from Sudan.  She is a presenter at the At-Promise Conference.