DENVER (dpa) – James Mayom’s childhood ended at the age of seven while he was in the bush and fleeing government soldiers during the Sudanese civil war.
Now after 14 years of terror, several thousand kilometres on foot and living in four refugee camps in three different countries, Mayom found himself stepping down from an airliner in the U.S. city of Denver, Colorado.He is one of 3,600 young Sudanese from the Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya. Thanks to the U.S. State Department and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Mayom can expect to find a home in one of 20 U.S. cities.Since 1983, government troops and rebels have been fighting fierce battles in southern Sudan. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), at least 20,000 children aged between seven and 17 have become separated from their families in the course of the war. Many of the victims are boys.At the end of the 1980s, most young boys were herding livestock when government troops began a major offensive. The razed villages became places of no return. Thousands hid along the front and lived in fear of being recruited as child soldiers. Many were starving, freezing and ill and they banded together with other children trying to flee to Ethiopia. Many were sent back to Sudan and finally made their way to Kenya.The media likened the trek of “lost boys” to the Peter Pan fairytale. Those who could not escape were seized by soldiers or attacked by wild animals. The screams of a friend dragged off by a lion still echo in James’ ears.Locking all the windows in the dormitory of his new American home has not helped keep nightmares at bay. His room mates are three other “lost boys”. With the help of church organizations, about 200 refugee children have found homes in foster families.Development workers in Kakuma taught James the mysteries of toilets and telephones yet Africans are wary of the U.S. “paradise” in which men are expected to do cleaning and there is no mention of dowries for future wives.Student adviser Slavica Olujic at the Emily Griffith Vocational School finds her new pupils eager to learn. Many completed their primary school education in the refugee camps and feel that a good course of training will help them compensate for the loss of a mother and father, she says.Her charges want to become engineers, doctors or computer specialists in order to rebuild their homelands in times of peace. Olujic believes such hopes may be dashed since the refugees are expected to be able to pay their own way within four months.Along with food vouchers, donations of clothes, free language instruction and subsidised advanced courses, every Sudanese receives 800 U.S. dollars to start off with. However, university courses are expensive and the temptations of the consumer society are legion. James has had to delay his wish to attend college.With the help of the labour office, the tall young man from the Dinka tribe found a job as a bookbinder working nights. Next day, he is usually too tired to learn vocabulary lists. “We are an unfortunate generation”, he said softly. “I’m just glad to have survived”.Only in the U.S. will the “lost boys” be fully integrated and gain citizenship. Paul Stromberg from the Nairobi office said, “The UNHCR did not want to spread them out between the typical countries offering shelter.” U.S. quota regulations permit all 3,600 Sudanese, including 70 young women to be given shelter in one country.
