Seed of South Sudan
Page 18
Probably no story shows this as much as that of Elder Ber Yuot; he had to wait quite a number of years to get married and live in the same area. Ber actually preceded us to Atlanta. He was here when we arrived, and we met him after Cyndie Heiskell discovered our poor living situation at Kensington Manor and got us moved to a better apartment after our arrival in the winter of 2001. Cyndie worked on our behalf and convinced one of the refugee services organizations to employ people to help us who can talk to us, as there was no Sudanese in that role before. So he worked for one of those organizations, I believe with the Episcopal Church.
We called him “Elder Ber” because he was older than us, and he helped us with every kind of thing. Anytime people needed to move, he would help them. Anytime you come to a new culture and a person has been there and he is one of your people, it helps a lot when you need help.
Ber had been relating to the woman who became his wife when we first knew him, so that was 2001. He had actually come to the United States from Egypt, so he was not a Lost Boy, but he was Dinka fleeing the regime while living in Khartoum, in the north. During the civil war, southern Sudanese people who had moved north were under attack also, but in a different way. The Sudanese government actually took the southerners who were in Khartoum and put them outside in a camp in the desert. The camp was called Jabrona. The government said they were supporting the rebels; that was their justification for rounding people up and sending them to the camp. Anyone who had a name that sounded Dinka or Nuer was accused of being SPLA, of supporting the rebels. They moved them from the city and took them out to the desert. So our people in the north were suffering, especially the Dinka and Nuer tribes as they are the largest in southern Sudan, and so these people were in a terrible situation. If they stayed, they would be incarcerated in these camps.
So Ber fled from Khartoum to Egypt. He made his own way to the United States through the immigration process. Other Sudanese were coming to the United States from Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, or Syria. They went to Egypt and these other countries because they were forced to leave the country of Sudan or be held in this desert camp. Ber and his fiancée had their marriage plans delayed until they could be here together. She stayed in Egypt while he came here. So they had this long-distance relationship. Finally, after a number of years working in refugee services, he joined the U.S. Army, and then he went to Egypt in 2008 or 2009, and they married there a year later. So finally they were married and they were closer to coming here together. But, since he was in the army, he was deployed to Iraq. And he died in a bomb blast two days after he arrived.
So these Dinka marriages still occur, but they have to await many other circumstances—immigration papers, the husband having enough money to support himself, send money home to family, pay for family illnesses, support the wife and children, pay fees to immigration and heavy airline fares. There are many obstacles. But as many of us live in community, we work hard, and we support each other. And we keep focused on why we are here—helping our country.
Twelve
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Celebrities and Friends of South Sudan
There were a few people who came forward to help the refugees and to publicly draw attention to our desperate conditions during the Second Civil War that ended in 2005—and since then. Possibly the most prominent of these was Manute Bol, the National Basketball Association player and fellow tribesman from southern Sudan. Manute was an extremely tall figure in basketball as well as to our Dinka people, to the refugees, and to the cause of an independent South Sudan.
What I remember about Manute is that he saved people’s lives when we fled Ethiopia during the overthrow of the SPLA rebels’ friend, Mengistu, the Communist dictator of Ethiopia. Southern Sudanese refugees had been shot dead in the Gilo River as they fled the camp at Pinyudo. When they finally made it back to a relatively safe area of southern Sudan that was in SPLA hands, Pachala, the refugees were massing outside the town, but did not have food or water. The UN had trouble trying to get food supplies to the refugees.
But Manute chartered an airplane to bring us food. He came himself to Pachala to see to its delivery. I did not see him that time, but I saw him later when he came to Kakuma Refugee Camp during the famine and poor food supplies in 1993 or 1994.
And then later, after I resettled in the United States, I attended a wedding of a fellow Dinka where he was also a guest, in Richmond, Virginia. Manute shared the table where we ate at a dinner the night before the wedding. He was very impressive. I remember that he asked the bride what she would like for a present. She said she’d like a plasma screen TV.
“That’s just a small thing,” Manute told her. “That is nothing. I thought you wanted something big, like a car.” Manute was used to donating to his country in a big way. He gave everything that he had, leaving little for himself.
The people of South Sudan are richer for the life of Manute Bol, and certainly South Sudan might not exist without his contributions.
Manute was seven feet, seven inches tall; he played for the Washington Bullets, after being selected in the second round of the 1985 draft. He then played two years for the Golden State Warriors and then the Philadelphia 76ers for three seasons, and returned to Philadelphia after playing for other NBA teams.1
Manute’s main advantage was his ability to block and discourage the opposition by his sheer size. According to Phil Jasner, Philadelphia Inquirer sports writer, Manute blocked an average of five shots a game as a rookie, and later, in one half, he knocked back 11 shots, eight of those in one quarter.2
“And amazingly, he loved taking threes,” Jasner wrote. “He was an astounding 20-for–91 with the warriors in ’88–89, and playing for the Sixers in ’92–93 knocked down six of 12 in the second half of a loss to the Phoenix Suns. He finished his career with 1599 points, 2,647 rebounds and 2,086 blocks.”3
Jasner went on: “Bol would donate virtually all of his salary to the rebel movement in Sudan, and to feed the hungry there. He would make personal appearances, then donate the fees. He beat the Chicago Bears’ legendary Williams “Refrigerator” Perry in a celebrity boxing bout.” He even contracted for one day with an Indianapolis minor league hockey team even though he was unable to skate.4
Writer Alan Sharavsky said reports were that Manute donated $3.5 million to Sudanese causes along with “endless time and effort which I witnessed first hand.” Manute died of kidney problems and Stevens-Johnson syndrome in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was believed Bol fell victim to the skin disease after either taking kidney medication in Africa, or delaying treatment for the kidney condition while he was in South Sudan. He was there helping construct a school as part of his Sudan Sunrise charity and had been convinced to extend his stay until after the Sudanese elections. On his way back from southern Sudan, he’d stopped in Dulles, Virginia, and he was hospitalized in Charlottesville, where he succumbed.5
Bol was known for his practical jokes and his sense of humor. Once, he jumped center against Mark Eaton, of the Utah Jazz—who is 7 feet, 4 inches. Eaton told him, “Man you are big!”
“No, mon,” Bol told him with characteristic Dinka inflections, “You are big, I am just tall.”6
The Associated Press carried the story of Bol’s funeral at the Gothic National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where 100 mourners gathered and the Republican senator from Kansas, Sam Brownback, eulogized him:
“I can’t think of a person I know of in the world who used their celebrity status for a greater good than what Manute Bol did. He used it for his people. He gave his life for his people.”7
According to the AP, Bol lost some 250 members in the Sudanese civil war. He was buried in his home village of Turalei in Warab State of South Sudan, where he wanted to be buried, next to his grandfather. It was a long trip back. His casket arrived in Juba, South Sudan, on one day; the next, his family accompanied the body aboard a two-hour flight, followed by a four-hour road trip through the relatively unpopulated area.8
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sp; “Hundreds of people from surrounding villages walked to Turalei for the burial and lined the road from outside the settlement right up to his family’s mud-walled hut,” Reuters reported. “Young men carried pictures of the sports star and a local basketball team accompanied the coffin that was lowered into the grave lined with cattle hides.” The ritual slaughtering of bulls—a high tribute—would continue for the next two or three days.9
Manute Bol’s effects would long be felt in U.S. basketball. Shortly after his death, a young man from his home town who was a Lost Boy was playing basketball in New York, at a Lutheran international exchange school. Ring Ayoel followed Manute’s example in immigrating to the United States to use his size to advantage in basketball. A 7-foot-4 center, together with three other young men from Sudan, also very tall, caused the exchange school to have the tallest team in basketball.10
Currently, there is another NBA player from South Sudan, Luol Deng, and he learned basketball from Manute. He is also from the Dinka tribe; so he is one of my tribe. He plays for the Chicago Bulls, and he is active in charities to bring education and sports to refugees in camps. We in South Sudan are proud that he is reaching back to those in the camps; he knows how hard it is to be a refugee and seek asylum in another part of the world.
During the 2012 London Olympics, the world learned of a man who ran without his country’s sponsorship, because he refused to acknowledge the country whose flag he could have run under. That country was Sudan, from which we became independent in 2011. South Sudan was his country, but it did not have the resources to create an Olympic committee, so it could not sponsor him. So he ran under the flag of the Olympics. His name is Guor Marial, and I got a chance to meet him—I actually arranged for him to speak at a fundraiser, making contacts so that he could come to Atlanta in 2012.
As deputy chair of the Rumbek Sudanese Community (Stephen Chol Bayok, the chair, was working in Oklahoma at the time), I was asked to arrange for him to come to Atlanta by those who were helping another Lost Boy, King Deng, or Makur Abior, to publicize his book, The Original Lost Boy. The event was for the King Deng Foundation, which assists street children in Lakes State and plans to start a school for them. Guor was from another Dinka tribe, the Agok Dinka from the Unity State, near the northern border with Sudan. As it happened, I knew someone who knew him, and we were able to arrange Guor’s visit. He came from Arizona where he was training for the race. His schedule was extremely tight, but because of his commitment to help his people, he agreed to come and speak and help raise funds for these children to be educated.
I really respect people who take a stand and refuse based on memories of the war to embrace the old country too quickly. One day, things may be different, but for now it seems right to maintain a separate identity. That is what so many, many people died for.
Another person who has raised the visibility of the South Sudanese people is Alek Wek, a supermodel who also was a refugee, who after many years made her way to London and eventually hit it big in the media. She has also championed the cause of refugees in South Sudan.
Alek Wek has represented many fabled houses of fashion such as Christian Dior and Diane Von Furstenberg, and has published a memoir of her life as a refugee who fled southern Sudan after the civil war broke out and destroyed their village. She was sent to Khartoum and her family followed after. Her father, in the long walk from South Sudan, developed a hip fracture, and died of complications from surgery after he made it to Khartoum. Alek and some of her family of nine siblings fled to London, and the others were eventually given refuge in Australia and Canada.11
In London Alek worked outside school hours and sent money to her mother back in Sudan, finished school, and enrolled in fashion technology and business at London College of Fashion, a top school. HELLO! Online states that she became “one of the hottest new faces on the scene,” and pretty soon the top design houses were after her to wear their fashions on all the runways. “Her distinctive looks, so different from the usual catwalk face, caused a stir in the world of fashion and garnered a raft of awards, including ‘Best New Model’ at the Venus de la Mode Fashion Awards, 1997 MTV model of the year and ‘Model of the Decade’ from i-D.12
Alek is very active in advocating for the plight of the refugees, and is in fact a member of the U.S. Committee for Refugees Advisory Council, where she tries to bring attention to the plight of the humanitarian disaster in Sudan and other places.13
Friends of the South Sudanese
Some well-known celebrities from the United States and other countries have come forth in support of South Sudan since the area’s plight became more widely known. In turn, Hollywood has responded by recognizing the artistic gifts these men and women have brought to the United States and the Western world. In 2003, Bruce Willis’ movie Tears of the Sun, featured some of the Lost Boys, the refugees from southern Sudan, portraying the west Africans in a story about rescuing a doctor who won’t go until her 70 refugees go with her. Other Lost Boys have become known as actors, including Alphonsian Deng, who goes by Alepho Deng, and Benjamin Ajak. Both of them were in Master and Commander: On the Far Side of the World with Russell Crowe, where they learned how to sail a tall ship. Alepho has had other roles as well.14
Alepho’s brother, Benson Deng, and their cousin, Benjamin Ajak, together with Judy Bernstein, wrote a book, They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky, a very popular story of the journey each of them made across Sudan, some of them to Ethiopia, and then all eventually to Kenya. The story is told as each of them experienced his journey. All three ended up in Kakuma Refugee Camp, and after a number of years they were selected for the resettlement program and boarded a plane destined for points north, and to the United States and San Diego.15
Two others who have brought their celebrity to the causes of the South Sudanese are Ger Duany, a former child soldier in the Sudanese civil war and now noted actor and model, and Emmanuel Jal, former child soldier and now actor, hip-hop star, and celebrated activist who brings a message of peace through his music. Ger was forcefully recruited into the war as a seven-year-old and escaped at the age of 14, making his way to camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. He got a role in a film, I Heart Huckabees, when the director sought a real refugee to play the role of one; he has subsequently developed more roles in feature films, enjoyed a career as a model, and starred in a documentary about the South Sudan independence election in 2011, Ger: To Be Separate. Jal has acted in movies, but is best known for his appearances and music recordings. Both Ger and Jal will be in a feature film soon to be released, a fictional story that draws on Lost Boys’ experiences.16
Actor and activist George Clooney has had the highest profile among those non–South Sudanese advocating for the country’s needs. He was pictured on the cover of Newsweek in February 2011, just after the independence election in South Sudan and areas of the South Sudanese diaspora. The article highlighted the unique role that celebrity activists such as Clooney, Bono, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie play in Africa and other countries. Their goal is to raise awareness of world problems that might otherwise receive little or no attention in the press.17
“Clooney had traveled to the oil-rich contested region of Abyei on the eve of South Sudan’s historic referendum,” John Avlon wrote in the Newsweek article after he accompanied Clooney. “When the polls closed seven days later, Africa’s largest nation would be divided into two separate countries by electoral mandate.” After a war that took 2 million lives, it seemed incredible that such a peaceful election took place. Most of the credit belonged to the resolve of the southern Sudanese civilians and military who had fought the war. But in assuring the rest of the world would be watching in a very public way, “Clooney played a pivotal role.”18
Clooney was not known in this part of Africa for his movies—there are few movie houses—but for his visits to South Sudan, many with the cofounder of the Enough Project, John Prendergast. “Amid the factions, Clooney is seen as a man unconstrained by bureaucracy, with access to power and
the ability to amplify a village’s voice onto the world stage,” the Newsweek article said.19
The teaming with the Enough Project enabled Clooney to link with an ongoing organization dedicated to ending genocide across the world. The Project brings attention to areas of mass human suffering, the sites of the world’s worst atrocities.20
The son of a journalist (his father Nick Clooney, 78, George, and a couple of congressmen were jailed briefly after a demonstration at the Sudanese embassy in Washington in 2012), Clooney has focused attention on this particular country with an awareness of how the media that follow him so relentlessly can be turned to help the cause of observing and action on behalf of countries such as South Sudan.21
“Celebrity can help focus news media where they have abdicated their responsibility,” he told Avlon. While he can’t change the media, he said he can use it to help influence politicians to do something concrete. The paparazzi? “If they’re going to follow me anyway, let them follow me here (to South Sudan).” And they have. If not the paparazzi, then the media in general pay attention to Clooney’s statements.22
“He has briefed the Senate Foreign Relations committee and the UN Security Council,” the article states. He and Barack Obama “first worked together on Darfur. After their first Oval Office meeting, Obama appointed a special envoy to Sudan. The second meeting … resulted in the deployment of [then] Sen. John Kerry to Khartoum.”23