‘Lost Boys’ try to help those left in south Sudan

Reporting from Chicago — 

After he fled Sudan’s civil war as a child in the 1980s, Garang Mayuol knew in his heart that he would return.

In 2001, he was among about 3,800 young Sudanese men, known as the “Lost Boys,” who were settled in the United States. From refugees to American citizens, attaining education and success, the Lost Boys have become international icons of war and survival.

Resettlement efforts scattered them across the country, but Mayuol, 27, stayed in touch with two friends from the Kakuma camp in Kenya. All three were determined to return someday to their villages.

In the summer of 2007, Mayuol, Gabriel Bol Deng and Koor Garang traveled back to Sudan for the first time in 20 years on a journey that reopened wounds and provided new visions for the future. They now form part of a new movement of Lost Boys who are helping their country rebuild after finding that a 2005 peace agreement failed to alleviate poverty and suffering there.

A documentary by Seattle filmmaker Jen Marlowe, “Rebuilding Hope,” chronicles their trip back and the current struggle for stability in southern Sudan. Though several films have been made about the Lost Boys’ lives in America, this is one of the first to document their return home.

Through the film, which will be shown in March at the Paris International Human Rights Film Festival, the three men hope to spread awareness about the situation in Sudan and get support for their projects there.

“There is no more shooting. But nothing else has changed,” Mayuol said. “There is still a lot of suffering. People are dying of hunger. There is disease and no medication.”

Deng and Garang went to Sudan with clear goals. Deng, of Syracuse, N.Y., plans to build a school in Ariang, his childhood village. Garang, who became a nurse in Tucson, Ariz., focused on healthcare and arrived with medical supplies and mosquito nets. He formed a nonprofit, Ubuntu, and in January 2008, he returned to treat patients and train staff at a clinic in Akon.

Mayuol was uncertain of his purpose, so he spoke to the elders in his village of Lang and found the most pressing need was clean water. “People were dying from cholera and other water-borne diseases,” he said.

So in February, with $12,000 raised from Chicago churches and schools, Mayuol returned to Sudan and oversaw the drilling of six wells that now provide water for 20,000 people.

Mayuol said the most emotional moment was seeing his mother again. “She was so thin, so weak. I was happy to see her, but sad to see how she had suffered,” he said.

After two decades of civil war that killed up to 2 million people in southern Sudan and displaced 4 million, a peace agreement was signed in 2005 that ended fighting between the mostly animist and Christian Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the Sudanese Arab Muslim government in Khartoum. The violence in the western region of Darfur is a separate conflict, and still rages. Economic inequities persist, and ethnic tension between Sudanese Arabs and tribes that identify as African or black, continue.

“In many ways, the stories of these three men are vehicles for the larger story of what is happening in south Sudan right now,” Marlowe said. “There is also the universal theme of home and family and community and what does it mean to be in between these two communities and how can you use the resources that you have to contribute to a community at home.”

Mayuol’s father died in the war, and when he fled at age 7, he was unsure whether he would ever see his family again. He moved to Chicago when he was 19 and found work at UPS. Eventually, he enrolled at the College of DuPage and earned an associate’s degree in business. He is continuing his studies at Benedictine University in suburban Chicago, working toward a degree in business management.

Although his priority is helping his people in Sudan, Mayuol said he hopes his personal story of struggle inspires others to become active in their communities.

“We need to teach young people: Go to school and do something for someone else. You can change people’s lives,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be Sudan. It can be anywhere.”

maramirez@tribune.com