Sudan Impact

Wal and Julia Duany didn’t know in 1983 that they were in a basketball incubator when they arrived in Bloomington, Ind., from war-torn Sudan.

Wal was Sudan’s Minister of Finance and Development before a bloody civil war, which still rages, forced him to flee the African nation.

Wal sent Julia ahead with the couple’s five young children. She remembers arriving in New York after a connection through London.

“I was very scared,” Julia says.

From geography classes, she knew Illinois to be “a vast area of corn and wheat,” but had no inkling about the other I state.

“I didn’t know anything about Indiana,” Julia says. “No Hoosiers, no Bobby Knight, no nothing.”

Seventeen years later, Julia knows plenty.

She stood last Saturday at the Pit in Albuquerque bedecked in a cherry-red Wisconsin T-shirt, leading cheers as her son, Duany Duany, helped the Badgers to victory over Purdue and the school’s first Final Four trip in 59 years.

Duany, a 6-foot-5 senior guard, averages 5.4 points and two rebounds a game as an important role player for Coach Dick Bennett’s Badgers.

That this week’s Final Four will be played at Indianapolis only lends a touch of irony to the Duany family’s already extraordinary life journey.

Duany Duany is one of four Duany siblings playing Division I basketball.

Duany is the oldest and, as is the custom in his homeland, took his family’s surname as his first name.

His younger sister, Nyagon, attends Bradley.

“She plays the two and the three spots,” Duany says. “She’s a slasher. Has a nice shot.”

His brother, Kueth, is a redshirt freshman at Syracuse.

“He just got eliminated,” Duany said of the Orangemen’s East Regional loss to Michigan State. “He also plays two and the three. Very versatile. More of a slasher than a shooter.”

Nok, the younger daughter, is a freshman at Georgetown.

“She’s a power player,” Duany says. “Nice shot. She can slash too.”

Four siblings playing Division I basketball at the same time?

It is believed to be unprecedented.

Oh, there’s another Duany on the way. Bil, a 15-year-old budding star for Bloomington North High School, had to miss Duany’s game Saturday because his team was playing in the Indiana state tournament.

“He’s 6-4, 6-5,” Duany says of his kid brother. “He can do it all, from the one to the five. He’s got a great feel for the game.”

What Wal Duany knows about the development of his children comes in dribs and drabs.

He has been in Sudan since June, trying to mediate peace in his country. For security reasons, his whereabouts are secret.

To keep him abreast of Wisconsin’s run through the NCAA tournament, Julia has to e-mail the Council of Churches in Nairobi, Kenya, which relays the message to the United Nations, which forwards word to Wal.

“I’m not sure he can make it back for the Final Four,” Duany Duany says of his father. “But he’s definitely going to try and make it back for my May graduation.”

Duany understands the cause his father is working on is more important than basketball.

“It makes you put things in perspective,” he says.

Duany also knows this:

“His life is in danger. We worry about him all the time.”

Life of Strife

The Sudanese civil war is both savage and complex.

The Muslim and Arab-dominated north is fighting to maintain sovereignty over the south, whose people practice Christian religions.

The Duanys are from the south. The fight there is led by Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army, or SPLA.

Published news reports estimate that at least 2 million people have died in fighting or war-related famine since 1983.

The government-backed military in the north has been accused of slave raids and attacks on villages in southern Sudan, Africa’s largest nation.

Since 1997, the United States has levied trade sanctions on Sudan because of alleged human rights violations, although the Sudanese government has recently made diplomatic overtures to the U.S.

“Sixty-five percent of the households [in southern Sudan] are run by the women,” Julia Duany maintains. “The husbands are either fighting or have been killed. There is no health care. It is one of the great human catastrophes and no one can see it.”

Eric Reeves, professor of English at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., is writing a book about Sudan.

He summarized the country’s plight in an op-ed piece Feb. 10 in The Times:

“Sudan’s civil war is, quite simply, the most destructive conflict of its kind since World War II. It is a humanitarian crisis without rival.”

Julia Duany misses her husband; misses what he has missed.

“It’s very difficult,” she says. “Raising five kids in America is a tough job. But the kids have been very good kids. They listen. I say, ‘Thank you, guys, for listening.’ ”

She knows why her husband has to be away.

Julia is witness to what freedom, education and opportunity can mean to a family.

“I want that for my country,” she says.

Hoosier Dreams

The Duanys’ fortunes can be attributed to fate and osmosis.

Duany was 6 when his family arrived in America.

“I have a little memory of Sudan,” he says. “Like the temperatures being tropical, hot.”

Duany played soccer and tennis in Africa, but Julia learned quickly that Indiana had a passion for hoops.

Why Indiana for the Duanys?

Wal earned his undergraduate degree at Syracuse in the 1970s before returning to Sudan.

When the civil war erupted, a liaison arranged for Wal to do postgraduate work in international studies at Indiana University.

Julia also got her degree there and works as a research associate in a course called “The Workshop of Political Theory/Political Analysis.”

Shortly after arriving in Bloomington, she signed up Duany for the local Boys’ Club. On the first day--surprise, surprise--he came home dribbling a basketball.

She insisted her son stop at first for fear the racket would disturb the neighbors, not realizing the sound of a bouncing ball in the Hoosier state is akin to the soothing pitter-patter of raindrops.

“Just growing up in Indiana, it’s a crazy state for basketball,” Duany says. “You almost had to play basketball. Everybody did it. All my friends did it. So we just got into it. My sisters and brothers just followed along. We just had a knack for it.”

And the size.

Julia Duany is 6-1, Wal only 5-11, but Julia has an uncle who is 7-3 and says the Nilotic people of the Nile River valley are generally tall.

Because mother and father are educators, the Duany kids learned early that playing basketball came with a price.

“That’s the No. 1 reason my parents moved here,” Duany says, “for us to get a great education. Basketball and academics went hand in hand. I knew if I didn’t have the grades, my parents weren’t going to let me play basketball.”

Duany had his educational lapses, but they didn’t last long.

“We told Duany point-blank, ‘You have to get your grades up,’ ” Julia says. “He’s a very good listener.”

Duany says he has a 3.0 GPA and will graduate in May with a degree in behavioral science.

He did not consider attending Indiana.

“‘I don’t think I wanted to stay so close to home,” he says. “It was only like five minutes away. I used to go there all the time, since like the eighth grade. I’m still an Indiana fan, but Wisconsin was just the place for me.”

This weekend, Duany returns home for the Final Four. Wisconsin plays Michigan State on Saturday at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis.

“It’s definitely special,” he says.

Duany has become thoroughly Americanized since coming to the states. His nickname is “Doc” because of the way he dissects offenses and his interest in Doc Holliday, the 19th century gunslinger.

Carson Cunningham, Purdue’s starting point guard, became friends with Duany when they played together on the same AAU team in high school.

“I guess I’m on a first- and last-name basis with him,” Cunningham joked of Duany’s name. “He’s really into Tombstone and Wyatt Earp. He was unimpressed at the fact I wasn’t as fully aware of our nation’s history concerning the Wild West.”

Saturday, Cunningham and Purdue lost a 64-60 shootout at the O.K. Corral to Duany’s Wisconsin team.

As Badger fans stormed the court in waves of red, and players took turns clipping down pieces of the net, Duany’s mind drifted across the Atlantic, where the color red has a more sobering connotation.

Where was his father now? When would he receive news of Wisconsin’s triumph?

“I know he’s got his hands full,” Duany says of his dad.

Someday, after he exhausts all basketball eligibility and ability, Duany wants to return home.

Not to Bloomington.

To Sudan.

“I’d like to see what it’s like, to see what’s going on,” Duany says. “I want to see what my dad’s really doing down there and see what I can do to help.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

SEMIFINALS

Saturday

at RCA Dome, Indianapolis

Michigan State (30-7) vs. Wisconsin (22-13)

2:30 p.m., Channel 2

*

North Carolina (22-13) vs. Florida (28-7)

*5 p.m., Channel 2

*30 minutes after first game

*

Championship

Monday

at RCA Dome, Indianapolis 6 p.m., Channel 2