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‘Lost boy’ tells Lenten luncheon of personal fight for survival by Alice E. Gerard
As small boys in 1986, Dominic Ding and his five brothers fled their homes to escape the violence that had engulfed southern Sudan during its Civil War. The six boys of the Ding family were among 27,000 Sudanese boys between the ages of 5 and 12 who fled their homeland during the war, which began in 1983. The Khartoum government forced the separation of families during that time, announcing, in 1987 that all male children in southern Sudan were to be killed. During the course of that war, 2 million southern Sudanese were killed and 4 million were left homeless. Many others, especially women and girls, were sold into slavery in the north, said Ding, who was 7 years old when he ran from his childhood home. The lost boys had become permanently separated from their parents. “The lost boys of Sudan were children who left their homes, not because of a choice, but because they were forced,” said Ding, at Wednesday’s Lenten luncheon at Trinity United Methodist Church. The boys faced tremendous adversity through their 1,000-mile journey that eventually took them to the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya and new homes in faraway countries. Along the journey, three of Ding’s brothers died and, in 1998, another was killed in the Civil War, which pitted black Christians from southern Sudan against Arab Muslims from northern Sudan and black Muslims from the western Sudan region of Darfur. “On my way, I faced a lot of difficulties, and I didn’t know if I would survive,” Ding said. “One of the immediate problems was starvation. There was nothing to eat. There was no water to drink. We drank anything that looked like water and could be used to drink. This saved our lives. We ate roots. A lot of people died. Many people were attacked by wild animals and were eaten up.” Ding said that he walked for six years through Sudan and into other countries, including Ethiopia, where they found safety in refugee camps. But their peaceful lives in Ethiopia ended in 1991, when there was a change in government, and the boys, once again, had to flee, this time, back into Sudan. “We had the same problem we had before we came to Ethiopia. There were attacks on us at the border of Sudan and Ethiopia.” Death was a constant companion on the children’s journey. According to John Harbison, chairman of the board of directors of Journey’s End Refugee Services Inc. in Buffalo, by the time that the boys had arrived at the first refugee camp, half of their companions had died. Harbison described Ding as “an example of tremendous will of the human being to survive.” While Ding lived in the Kakuma refugee camp, he focused on his education. “When I was in Kakuma, I graduated from high school, and I went into the teachers’ clinic for a year, and that was enough for me,” Ding said. In 2001, Ding was one of 4,000 Sudanese “lost boys” who came to the United States. Harbison said that some of the boys were waiting for flights to the United States on Sept. 11 and were shocked by what they saw on television in the airport. “Some of them were standing in the Nairobi airport waiting for their airplane. There were pictures on the TV screens of 9/11 actually happening, so that will give you an idea of what some of them were exposed to just before they came,” Harbison said. Many of the boys who came to the United States in 2001 have continued their educations, with 1,800 of the 4,000 having earned bachelor’s degrees from universities throughout the country. Ding is a graduate of Niagara University and is currently working on his master’s degree in education and economics. Ding said that, as a refugee in the United States, he had many opportunities. “I could say that I was the luckiest of them all.” He now works to help other refugees. “Right now, I’m working with refugee children in Buffalo public schools. They have a lot of problems (adjusting to American) culture and with language.” Ding talked about his goals. “I want to get an education. I have a dream to help the poor and, if you could, join me in helping them.” There is a great need in Africa for assistance, Ding said. He talked about the many children who are born HIV positive. He said that many African children die from malaria, polio, and respiratory infections before their fifth birthdays. “Safe drinking water is scarce; 12,000 orphans are living in southern Sudan without any basic support. They live on the streets. They starve and die of diseases because nobody takes care of them.” Ding said that the situation in Sudan has changed dramatically since he left. The war in the southern part of Sudan has ended. Now, the massacres are occurring in the Darfur region of western Sudan. “The people who came to kill people in my village, in the south of Sudan were from western Darfur in the Sudan, who are today in the same problem.” The victims of war, Ding said, are the women and children. Ding said that the now-grown lost boys are working to help the victims of the Darfur violence. “How can we help the women and children, particularly children without parents, who are the people who are in the most difficulty? We have to come up and help them because I believe in what it says in the Bible: help the poor.” Ding asked the audience at the luncheon to check the Web site, www.careandaid.org. It is a Web site of a refugee aid organization called Aid and Care Inc., and it offers aid mainly to Sudanese refugees, such as the lost boys, whose status has never changed. “The lost boys and American friends must stand together against natural disasters and man-made abuses. I’m still a lost boy even though I am 28 years old and a man,” Ding said. Ding’s talk was sponsored by Trinity United Methodist Church, who provided the food for this last Lenten luncheon of the series. |
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