My Lost Childhood

Abraham Deng Ater

Description

My Lost Childhood is a memoir describing immeasurable suffering the author went through in his early childhood. In the late 1980s, the Islamic government began to systematically torture and kill Southern Sudanese families, burn their villages, and enslave young boys and girls. As a result, an approximately, as numbers are largely unknown and only an estimate, 27,000 plus boys from Southern tribes were forced to flee from their homes. Traveling naked and barefoot, they sought refuge in neighboring Fugnido, Ethiopia, where a few years later they were forced to flee yet another civil war. Returning to Sudan, the Islamic government forced them to travel for another five months, ultimately arriving in Kakuma, Kenya, after four years of unthinkable hardship and walking over thousands of miles naked, barefoot, and ailing from starvation, dehydration, and diseases. Many boys perished along the way and their numbers shrank into few thousands.
Abraham Deng Ater, separated from his family in 1987, is one of approximately 3,800 boys now known as the Lost Boys of Sudan. He left Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya after several years of massive suffering and was granted refuge in the U.S. in 2001. Many Lost Boys including Abraham have since become U.S. citizens and have continued to pursue their education. Thousands more have also been granted refuge elsewhere and are scattered around the globe.

Sujets

• Kenia
• Biography
• Lost Boys of Sudan
• Autobiography
• Kenya

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 15 novembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493123018
• Langue: English

Extrait

MY LOST CHILDHOOD

A Story of My Long Journey through the Horror
 
 
 
 
Abraham Deng Ater
 
Copyright © 2013 by Abraham Deng Ater.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2013919622
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-4931-2300-1

Softcover
978-1-4931-2299-8

eBook
978-1-4931-2301-8

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
Rev. date: 11/05/2013
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
540885
CONTENTS
Prologue
I.THE LOST STORM
ONE                We Are Now Soldiers
TWO              Life along the Nile
THREE            My Sister, the Messenger
FOUR              Departure
II.REFUGEE CAMPS
FIVE                Like Jungle Animals: Fugnido
SIX                    A Trilogy of Terror
SEVEN            Hasty Escape
EIGHT            Becoming a Lost Boy
NINE                Streat Tramps: Lokichoggio
TEN                  A Makeshift Camp: Kakuma
III.IMMIGRATION TO AMERICA
ELEVEN          The Gift of Hope
TWELVE          Hope, a Process
THIRTEEN      Leaving the Vicious Camp
FOURTEEN    Wait . . .
Epilogue
Chronology of Sudan’s Breakup
Acknowledgments
 
 
To Brother Wuor and the rests of the SPLA heroes who had sacrificed their lives for my life and for my country of South Sudan.
 
To my fellow lost boys, who have lost their lives and dreams.
 
and
 
For all my lost brothers, who have been found.
PROLOGUE
I t is midsummer 2001 in dry, dusty Kakuma Refugee Camp in northern Kenya; deep in my sleep, I have this one dreadful plain nightmare. A donkey in a lionlike appearance is running toward me trying to run me over. I rise up and run away, but it keeps coming toward me. I have to take courage and have to turn around to tell this beast; “You better back off or I will hit you.” As he roars and he gradually turns his back on me, I could not give him a chance as I am keeping him on his feet, “Yeah, go! Get out of here! Now!” He keeps running away and I after him.
To my embarrassment, some people who are still awake are watching me as I run back and forth, but I could not hear them saying anything. Laughter and yelling is now up in the air in our compound, but my physical body is deep in the sleep and my poor soul is bravely chasing an invisible beast. Without my knowledge, one pitying soul is right after me. He grasps my arm and pulls me back to my humanity.
“Deng, Deng Ater!” he yelled out to me. Immediately I open my eyes and it is Malual Wuor. “Deng, what are you doing?”
“Um . . . um . . . what?” I replied as I revived my sanity.
“Why are you running like crazy? Have you lost your mind?” Malual continued while mockingly pushing me back to my bed.
The rest of the people who are still awake are laughing at me as well and others are asking me about what is happening to me.
“Although I am fully awake now, I am not going to tell anyone despite my embarrassment regarding waking up and running around like an insane person.” I assured myself and could not open my mouth to anyone, despite being insane that night.
Interestingly, the danger of constant attack by wild animals is getting over. A new journey with new perspectives and challenges is about to begin. After much embarrassment in front of my friends, I sit down on my bed, trying to get back to sleep. I could not fall asleep, but rather for the first time in my journey traced my nightmare back to where it all began.
I THE LOST STORM
“A child shall wander without his parents  . . .
in the jungle, in the wilderness, through the deserts, over the mountains,
and sleep under the trees and under the stars for years .”
 
Ngun Deng, Spiritual Leader
Lou, Nuer
ONE We Are Now Soldiers
“R ed Army, how are you doing?”
Shocked by the word “army,” I was amazed and terrified to be referred to as a soldier at such a young age. While standing there watching the passersby, I began thinking deeply to myself. I knew how the soldiers looked to other people and what the soldiers do to others.
I had seen the Sudanese government militias before in our village of Werbuot, near Poktap. They would jump down from their military trucks and ask if there were SPLA (Sudan People’s Liberation Army) soldiers hiding in our village. If an older man said there were no SPLA, they would torture or shoot him down like a dog. If a woman said no, they would beat her up until she told them exactly where they were hiding, if there even were any. If a young boy said he did not see anybody, the soldiers would either slap him in the face or throw him in their truck and take him away.
Just like what they did to my cousin Makuol Nyankuir. Makuol was eight or nine years old when they took him away to Poktap. We were playing in the garden in the evening when the Sudan military truck arrived on the Malakal-Poktap highway. They stopped their truck and waved some candies in the air. They called in Arabic to come and get some candies. Makuol, who was a little bit older than I was, ran toward the truck. Before they gave him any, they asked him if there were some SPLA soldiers at the house. Makuol said no. They also told him that if he said yes, they would give him more candies. I was not far from Makuol and as I continued to hear their conversation, it got uglier, with some of the soldiers coming from the front of a truck more upset. Some jumped off a truck wearing military clothes. They had machine guns wrapped around their back, chain of bullets around their body, and some other things on their waist. They looked around as if they were looking for something lost. Meanwhile, Makuol was still arguing with one of the soldiers. He was light skinned, short, but big, with a big sideburned beard. The ones coming from the front of the truck immediately grasped Makuol, threw him on the back of the truck and drove away. I stood there steadily mad and furious, as if I would fire a machine gun at them and rescue my cousin.
I said to myself I would love to ride on one of those trucks; they were beautiful, but no way could I be a killer. Makuol found his way out and arrived three days later.
Nor could I be like the SPLA soldiers I had seen before wandering around our villages urging villagers to provide them with some food! Some would ask for a live goat or cow to slaughter and eat on their way. I was not sure where they would be heading to, but I knew that they were going to a battlefield. They didn’t look happy. None of them smiled or talked, unless asking for food, water, or the way to some place. They sometimes rounded up civilians by force and made them carry their ammunitions or bags from one village to the next. If someone refused, the soldiers beat him up and then still made him do the job.
I had seen these military behaviors in our village of Werbuot and in the cattle camps. While in Atem Achol, summer of 1985, a group of the SPLA soldiers came one time with their weapons, most of them carried AK-47s. They were wearing military uniforms with many materials around their waists. Some had chains of bullets wrapped around their bodies. They put their camp right on the east side of the cattle camp. Magot Deng, two other boys, and I ran to their place and washed them as they unloaded their bags, guns, boxes of ammunition, and AK-47 magazines. They really looked tired and exhausted. It seemed like they had not eaten anything in three days. Anyway, they told us to leave. We ran back to our camp. It was around eight in the morning when they arrived. A few minutes later, one of their leaders—I believe he was a captain because he had three stars on his shoulder—came along with three bodyguards. They asked my elder brother, Wuor, where the cattle camp chief was! Wuor told me to go with them to show them the chief. I walked them over to the chief, who immediately told them,
“I am Chol Nak, the chief of this cattle camp.”
“How many dhien are here, Chief?” the captain asked. A dhien is a place where its owner keeps a grouping of cattle.
“One hundred,” Chief Chol replied.
“I need one hundred gourds full of milk and one adult bull in thirty minutes,” said the captain.
Chief Chol tried to bargain with the captain, saying yes to the milk, but not a bull. The captain turned around and told the chief that he had to do it or suffer a beating by his men. On top of that, he would have his men come and pick three best cows from among the chief’s cows. He turned around and walked away. The captain looked exhausted, but his eyes were so red and his face so dark that it took courage to have eye contact with him. He was tall and slender. As he walked away, his bodyguards were pointing guns everywhere and looking in every direction. I followed them just outside the cattle camp but returned to my brother, terrified of the orders the captain gave to our chief.
A few hours later, the soldiers collected gourds full of milk from our dhien . I did not have a full gourd that day, but no bull was collected from us. I figured the sold