"Lost Boys" of Sudan

I saw this great documentary called God Grew Tired Of Us over the weekend. It is about the "Lost Boys" of Sudan.

This made me thinking about how we take certain things (like the freedom, food, water, shelter, clothing and many more...) for granted in our country. We certainly cannot say the same about these young lost boys from Sudan.

I was really moved by this movie.

Excerpts from the website about the film:

Winner of both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, “God Grew Tired Of Us” explores the indomitable spirit of three “Lost Boys” from the Sudan who leave their homeland, triumph over seemingly insurmountable adversities and move to America, where they build active and fulfilling new lives but remain deeply committed to helping the friends and family they have left behind.

Orphaned by a tumultuous civil war and traveling barefoot across the sub-Saharan desert, John Bul Dau, Daniel Abol Pach and Panther Blor were among the 25,000 “Lost Boys” (ages 3 to 13) who fled villages, formed surrogate families and sought refuge from famine, disease, wild animals and attacks from rebel soldiers.

Named by a journalist after Peter Pan’s posse of orphans who protected and provided for each other, the “Lost Boys” traveled together for five years and against all odds crossed into the UN’s refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya. A journey’s end for some, it was only the beginning for John, Daniel and Panther, who along with 3800 other young survivors, were selected to re-settle in the United States.

From the trans-Atlantic flights that take them to America - an eye-opening experience for young men who had never been on an airplane - to a supermarket visit in Pittsburgh where they encounter an endless bounty of food, to the painstaking efforts that each one makes to find family members back in Africa, the cameras observe three resilient young men in a complex and confusing western world.

However, John, Daniel and Panther are able to make a home wherever they find themselves and, in the process, illuminate all that has been gained and much that has been lost in the continuing immigrant experience of coming to America.

From their first visit to the Kakuma refugee camp in July 2001, Christopher Quinn, Tommy Walker and their small crew began to gather testimony about the hardships of crossing the desert on foot and the dangers of life in a refugee camp.

Two weeks later, they were boarding a plane with many other joyful but nervous young men who had been selected by the International Rescue Committee to be relocated in America. As the plane took off and the filmmakers watched the happy yet apprehensive faces around them, they discovered that their story was only beginning.

During the next four years, Quinn, Walker and their colleagues made weeklong visits to the three young men every other month, rotating their visits between Syracuse, New York and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where their three subjects had settled.
“I wanted to make sure that this was more than a ‘fish out of water’ story... I knew there was much more to be said,” says Quinn.

“This story was about coming into a new world and, despite the fact the it was daunting and crazy and upside down, I was thinking that once they got their footing, they would turn their attentions back to helping their friends and family in Africa. Which is exactly what happened.”