The Flight Deck

I had a lousy day at work.

A really lousy ten hour day with another hour and a half of commute time each way. When I returned home, I found that my mom had been in a car accident [a minor one, fortunately] and “needed” me. Both kids still up past their bedtime. A sink full of dirty dishes.

I was tired and cranky. And then I read this story. 

There are about 3,800 Lost Boys currently living in the United States.

In 1987, when he was just six years old, James Garang’s African village was attacked by government troops.

“They were burning down houses,” he said. “They were killing people. They were shooting anybody who was around.”

After an explosion near his home, Garang’s family scattered. As he was running away, he looked back to see soldiers kill both of his parents. Garang jumped on the back of a soldier and bit him.

The soldier shot Garang in the head and left him for dead. Garang was found conscious the next day when survivors came to collect the bodies of his parents and several siblings.

He spent the next 28 days walking about 1,000 miles from Sudan to Ethiopia, where he lived in a refugee camp with some 20,000 other “Lost Boys” during the next four years. While there, Garang reconnected with an older brother who had also made it to the camp.

James, along with one of his brothers, lived in a United Nations camp in Kenya for nine years.  When he was 19, he came to the United States as part of a resettlement program for the Lost Boys of Sudan. But his brother never made it because the program was severely cut back following 9/11.

You have to follow the jump to get to the good part!

Since arriving in the US, James has worked three jobs and he earned his GED within months. He recently earned an associate degree from  a Community College. He’s married and had a child. And this past May, James became a U.S. citizen.

Now he is determined to find answers to why his parents and so many others were killed, and why Sudan’s “president”/dictator continues to rule.  James serves as president of the a community development foundation which was started by about 200 Lost Boys from his village who are currently scattered across the United States. Their goal is to increase awareness of the problems and needs of Sudan, and raise money to build a medical clinic and schools in the village. James himself is studying biology and wants to become a doctor so he can go back to Sudan and help.

And when a new family (or “a brother” as he calls it) is able to immigrate from the Sudan to the US, James and his famliy are always there to greet them and help them settle in.

Now, what was I complaining about today?

Funny, I can’t quite seem to remember.