Sudan refugee, 32, in Texas still adapting

AMARILLO, Texas (AP) ? Lual Lual is nearing his second year as a correctional officer at the Clements Unit, the 3,400-inmate prison facility on the northeast edge of Amarillo.

Prisons across the state are facing shortages in guards because of salary and tough work conditions.

Lual, however, doesn't blink.

"When someone like him has lived through what he has, my life can't be that tough," co-worker and friend Melanie King said. "He smiles all the time. He's the hardest worker out there. He puts things in perspective."

Lual is 32. He has spent the last three years in Amarillo, the last 11 in the United States. Before that, his life was smothered by terror, death, starvation and a daily struggle for survival. That's what Lual carries with him as one of 20,000 Lost Boys of Sudan.

"I don't see anything hard anymore because of what I went through," Lual said in his deliberate English. "Nothing can be harder. Nothing."

The last ties to his war-torn home country of Sudan are the most important. A younger brother, Akot, and sister, Akon, live in their village of Nymele. He sends money from his Clements paycheck to them for food and a phone card.

"My hope is to get them to a better place to live. I try my best to get them to America," Lual said. "But I'm told it is hard to bring them because they aren't children. They say, 'OK, as long as you send us something to help us eat, we can do OK.' So that's what I focus on."

Lual hasn't seen any of his family since a night in 1986 when his village was attacked. He was 6 when he was awakened by nighttime gunfire by soldiers from the central government in the Second Sudanese Civil War.

They fled, running in any direction just to live. His parents, mother Achol and father Bol, were murdered. But he escaped into the screaming chaos, a scared child slicing through the dark.

"We just run. We don't know where. I run one way, my father run one way, my mother run one way," he said. "You try as much as you can to get out of the middle of the enemy because they were everywhere. They used guns. We used spears."

It would be years before Lual would understand what was happening, that the central Sudanese government was in a 21-year war with the Dinka and Nuer tribes and the Sudan People's Liberation Army in the southern part of the country.

The war, which killed 2.5 million, was seen as racial, with Arabs against Africans, as well as religious with Muslims attacking Christians and traditional African religions.

All Lual knew at that age was evil men were trying to harm him and others with him.

His family was gone. He had only scared strangers in his group. For the next year, Lual, of first-grade age, scattered to an Ethiopian refugee camp and then to six different villages across Sudan and near the Kenyan border. They were human quarry.

Lual watched people drown in a river as bullets whizzed by. He survived only by floating on a makeshift raft of plastic.

"I not know how to swim," he said. "I just make it after I see the river was clear. When it was full of people, people step on you and grab you and you both drown."

Besides soldiers, African animals posed a deadly threat. Lions, in particular, would prey on those too exhausted to continue in the Sudanese heat. Starvation and dehydration were enemies too. Lual remembers he and others drinking their own urine.

"You were lucky to have it," he said. "Some people see you with urine and they steal it from you. They take it away by force."

The Red Cross and United Nations, nearly a year into their escape, ultimately intervened for the young boys. They were taken first to Nairus in Sudan. When violence was too near, the Red Cross moved them to the border town of Lokichogio, Kenya. Finally, for nearly a decade, Lual lived in a refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya.

He was among more than 20,000 displaced orphans, dubbed "The Lost Boys of the Sudan" by aid workers. Many immigrated to the U.S. when a resettlement program was instituted in 1999.

Lual came to the U.S. in 2001, settling in Dallas for nearly eight years.

There are a handful of "Lost Boys" in Amarillo, and a friend invited Lual to move here. After short stays in Washington state and on a fishing boat in Alaska, Lual thought Amarillo sounded good. He has been here since 2009.

"In America, it is easier to do what you want to do," he said. "America has freedom."

But the United States does not have the rest of his family. He has confirmation an older brother, Deng, was long ago kidnapped by government officials and is now a forced soldier. He had been a fighter in Darfur, a region in Sudan.

Lual has no contact with him, but does about twice a month with Akot and Anon, who live in what is now the Republic of South Sudan. On occasion, he will allow himself to think of what was and what could be.

"I miss my mom, my father," he said. "It's not good for a little boy to be parentless where nobody is going to help you."

But Lual, like all the Lost Boys, has been steeled with resolve after surviving the trauma only they know.

"I have to stand up and do something for myself and my brother and sister," he said.

"I am lucky I came here. Their lives are more bad than mine. I am the father and the mother. I am the head of the family. So it is on me. But one day, I would like to see them."

___

Information from: Amarillo Globe-News, http://www.amarillo.com

Source: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/texas/article/Sudan-refugee-32-in-Texas-still-adapting-4198690.php

stan van gundy navy jet crash virginia beach crash stephen hawking marion barry virginia beach jet crash ridiculously photogenic guy