Lost Boy Dies Without Seeing His Mother Again

[NATO AIR]

You hear something like this, and you just get a lump in your throat. It was wonderful though how so many good people (from Sen. Chambliss on down) tried to help this young man, who was doing quite well in building a promising future in America before he fell ill. Let us hope he finds the peace with God in heaven that he was denied in life by the Sudanese government.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0501300322jan30,1,4547207.story?coll=chi-

Lost Boy dies without seeing his mother again
Fear for children kept her in Sudan

By Dahleen Glanton
Tribune national correspondent
Published January 30, 2005

ATLANTA -- Gabriel Boul, a Sudanese refugee who was torn from his family at the age of 7, clung to life for more than a month, fueled by the hope that he would see his mother again. He died last week surrounded by friends, but the person he most wanted there never came.

The tragic story of 24-year-old Boul, one of the 26,000 "Lost Boys of Sudan" who walked 1,000 miles from their war-torn villages to safety in Kenya, could have ended with his death. Instead, his friends chose to make it a beginning. They recently established a non-profit organization, called Gabriel's Fund, to raise money to assist other Sudanese refugees with serious medical problems.

Since Boul was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer late last year, his friends had worked feverishly to grant his dying wish--that his mother could travel from embattled Sudan to be with him in Atlanta. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) worked to get her a temporary visa, $7,300 in donations poured in from well-wishers, and relatives in Sudan arranged to get Atong Abor from her remote village to Nairobi, Kenya.

But in the end, Boul's mother chose not to come. It was fear that kept her home.

Abor and Boul were the only family members who survived a bloody raid on their village 17 years ago. Bound and gagged on the floor of their home, she watched as militiamen killed her husband, a son and a daughter. They took Abor and another daughter into captivity and left Boul behind, believing that he could not survive alone. Later, a neighbor came and took him away.

Like Boul, Abor has tried to move on with her life. She remarried, but her second husband also was killed. She has two other children now, ages 9 and 15. But with the civil war still raging in Sudan, she was afraid that if she left them behind while she traveled to America, she could lose them too.

Afraid for remaining family

"She really wanted to come but she was just too frightened," said Janis Sundquist, an Atlanta volunteer who works with the 150 Sudanese boys who have resettled in Georgia. "Once she even went to the airport, but she just couldn't go through with it. Having seen your family blown away in front of your face, it is hard to leave your children behind."

The friends considered trying to bring the children to the U.S. as well, but as Boul's condition worsened, they realized there would not be enough time.

For years, Boul did not know what happened to his mother. A friend found her in Sudan, and in September she gave him a call. They talked for more than an hour, but she refused to say what had happened to his sister who was captured.

Boul, who entered a hospice in December, refused for a month to give up hope of seeing his mother. But near the end, he seemed to have come to terms with the fact that he would not, Sundquist said. A week before he died, he said to Sundquist, "Let's just close that chapter."

"I didn't say anything, but I didn't close the chapter. We just kept trying," she said.

Sudan has been embroiled in a civil war between the Arab-descendant Janjaweed militias, supported by the Sudanese government, and civilian Sudanese rebels in the Darfur region. The violence has escalated into what is being called a massive genocide, resulting in more than 2 million civilians, mostly dark-skinned Africans, being killed, raped or displaced.

When Boul was 11, he and thousands of other young boys walked more than 1,000 miles through the desert, eating leaves, drinking dirty water and struggling to stay alive for four months, as they made their way to a refugee camp in Kenya. Their name, the "Lost Boys of Sudan," comes from the orphans who followed Peter Pan.

Since 2000, more than 3,500 male refugees like Boul have been resettled in cities such as Atlanta, Chicago and Salt Lake City through a rescue program initiated by the United Nations and the State Department. The transition has been difficult. Many have medical problems and no health insurance.

"They came from one of the most remote parts of the world, and they were on their own for 10 to 15 years. So bringing this type of people to the most advanced part of the world is a challenge," said Justin Demayen, a case manager for Refugee Resettlement Immigration Services of Atlanta. "Socializing means everything from learning to use modern appliances to getting a job."

Insurance an obstacle

The refugees are provided Medicaid for eight months after their arrival in the U.S., but after that they are expected to get a job and support themselves, Demayen said. Most of them do, but with no education, they end up working at mostly minimum-wage jobs.

"These are refugees who come with no job experience, and it is hard for them to get a job that offers insurance or pays enough for them to buy it," said Demayen. "They come here with a lot of diseases that need to be taken care of. And that could take longer than eight months."

Boul in many ways was a success story. He was scheduled to graduate from Open Campus High School, an alternative public school, in June. He had a job making salads at a restaurant at the airport. He sent money to Africa each month to help other refugees. And his Medicaid was extended to cover his care.

The money collected by his teacher, Lettie Love, and other staff members at the school to bring Boul's mother to Atlanta will be used to pay for his funeral and burial on Sunday, they said.

"It's too late for Gabriel, so what we want to do now is try and screen all the boys and get a complete medical history on them. We are going to follow them until they are stable enough to do it themselves," said Sundquist.

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune