May 10, 2004

The Lost Boys of Sudan was a true movie about a group of boys sent to America to give them a new life. They were called "Lost Boys" because, during the civil war that's been going on in Sudan (a country in Africa) for the past 20 years, thousands of boys ended up trying to survive together after their families were killed.

It was amazing how Peter Dut took us back to the scene when his family was killed. Peter said he heard the drums in his village so he ran down to help. But he got separated from his mother and sister. And when Peter found his father he was covered in blood.

Peter was only a young child; he was 4 or 5. After that, he was traveling by himself. He found a huge group of 20,000 other boys and they crossed hundreds of miles of desert to reach Kenya. There they all lived in refugee camps (those are temporary places where people live if they have to flee their country) for a long time.

Refugee Life
Even though their circumstances were extreme, the Lost Boys dealt with a lot of the same feelings we deal with in foster care: loneliness, pain, sadness and abandonment. They also had to find a way to make strangers into family.

During their journey to the refugee camps, they became like brothers. They would hold hands and cook their food on the fire together, eating it with their hands. It was nice. Even though they were not related, their connection resembled the family that a lot of us in foster care also want.

But they couldn't stay in the refugee camps forever. The land wasn't too fertile. It was just dirt and dust. So they signed up to come to America. Not everyone got to go. The day they saw the list of who was coming here, it was sad. One boy said, "I had my interview first, and now he is before me."

Peter and Santino Chuor were two of the 4,000 Lost Boys picked to travel to America. They felt excited and guilty. They were getting a great opportunity, but they were leaving their friends.

As gifts of remembrance Peter gave his friends a book about basketball, a basketball and sneakers. One sneaker had a hole in it. He said, "You can just sew this up and use it." To get ready for the trip, he washed his clothes and ironed them. He put coals in the iron! It came out neat, too. All starched looking.

Peter and Santino were very obedient. They took advice from the older folks before they went to America. One of the older people was saying, "Don't follow those boys in those baggy jeans. You work and study." (Pauline thought, "Wow, that's my grandmother. They're all the same.")

Heaven on Earth?
On the long flight, one boy said that landing in America was like coming to heaven on earth.

America was a lot different than they expected it to be. We could relate to the pressure of having to adapt to a new place. When a child goes into foster care or moves to a different home, they have to adapt to the new family they've been placed with. Or if a child has just gotten adopted they have to get used the way things are done in the new family. The Lost Boys got adopted by America and had to learn the country's ways.

We were surprised at how fast they learned things in the months they were here. Within a few moths, they each got a job, learned how to drive, found new apartments and started on their educations. Peter even moved himself from Houston, Tex., all the way to Kansas City. We felt for them because it seemed so much like aging out of foster care: having to make it on your own, and not knowing quite how.

They were told just to get jobs and had to support themselves completely within four months (before that they got help with rent and food). It impressed us that when they first came, they were so big on education. They kept asking, "How come we're not getting an education? We have to be in school." (We found out later that many Lost Boys had carried books with them all the way from Sudan, hoping to get an education.)

Peter got himself into high school by getting a new birth certificate that said he was 17. He wasn't sure of his birth date; the boys weren't born in hospitals so they had no real way of knowing how old they were. Many of the ages that were given to them could have been wrong. Peter changed that and the school put him in junior year.

Pressure
Being in America wasn't a bed of roses for them. You could feel their pressure. Pressure from work, from school, from family. At the beginning, Peter worked right through lunch, and had not been enrolled in school.

Santino seemed really unhappy. He had difficulty doing his job, and he wanted to get into high school or college, but couldn't because of paperwork. Santino was studying to be an electrician, because he thought he could be the one to bring electricity back to their village.

Their trials were comical at times—one boy was afraid to sleep on the second floor, because they grew up in one-story mud huts. And Santino bought a car before he got a license, because he didn't know he needed a license. Then, when he went to get one he failed the driving test. But he got in his car and drove away anyway. That was so great.

They had some setbacks, too. Let's talk about the basketball tryouts Peter went to. Poor baby. He would've made the team but there were so many other things going on in his life at that time. It probably affected his game that he was stressed about school and work. That's something we know all about—stress can make you have trouble doing things like concentrating at school or a job.

One big stress was their feeling of not fitting in, of being outsiders. Peter and some other Lost Boys got jobs at a grocery store. Their boss said they should work outside in the parking lot because they're Africans and they're used to the heat. He was angry. He said, "She thinks we're burnt already." (That reminded Natasha of a foster family telling her that she could put up with bad situations, like three people to a bed, because she'd had worse. That's insensitive.)

Discrimination & Race
The Lost Boys also felt that African-Americans were discriminating against them even more than the White people. In the housing complex where Santino lived, he said Black people would walk up to their apartment at night with guns and demand money. Santino's friend David even said he hated African-Americans because they seemed prejudiced and mean. That was disturbing.

They also felt out of place because of their skin color. They said, about African-Americans, "They're brown, not black." But we loved that the boys were so black. These days everybody is mixed and here were these pure black-skinned boys that were so beautiful.

It was unrealistic that, in the beginning, they thought America was heaven, the so-called land of opportunity. In the end they realized that there is no heaven on earth.

When Peter's family called from back home, they were pressuring him to work harder and stressing him about how he has a lot of responsibility and he can't be lazy. They were asking for money, because the village was poor. It had nothing but mud huts.

Peter and Santino learned that there is no heaven on earth. They expected America to be their cure-all. But Africa was hard in one way and America is hard, too, in its own way. In the end, they understood what we know from being in foster care: you have to make your own way.

This review is reprinted with permission from Represent, a bi-monthly magazine written by foster youth and published by Youth Communication.