Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Sioux Falls Picture


Joseph was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota to attend an event with John Dau and Moses Jokhnial. Moses lives in Watertown SD and is working on a raising funds to build a school in his home village in Sudan. It is not often Joseph is the shortest person in a photograph!

Monday, April 28, 2008

Successful book signing at B. Dalton

Ron Saeger and Joseph spent about 3 hours at B. Dalton in Fargo on Saturday and had a good day of sales and visiting with well-wishers. They spent Sunday in Watertown SD and Monday in Sioux Falls with John Dau promoting other Sudanese aid projects.

I just discovered Valentino Achak Deng's Google Book talk on YouTube. He is the subject of Dave Egger's What is the What and does a nice job of telling his story--much like Joseph's--in a succinct, powerful, and occasionally humorous way.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Dying in Peace: The Ongoing Emergency in Southern Sudan

Ron Saeger, an ASAH Board of Director, has been doing some great research on Sudan and turned up this startling video and report from Doctors without Borders, Dying in Peace: The Ongoing Emergency in Southern Sudan.

The influx of Sudanese returning to the country with so little infrastructure in place is putting a tremendous strain on the returnees as well as the aid organizations trying to help them make the transition.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Memo to Bush on Darfur

Nicholas Kristof's opinion piece in the New York Times lays out 8 steps the Bush Administration should take to help not only Darfur, but, as Mr. Kristof says, "Save Sudan." A little over a month ago Kristof started to broaden his view (and his readers' view) on Sudan; the crisis is most visible and deadly in Darfur (western Sudan), but the North-South tensions have returned after only 3 years of peace.

Southern Sudan desperately needs piece. Various aid projects grounded in the US are gaining momentum, but they will not be realized if fighting in the south resumes.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Bill Moyers, Hope in the Congo

Bill Moyer's Journal covered the rebuilding efforts in The Democratic Republic of the Congo. Southern Sudan faces many of the same challenges--lack of infrastructure, few jobs, no reliable food source, etc. What really stood out for me, and something that I have heard from Joseph and others in southern Sudan, is that life was good before the wars. People had enough food, kids were going to school, progress was being made and it was being made by the people of Sudan and the DRC. Joseph remembers a good life before the Sudanese Civil war of 1983-2005. Valentino Deng in What is the What describes a good life in his Sudanese village before the war. My Congolese friend Martin says life was good for him, he was going to school, his father had earned a Master's degree and was gainfully employed before the family was forced out of the Congo in 1999. I fear that many in the west assume these African countries are always at war within and among themselves; I fear that many in the west assume life has always been and will always be difficult in Africa, but that isn't an accurate perception. The wars disrupt everything, they destroy everything.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Returning to Sudan

A very good story about a Sudanese man who left Bor with his family when he was 10, stayed in Pochalla for about 6 months, and then moved to Pinyudo for 3 years. From there, his story looks like the Lost Boy story, except he was never resettled to the US, and in November 2007, at age 29, returned to Bor with his family.

What's particularly interesting here is that it describes whole families moving out of the Bor area to Pochalla--different than the typical Lost Boy story. Pinyudo, I have read, had 40,000 or more refugees, about half of them unattended minors.

GDR Kids of Namibia

Today at the Red River Conference on World Literature, I heard Jason Owens of SDSU present on the GDR Kids of Namibia, a group (about 140 I think he said) of Namibian children who were relocated from a refugee camp in Namibia to East Berlin in the late 1970s. They were educated in Germany, became known as the GDR kids, and returned to Namibia when the government there changed and the Berlin Wall fell (almost simultaneously).

The parallels with the Lost Boys of Sudan story were interesting, although the GDR kids were much younger when they left Africa. Jason told me afterward that the kids did become "media darlings" a bit like the Lost Boys have become, but the name has proved problematic, as these kids are now well into adulthood.

Surprisingly little on the Web about this group--the one book about them is very expensive, and Jason's conference presentations show up, but not even a Wikipedia entry!

New Film: Come Back to Sudan

Come Back to Sudan is a 29 minute documentary about the return of 3 Lost Boys of Sudan to their home village, Duk Payuel. Duk Payuel is also Joseph's home village, and this group returned to Sudan in January of 2008--they slept in the tents we left!

Their film just showed at the Aspen Film Fest.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Barnes and Noble Book Signing with Joseph

Joseph will be signing African Soul, American Heart from 12:00-2:00 PM at the Fargo Barnes and Noble, Saturday April 12th. Direction and details.