Background and Early Life

I was born from the Dinka tribes where polygamy is predominantly a pride of cultural values in Southern Sudan, Eastern Africa. My mother is the last of the eleven wives of my father, and I am the last-born of fifty siblings. I am not exactly sure of my birth date because there are no written records from my parents. However, based on the date given to me by the United Nations, I was born in 1984 and grew up in a traditional cattle-herding community from Pakeer, Ciir in Jonglei State.

In the late 1980s, I was only four years old among fifty siblings living an incredible life of illiteracy. The nomadic cattle life valued a lot more than education. So, education was not something I ever dreamed of. My peers and I played different games that don't exist in Western countries when we were in our village where there was no electricity or clean water. Those games such as Gugura, molding cows from clay, and the Dinka game of kids playing marrying your wife, building toggles, and sleeping in them while looking after calves were the most enjoyed.

We were very happy like the rest of the kids before the Sudanese government troops began bombarding our village from the sky with helicopters, and Russians made airstrikes—antinovels in Arabic. In 1987, when the civil war reached its climax and the Sudanese government kept sending troops south, burning down our villages to ashes and obliterating entire communities, I fled into the bush with my brothers and cousins to escape the bullets and avoid being captured or made slaves.

Escape and Survival

The chaos and violence forced me to flee into the bush, where bullets whizzed in the air and burning smoke rose from nearby villages. This led to uprooting and a journey through horrendous lives I never imagined. My first nights in the bush were horrible, leading to an unknown journey that none of my ancestors or parents had experienced before. We became orphaned and walked thousands of miles on foot to Ethiopia, guided by the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) rebels, to avoid being killed or kidnapped by Murle militiamen.

On our way, I witnessed the deaths of cousins, friends, and colleagues. I also saw human remains and sculptures I had never seen before. During the journey, I starved and thirsted to the point where I drank my own urine to survive. I lived in refugee camps for fourteen years before coming to America. I endured hunger, violence, fatigue, and malnutrition, living on just one cup of maize and one cup of beans for six days.

The violence and suffering caused many deaths from Sudan to Ethiopia and then from Sudan to Kenya, but I am grateful that by God's grace, I am alive today.

Journey to America and Education

On April 3, 2001, I arrived in Rochester, New York, later joined by my close friend Peter Agok. I have lived in Rochester for the past ten years. Upon arriving in the United States, I faced cultural shocks and was shaken by American expressions and slang while adapting to life here, both at work and school. I have been chasing the American dream, which still feels far away.

During my stay in the U.S., I attended high school for a year before enrolling at a community college to improve my English. After two years, I transferred to the University of Rochester and graduated in May 2007 with a major in Biology and a minor in Chemistry. I now work at Xerox in Webster, New York, and I look forward to returning to school to pursue a field in medicine, especially pharmacy, to eventually return to Sudan and help alleviate the suffering of my people.