Lessons from a ‘Lost Boy’: South Sudanese activist shares story in Mooresville

The book shares Dut’s journey as an 11-year-old boy who walked miles to escape his country’s civil war along with thousands of other children headed to refugee camps.             

It also tells the story of a young girl’s trek to find water each day for her family.

The book helps Goodwin’s students develop a global view and “understand we are in somewhat of a nice little bubble here in the United States,” Goodwin said.

The school was randomly selected from 174 schools worldwide to win the organization’s “Iron Giraffe” challenge after raising at least $1,000 through doughnut sales for Water for South Sudan.             

The challenge’s grand prize?            

A visit from Dut himself.              

“Thank you for doing this,” Dut told students Monday. “The difference you are making over there is huge. You are helping thousands and thousands of people.”

South Sudan is a landlocked country in central Africa that gained its independence from Sudan in 2011. With more than 12 million people across 400,000 square miles, South Sudan is slightly larger than France and slightly smaller than Texas.              

Dut, of the Dinka people from the town Tonj, grew up in a mud hut with a grass roof and no running water or electricity, he said. He attended school and cared for cows and goats.               

But soon, his simple, peaceful life was changed forever.               

“When I was 11, that’s when my life was totally upside down completely,” said Dut.               

In 1985, two decades of civil war began in Sudan and millions of Sudanese fled to refugee camps in Ethiopia, Kenya and neighboring countries to escape being killed by enemy factions.               

Among those who fled were thousands of young children, including Dut, who became known as “The Lost Boys of Sudan.”              

Dut said he spent years in an Ethiopian refugee camp and, as a teenager, led 1,500 fellow “Lost Boys” through the desert to another refugee camp in Kenya.

“We had no option,” Dut said. “We had to take care of ourselves."

Years later, as a young man, Dut traveled to America and lived with a sponsor family. He became a dual U.S. and South Sudanese citizen.             

While in America, Dut soon learned his father, presumed dead, was alive but gravely ill back in South Sudan due to a water-borne illness.              

“I said, ‘I should do something,’” Dut recalled.                

Despite not knowing how he could provide clean water, over time Dut raised enough money to return home. He decided to drill a well in his village.

Besides improving the health and welfare of villagers, access to clean water also opened other doors, he said. Girls in the village now had time to go to school instead of walking miles for water for their families.             

Peace between rural villages also became more commonplace because people didn’t have to leave their village for another to get water.               

Dut formed Water for South Sudan in 2003 and today serves as senior adviser.

“All this happened because I did not give up,” said Dut, now 43. “I have hope, perseverance and faith. This is how I went through it.”              

To date, Water for South Sudan has drilled 336 borehole wells, bringing water to hundreds of thousands of people in South Sudan, Dut said.              

He urged the audience Monday to help conserve water.               

“I’m encouraging each person in this room … (to) try not to let that tap run while you’re brushing your teeth for that long,” said Dut.              

Jordan Lawson, 13, and a seventh-grader at Pine Lake, said he found the book inspirational because Dut was able to live through such suffering, move to America and then return to help his people.               

Lawson said he thought it would be terrifying to have to walk to refugee camps the way Dut did as a child.

“(It is) probably one of the most horrifying things you could do in your life because you’re fleeing from your home country, without any of your friends or family, to a country you don’t know,” Lawson said.               

Seventh-grader Morgan Tucker, 13, said she enjoyed reading the book for class. “I thought it was really good,” said Tucker. “There were a lot of descriptive details. It was inspirational, I guess. One of the key messages was to always keep trying. When he was traveling, he never stopped and gave up like a lot of people did.”            

Tucker said it was hard to imagine being a girl in South Sudan walking miles for water each day for her family.            

“I’ve never really had to walk far for anything,” said Tucker. “The most I’ve probably ever walked was around school or around the neighborhood or something. I’ve never walked a long distance every day for hours.”