Community mobilizes to help 'Lost Girls'

A contingent of Boulder volunteers who worked to relocate young women from Sudan now have mobilized to support the four who were displaced by Saturday's apartment fire, including a 21-year-old Sudanese woman who was severely burned.

"We thought we left all this tragedy back in Sudan," said Micklina Peter, a Lost Girl herself who now works to bring others to Boulder through the Community of Sudanese and American Women and Men.

The group met Sunday night to coordinate efforts, including collecting winter clothes and household items. The volunteers already supplied the women with basic clothes and brought backpacks filled with school supplies to the meeting. Another volunteer planned to take the women shopping to buy replacement textbooks.

They also talked about coordinating a carpool so Susan Moi, who is in critical condition at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, will have a steady stream of visitors to encourage her.

Moi was the first Sudanese girl to relocate to Boulder and has lived here for almost three years.

"She's got a spunky spirit," said Janet Taffet, who has helped Moi adjust to American life.

Friends described her as hardworking "people person," saying she worked at the Sushi counter at Safeway and attends Catalyst High School, a private school in Lafayette.

They said she will need extra support after she leaves the hospital because the Sudanese culture views a woman's facial scars negatively. The group is hoping to bring Moi's mother, who's currently living in a refugee camp, to Boulder. But because the woman has been ill, they're not sure if she can travel.

Josephine Louis, a Sudan refugee who lives in an adjacent apartment building, said she also wants to help the second woman critically injured in the fire, 26-year-old Kaianna Kadivnik.

"I feel like she is part of us," Louis said.

Louis said the fire was an unwelcome shock for her and the other women, who came here to escape from the violence of their homeland.

"It just brought back memories," she said. "It was just hard. It's sad."

The Lost Boys and Girls survived the Sudanese government's genocide against the tribal residents in the south. As children, they watched their loved ones die and villages be destroyed. Many ended up separated from their families in refugee camps, where they lived for years.

Boulder's Lost Girls were identified by a Catholic nun living in Kenya, who goes by "The Good Samaritan" and works to rescue women and girls in the camps. So far, 16 of the Lost Girls have relocated to Boulder.

Source: DailyCamera.com