Young Sudanese refugees adjust, volunteer in new home

Mennonite Central Committee
Friday, 12 January 2001

One by one, John Manyok places cloth school kits into a large metal barrel at the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Material Resources Center.

Manyok, who is 18, is not certain where these school kits are going, but he is familiar with them.

"They issued us some of these in the camp," said Manyok, a newly arrived Sudanese refugee, as he placed another kit in the barrel. "Maybe, they will be taken to the camp where we were."

With four other family members, all teenagers, Manyok arrived in the United States on Dec. 21 from Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwest Kenya, near the border with southern Sudan.

They are being assisted by Plains Mennonite Church in Hatfield, Pa., in what the church pastor, Mike Derstine, calls a "four-month rescue operation." The United States is offering a permanent home to around 4,000 young Sudanese, mostly boys and young men ages 14 to 25.

On Dec. 28, the family traveled with other members of the church to the MCC center to help pack school and newborn kits. Once recipients of aid themselves, they were contributing at least indirectly to MCC's commitment to their fellow Sudanese. (See sidebar.)

The church had planned the trip earlier, before the refugees arrived. Congregation members are orienting the Sudanese to American society. They arranged for and furnished an apartment before their arrival and offer counsel on everything from school to personal hygiene to "reminding them to dress properly for the cold weather," Derstine said. "We are showing them the little things we take for granted."

Committed Christians, the Sudanese are also attending church services with transportation provided by church members.

For the past decade, survival has been the young refugees' goal.

"At the time I left Sudan, I left because of the war," Manyok said. He and the others talked about fleeing the 17-year civil war with a flood of other refugees, swept up in a sudden desperate rush across the border.

In a Dec. 21 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Manyok described the horrors he lived through: When he was five, soldiers murdered his parents. When he fled at the age of nine with other children, he saw his companions die in jungles infested with crocodiles and bombs.

His story is common among the "lost boys," as the group has been called, according to Janet Panning, refugee resettlement supervisor at Lutheran Children and Family Services, Philadelphia, Pa. A former MCC volunteer, Panning also attends Plains Mennonite Church.

Most of them experienced "two years of trekking from country to country," she said. "They were forced out of Ethiopia at gunpoint, fled back to southern Sudan and then spent eight years at Kakuma. Of 17,000, about 5,000 made it [to the camp]."

At Kakuma, a United Nations camp for 65,000 refugees from Sudan, Somalia and other war-torn countries, the boys lived in small groups. The few girls who had escaped were placed with families. With none of the traditional structures of their cattle-herding Dinka and Nuer cultures, the boys fended for themselves.

"I think my parents are living, but I am not sure," said Michael Aleer, 18, an uncle to Manyok and one of the five teens. The others in the group are a 17-year-old boy and Aleer's nieces, ages 14 and 18. They are two of only 70 girls coming from Kakuma.

The United States will resettle the Sudanese youth in 18 states. Like all refugees accepted for entry into the United States, they are sponsored by one of 10 national voluntary agencies. The national agencies, with affiliates such as Lutheran Family and Children Services in cities throughout the country, have contracts with the government and receive government and private funding.

For the 300 children under 18, the agencies must search for foster care or arrange for them to live in small groups with at least one adult. Those who arrive before their 18th birthday will receive $570 a month to support them while they attend school, while those over 18 receive more limited funds while they work or go to school.

Panning and her agency, which has agreed to resettle 80 Sudanese youth, seek out churches to help. Several people from the church met the group at the airport. They brought winter coats for the new arrivals, who came with no luggage, and took them back to a meal of lasagna.

Derstine described Manyok and his family as "eager to learn and very open." The Sudanese youth are excited about the chance for an education.

Derstine said his congregation is benefitting from the refugeesí presence. "When a congregation takes a risk, there are blessings -- the details somehow work out. We've learned to sense again the presence of God in the stranger and those without parents."

For more information, or to contact Mennonite Central Committee, see their website at: www.mcc.org