Center of the heart

:: How you can help :: The tallest people in the world have a tall order to fill when it comes to finding support, comfort and friends in their new home in America — the Sudanese Lost Boys of Phoenix are no different. He sits behind a large desk, causally eating a peach and grinning. On his desk is a snapshot of his fiancé smiling back at him, which he is quick to show anyone who is interested. This is Jany Deng, and he’s damn near famous. There have been countless articles written about him, not to mention the “60 Minutes II” documentary in which he appeared. Deng, 29, graduated from ASU in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in social work, is about to go on to graduate school and is the Program Manager at the AZ Lost Boys Center. Deng is from a village in Southern Sudan called Jokou. He was 7 years old when he saw his village bombed. According to Africa News, the civil war of the 1980s between Sudan’s Arab-subjugated government and the rebels of Southern Sudan, mostly Christian, left about 20,000 young boys running for their lives. Most of them, like Deng, were outside, tending to livestock, at the time their villages were destroyed. Their choices were limited — flee, die, or be forced into the rebel militias. “I was herding the cattle,” Deng starts. “I just left the cows and me and some other boys, we just started running.” He explains that when he and the other boys saw the fire and smoke, they realized it was too late to go look for family members. They could only think to run. Deng and the other boys walked for four and a half months, not even knowing where they were going at first. He explains that a few soldiers came to find them on the road and then began leading them to Ethiopia. “Meanwhile, the gunmen were still shooting people down,” Deng says. “So we’d be walking in the daytime and we’d be getting shot at by helicopters and then also down on the ground we’d be facing starvation, dehydration and wild animals.” Deng says this was all very difficult at a young age; the oldest of the group was about 11 years old. They got to the camp in Ethiopia in 1987 and remained there until 1991, when they were forced back to Sudan. Southern Sudan was a ghost town by then, he says. That’s when Deng and other Lost Boys began walking to a refugee camp in Kenya. Deng ended up in the Dabaab refugee camp in Kenya and was reunited with his older brother Simon. Deng says the camp became one of the agencies to refer refugees for immigration into to the United States. “I was one of the few lucky ones in 1995,” Deng says. “By that time I was 14.” Deng says he and Simon both arrived in Phoenix in June of 1995, when he was 16. This was after stacks of applications and passed physical examinations. “Then, immediately, they separated us,” Deng says. Deng was put in a foster home because of his age, but his brother was supported for only three months and sent out into the world. “You don’t know the language, you don’t know about jobs or school,” Deng says. “That’s the difficulty refugees have to go through.” In the meantime, Deng was attending Shadow Mountain High School. “[I was] having fun, running, so I was doing whatever to fit in,” he says. Simon, however, was having a harder time. “He was having difficulty with life. He couldn’t keep up a job, things became overwhelming, nothing was going right,” Deng says. Simon took a 9MM rifle to the Catholic Social Services office building on April 10, 1997. Once inside, he began firing the gun into the air, also firing at an officer once police arrived. A police officer then shot Simon in the arm and the chest, killing him. “If the center could have been there at that time, he could have had a place to come,” Deng says. A Vision and a Mission Deng’s story is similar to many Lost Boys of Sudan. Others can even be much worse. An estimated 4,000 refugees were relocated into the United States. By 2001, about 550 young men were able to call Arizona home. On April 11, 2003 the AZ Lost Boys Center became a place where these young men could receive help and support, not to mention play a little foosball. According to the AZ Lost Boys Center Web site at www.azlostboyscenter.org, the vision of the establishment is that the “Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan can live full and meaningful lives in which they are able to achieve their dreams.” The mission is to “empower the Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan to achieve their goals by supporting their educational, employment, cultural and emotional needs.” “We have about 450 [Lost Boys] that we serve,” Deng says. According to the AZ Lost Boys Center Web site, the past four years brought major success to the center. The Lost Boys and Girls have been presented with 450 scholarships and hundreds of job offers. In 2007, 25 Lost Boys and Girls were granted U.S. citizenship. The center has also helped 11 Lost Boys and Girls graduate from community colleges or four-year universities. As most students know, getting into college involves application after application, no easy task especially for these young men and women. “How to apply for financial aid, how to apply for scholarships that are out there,” Deng says. “We bring them here like ASU and community colleges; we bring them into workshops here.” Brenda Felldin is the president of the Board of Directors at the AZ Lost Boys Center and a graduate of ASU. Felldin explains the Board of Directors as being a volunteer board consisting of about 12 members, both American and Sudanese. “I’ve been involved with the center for about four years,” Felldin says. “I read something about the Lost Boys and then I found out that there was a center here in Phoenix that worked with them — I thought ‘That’s so exciting.’ ” Felldin says she was looking for another volunteer program to get involved in at the time. “I thought, ‘What an interesting group of people and what a compelling story,’ ” Felldin says. “I came down and I started to volunteer.” Felldin was able to get TV and news stories to build awareness for the center and raise money. “I was asked to join the board and I served on the board for a year and then the second year I became president.” Felldin says her term as president finishes at the end of the year, at which time she says she’ll probably renew her membership and stay on the board a while longer. Felldin suggests a quote by Joseph Majak Tuok to fit the center — “What we have is hope, hope that there shall be a better life ahead of us…” The Mural One addition was made to the AZ Lost Boys Center that sticks in the minds of visitors. On the back wall, where mentors do their mentoring and volunteers do their volunteering, there is a mural that represents the story of the Lost Boys’ journey. Peggy Ferguson, 54, is an artist and illustrator. She sees this as the most rewarding mural she’s ever done. Ferguson was asked to do a mural for the Lost Boys Center, although she had only heard little of the situation beforehand. “What I did is I went online and I just researched and researched and researched — and cried a lot,” she says. “Then I just prayed.” Ferguson was told she only had a week to complete the mural. She ended up finishing it in four and a half days. “I wanted something that the boys could participate in and have it be their own,” Ferguson says. “Make their own mark on it.” She accomplished this by cutting a stencil of the Sudanese cow and having each one of the Lost Boys sponge on the paint near the bottom. “That was so rewarding for me,” Ferguson says. She says she had to take their hand and show many of them how to use the stencil. “Some of them had never even used a stencil. They didn’t have a clue what I was even talking about.” The mural is a metaphor. According to Ferguson and her blog, the green base represents life, the changing colors of the sky represent the changes the Lost Boys have seen and the cows at the bottom represent the economy. The tan colored clothes represent the poverty of the Lost Boys and Girls, the bright colored stripes on their clothes represent hope, the people facing the left are those who have come to help and finally, the waves and text at the top represent continuous spirit. “It was an awesome experience,” Ferguson says. “I feel so privileged to have been a part of that and to know them.” Deng says the mural brings joy to the center because of the way it can represent the individual background of each Lost Boy. “The story might be the same, but each of us is different and unique,” Deng says. “And working with Peggy, we learned so much from her and her work as well.” Education is Our Mother and Father Yai Atem was one of the 11 Lost Boys to graduate in 2007. He received a bachelor’s degree in criminology and criminal justice at ASU West. ASU News posted an article in December 2007 about Deng and Atem. According to the piece, Atem was 7 when he began the walk to Ethiopia. Once there, he and other wandering boys were sent back to Sudan. Atem ended up in Kenya at the Kakuma refugee camp. The International Rescue Committee relocated Atem into the United States. They also assisted him in securing a home in Phoenix after a 13-year sentence of wandering in Africa. In Kenya, Atem had passed a national secondary school test, which allowed him to enroll almost immediately at Phoenix College. Upon his arrival in the valley, he received an A.A. in criminal justice studies. Although the IRC helped Atem tremendously along with his own willpower and drive, Atem also got by with a little help from his friends at the AZ Lost Boys Center. Atem explains that the AZ Lost Boys Center was not around when he first arrived. When the center opened its doors in 2003, he was on the first round of the leadership council. “I was the secretary of finance in the leadership council and in the Board of Directors,” Atem says. “I learned some literary skills,” Atem says of how the center has personally helped. “Of course I always get the social time there with volunteering.” Atem says he has witnessed the center help countless others with school and English skills. He visits the center still most weekends or will stop by during the week. He goes to relax and visit everyone in the center. Atem says he has even more hope for the center. “I would like to see the center deposit more scholarships and find a lot of the scholarships to award the Lost Boys,” he says. Most of the scholarship money comes from outside help. The center gathers funds for scholarships through monetary donations, donated items and with the cow room. The Cow Room Santino Mawut Chol and Kuol Awan go back — way back. They knew each other in Southern Sudan and went to school together. Now, they both work at the AZ Lost Boys Center after years of separation. Chol is a smooth operator, calm and collected as he speaks. He is a member of the Board of Directors and the President of the Leadership Council. Awan, polite and well dressed, is the center’s Outreach Manager. Chol arrived in Phoenix in May 2001. Awan was first sent to Utah in June 2001. Then came to Phoenix and started working at the center last May. Chol is attending ASU West and working on a B.A. in business. “If I try hard, I’m going to be done in May of next year,” Chol says. Awan graduated from the University of Utah. Chol says the center has benefitted both himself and fellow Lost Boys. “There are different scholarships for those looking for the money to go to school,” Chol says. “We make cows and we sell, them and the money we get from the cows, we use it for school.” The cow is essential to the Sudanese culture and economy. According to the center’s Web site, “Sudanese boys are taught how to sculpt cows out of mud. This teaches them the value of the cow and prepares them for their future work.” Now the cow is essential to the Center as well. A small room at the center of the building is filled with miniature, ceramic cows with dissimilar coloring and sizes. Table tops, shelves and more table tops are packed with these stunning and shiny diminutive grazers. There are brown ones, tall ones, short ones, spotted ones, black ones, green ones, big ones, crazy ones. “These were our toys,” Deng says while handling a small ceramic cow. The cows are made out of clay and then fired and glazed, the average size being 5” by 8”. The cows are on sale in the cow room at the AZ Lost Boys Center, priced from $20 to $100. All money coming in from the cow project goes towards scholarships dispersed directly to the Arizona Lost Boys each semester. In fact, most of the donations are for education as well. “The most important part [of the center] is the education,” Chol says. Reach the reporter at lauren.cusimano@asu.edu.