Story of escape, adventure from refugee

With a warm smile and a hospitable handshake, Gabriel Bol Deng greeted students on their way into the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center Thursday night. A Sudanese refugee turned humanitarian, Bol Deng shared his inspirational story with UConn students in the dim lights of the auditorium.

Bol Deng was living what he calls a "beautiful life with [his] parents" in the then-peaceful nation of Sudan before the devastating effects of the country's second civil war hit home. At just 10-years-old, he witnessed four militiamen kill civilians before his very eyes, the body of one falling on the young Bol Deng. Of the life-saving tactic he utilized in this experience, he said, "Pretending to be dead was the best way to stay alive."

It was after this harrowing brush with death that Bol Deng was forced to flee, leaving behind both his parents and all eight of his siblings. After a 12 hour journey across the Nile River, during which he used bundles of papyrus for transport and witnessed the deaths of more than 50 people, he arrived in Ethiopia. He sought refuge at the Dimma Refugee Camp, where he learned to write in English using cardboard and charcoal as paper and pen, before relocating to the Kakuma Camp in Kenya in 1992, where he joined drama and debate clubs and took a shine to soccer.

Despite the joviality and amiableness of his character, Bol Deng made sure to touch on a darker time in his life, one that was not shrouded with hope.

"There was a time when I was an angry, disillusioned boy,î he said. ìI thought I was just waiting for my death."

Before these thoughts had time to take hold, Bol Deng said he had a vision of his parents telling him to be resilient and regain a fighting spirit. He recalled a time in his youth when his father told him that despite the odds, man was capable of moving mountains.

While the greater message did not sink in at the time, he drew from these words in his time of desperation.

This was the mindset in place when a self-described "psychologically and mentally" sound Bol Deng and 4,000 other Lost Boys of Sudan - the colloquial term given to those displaced by the war, the term itself stemming from the lost childhood of Peter Pan - made their way to the United States.

After years of adjusting to American life, and the "sugar on the ground," as he initially thought of snow, Bol Deng returned to his native Sudan in May 2007 - two years after the nation drew up its conciliatory Comprehensive Peace Agreement and more than 20 years after he'd initially left.

"I needed to go back and feel complete," he said. Upon his return, Bol Deng reconnected with three siblings, finding that he'd lost the other five, and his parents, in the war. "The only thing I regret is my parents not being able to see me go back [to Sudan] and reunite [with my family]," Bol Deng said.

"You need to give back," he added, as he began to speak about his philanthropic efforts. By building wells to eradicate the polluted water system and embarking upon the Ariang School Project, a venture he calls his ìdream," Bol Deng is doing as much as he can to ensure a difference is made in his homeland. "How can I come here and have a good life when my nieces and nephews are walking two hours to go to school?" he asked.

By next year, there should be eight classrooms in the school, which focuses on learning for young girls, in a nation where 99 percent of women are illiterate.

Of the many messages of hope and perseverance in Bol Deng's gripping and engaging presentation, he made one very clear at the close of the evening. "Hopefully, you will use your education to move some of the mountains in your lives and others," he said.