Dear friends and family,

Thank you for waiting patiently to hear from me about the ongoing conflict in South Sudan. Although the war has not come to an end, I do have some good news to share with you.

The two towns of Bor and Bentiu that had been captured by the rebels have been recaptured by the government forces this past weekend. Thousands of bodies are lying on the streets, most of whom are women and children.

Bor city has been burned down to ashes and the people have attempted to go back are suffocated by the smells. Jalle community back in South Sudan are raising humanitarian support to help the victims of war and thanks to Rebuild South Sudan for donating $1,000 toward that cost. People are without food, cloth, shelter and clean drinking water. If you want to donate please us know and your donation will be directed to those in need.

Our school has not been affected by the conflict but some of the building materials we stored in Bor are not yet known whether they have been burnt as the city is now in ashes. I am planning on going back to south Sudan on February 2, 2014 so please pray for me and for the country.

Thank you for your continued support.

Michael

“Lost Boy” looking forward

The sound of bombs echoed through the Sudanese town of Jalle. Seven-year-old Michael Kuany and his male playmates watched from a distance as the Northern Sudanese army destroyed their village. That was 20 years ago. North Sudan is predominantly Arab and Muslim, while south Sudan is mainly Black African and Christian. Michael now looks forward to a new future in providing hope for the broken Southern Sudanese.

“When the government of Sudan unexpectedly attacked my village,” he reminisces, “I was afraid to go back to where my family was and I went in an unknown direction, which later became Ethiopia. I didn’t know where I was going, but my navigator creator, (God) guided me in my entire flight. I walked for a thousand miles from my home country to Ethiopia where thousands of other children from other villages met up with me. I saw many of them killed by the Islamic forces. Ethiopia became my home for four years…life was really hard.” Later he was forced to flee Ethiopia or the crocodile-infested Gilo river. Michael and the other Lost Boys fled on to Kenya where other troubles awaited them: little food, only Aspirin for medical assistance and terrorizing gangs.

Through it all the lost boys saying “education is our mothers and fathers” was their mission. Whenever they saw a UN worker in the Kenyan camp, they would ask to learn a letter. Then at the end of they day, they would share what they learned. Michael remembers vividly, “For example, I would show him A, and he would show me Z.

Unfortunately, of the estimated 30,000 that fled Sudan, only about 7.000 made it to Kenya. Michael and approximately 4,000 others immigrated to the United States in 2001.

When he went back to Sudan in 2007, he discovered that “where there were once thousands of huts, there were now only a few scattered buildings. The trees I had remembered were gone. The land was dry and empty. People were few, as most have not yet returned from the refugee camps. Recent floods have also kept people from returning to their homeland. I did not recognize my home. There was nothing I brought back to the United Stat

God’s would guide Michael, as he traveled the treacherous road to freedom. Brought safely through deserts, jungles, crocodiles, armies and marauding gangs, he now lives at Church of the Sojourners with Dave and Debbie Gish.

His organization Rebuild South Sudan aims for change. According to the organization’s website, www.rebuildsouthsudan.org, “A 21-year civil war between north and south Sudan left southern Sudan economically and socially impoverished, [so] today the people of Jalle have no clinics, schools, or clean water systems. His solution to the problem? “To help the [orphaned] children of war. Together we can make a difference in people’s lives. Every child deserves these basic needs. Let’s join hands and help now.” Rebuild South Sudan is working to rebuild schools, and change the terrible situation in Sudan. To find out more information, or to donate, go to www.rebuildsouthsudan.org.

Written by Jordan Green, Published in Helium on 11 October 2009.

The horrors still haunt him: the gunfire that ripped his tiny village apart, the terrified screams of neighbors and friends as their homes were set ablaze, the 2,000-mile walk he and other young boys were forced to take to a refugee camp in Kenya, all the while fearing soldiers would slice him limb from limb.

Since the day soldiers attacked his southern Sudan village and Michael Ayuen de Kuany became a 7-year-old refugee, he has struggled not only to survive but also to thrive. Now he hopes his dream of a new school in theRepublic of South Sudan will help his nation on its way to peace.

Kuany shared his story of destruction, survival and redemption with a packed auditorium at the World Methodist Council at the Lake Junaluska, (N.C.) Conference and Retreat Center. The Nov. 13-15 event was the fourth annual Peace Conference — “Poverty, Abundance and Peace: Seeking Economic Justice for All God’s Children.”

The conference explored causes of poverty and economic disparity to equip participants as change agents for a more just and peaceful world. Kuany; Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World; and United Methodist Bishop Nkula Ntanda Ntambo of the North Katanga Area, Democratic Republic of the Congo, spoke at the conference.

Kuany shared how he founded Rebuild South Sudan, a non governmental organization working to build a new interfaith school to help right the wrongs in his native country.

Violence, then a long walk

Kuany remembers well the day of the attack. He had been playing with boys his age on the outskirts of his small farming village. Born to a family of nine children in the mostly Christian Dinka Bor culture, he and his playmates were no strangers to violence. The government in the north controlled Sudan then, but the southern tip contained most of the resources – including oil – coveted by those in power. The extremist forces tried to force Christians and members of traditional faith groups to convert to their version of Islam.

“The Dinka people became a target for their beliefs,” Kuany said, recalling how village elders often warned them never to be captured or they would be cut into pieces alive.

When the boys heard the gunfire and saw their village begin to burn – and saw government troops running toward them – they fled for their lives into the woods, beginning a journey of more than 2,000 miles that ended at a refugee camp in Kenya.

“How did I survive? I don’t have an answer,” Kuany said. “I always say God protected me.”

The boys joined others fleeing similarly destroyed villages but had nothing more than the clothes on their backs and a will to survive to keep them walking. Animals and dehydration as well as soldiers were the enemy. Kuany said he watched many of his friends die.

“We drank our urine as water and would eat the leaves of trees as food,” he said.

They eventually reached Ethiopia and lived for four years in a United Nations refugee camp. However, political violence in the 1990s, when Ethiopia was torn by civil war and later Eritrea declared war against Ethiopia, forced them to flee once again – this time at gunpoint into the deep, crocodile-infested Gilo River. Waiting for them on the other side were Sudanese forces.

“Thousands of people drowned, and the people who couldn’t swim would pile on you and pull you under, and you would drown,” Kuany said.

He was one of the lucky ones who knew how to swim, and he realized his only hope was to dive underwater and swim as far from the crowd as he could.

Faced with Sudanese forces waiting to capture him, Kuany and the boys who made it kept running. They walked another thousand miles until they reached refuge in Kenya.

‘We demanded education’

Life in a refugee camp was rough, Kuany explained. Food was scarce, and the boys lived on one meal a day. There were few medical supplies.

Yet, when asked what they wanted most, the answer was easy.

“We demanded education,” Kuany said. With no family to teach them, he said they told the camps, “Education was our mothers and fathers.”

They got what they asked for. Kuany and the other “Lost Boys of Sudan” learned their lessons under a tree where they first prayed in the sand.

Kuany finished high school, moved to the United States through a sponsorship program and earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin and his master’s from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University.

Kuany was driven. His education had a purpose. He knew he needed to do something for the people he left behind – those who were not as lucky as he was to make it out of a war-torn nation.

“I had hope all these years God had a plan for me,” he said. “I always thought, ‘What can I do? What can I do for my country?’”

‘I had a dream’

Meanwhile, good things were happening in Sudan. As more and more people learned the stories of Kuany and the other “Lost Boys,” the United States in November 2002 passed the Sudan Peace Act. Spurred by this, northern and southern Sudan signed a peace agreement in 2005. Just four months ago, South Sudan became an independent republic.

Good news soon came for Kuany as well. After spending years believing he was an orphan, he learned his mother and younger sister had survived the attacks and were living in a refugee camp in North Uganda, and his father ended up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Though his sister eventually died in that camp, he finally got the chance to reunite with his mother in 2007 on his first return trip to his native land.

Then, one night, Kuany said, he had a dream that shook him to the core.

“I heard a voice: ‘Michael, have you forgotten the people you left behind?’” Kuany said.

The next morning, he withdrew all of his savings, $200, and gave it to his U.S. family, telling them he wanted to build a school for the people of Sudan.

A school, Kuany knew, meant options for poor, rural villagers often tempted by government forces into non-peaceful living.

“In North Uganda, it’s very easy for the (militant group) Lord’s Resistance Army to recruit children to fight their war,” he said. “We don’t want that to happen to the children of South Sudan.”

Kuany hit the speaking circuit, raising money as quickly as he could. Rebuild Sudan has raised more than $200,000 to build a school in South Sudan for Muslim, Christian and children of other faiths to learn and grow together.

“I truly believe that when you have a dream … people will support it,” Kuany said. “The problem is not finished. Let’s work together to bring peace to Sudan … so they don’t see themselves as enemies, but as brothers and sisters.

“What happened there can easily happen here.”

*Connor is editor of the South Carolina United Methodist Advocate.

News media contact: Maggie Hillery, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

Written by Jessica Connor, Published by United Methodist Church on 15 November 2011. See original article here.

I am one of the nine living children born to my family. As a young boy born in the rural village of Jalle in southern Sudan, my 6’4” mother believed that I was born in the year of great drought. She doesn’t know exactly what year it was because there were no clinics in the area at that time and birth certificates to this day are not issued. My mother named me Ayuen, which means “rope”. Around the time of my birth my father’s mother died. In Dinka Bor culture, a rope is worn by grieving adults as a sign of mourning. Life in my village was based on agricultural production and cattle herding. My mother tells me that I was a very active child who loved to run and join my age-mates in traditional dancing.

One evening, when I was perhaps six years old, Sudanese government forces from the north attacked my village. I saw smoke. I heard the sound of guns. After years of hearing from village elders that we were to run to the forest in the event of an attack, I did not hesitate. My playmates were with me but I was still very scared. I did not know at that time that I would not see my beloved mother or my village for another 20 years.

Sudan is the largest country in Africa and is made up of Arab Muslims in the dry north and Black Africans who practice Christianity and traditional religions in the fertile south. Fundamentalist Arabs control the government. While the reasons for the 21-civil war are many and complex, much of it is fueled by greed and religious intolerance. Southern Sudan is rich in oil and agriculture, which the Northern government wants to control. The government in the North was also killing Southerners who refused to convert to Islam. In the mid 1980’s, southern Sudanese villages were systematically torched and by the war’s end in 2005, over 2 million southern Sudanese were dead and 4 million displaced.

After my village was attacked, I walked for one thousand miles to Ethiopia. I did not know where I was going. But I was not alone. By this time there were thousands of us fleeing the south. A long line of thin, poorly-clothed, hungry and very frightened children. As young Dinka boys are often playing outside of the village and older boys are caring for livestock, we did not know where to go when we saw our homes in flames. From villages near and far we ran from soldiers and from the sound of guns. The journey was exhausting. I remembered when I was tired and wanted to sit down and rest, but Mamer and Alier, the older boys who were helping me, instructed me firmly not to rest. They explained that if I stopped to rest I would be captured and killed by the Islamic forces. So I continued to walk with fear, not knowing what might happen to me. Life was hard because there was no food, water, or medical assistance. I was always worried that wild animals might kill me. A lot of my friends died in my presence. Some were shot. Others were simply too tired to keep going. Others died of starvation. I was sure that it would not be long before it was my turn to die.

When we reached the Ethiopian border, we were rounded up by men whose language I did not understand. They scared me because they had guns. Over time, the United Nations (UN) set up a refugee camp for us and Ethiopia became my home for four years. There was no medical assistance and many people died from diseases. But at times it felt like home. My friends and I had built ourselves huts similar to the tukuls we lived in back home in Sudan. I was also reunited with my brother Peter Kuany, (although I always worried about what had happened to the rest of my family). I was thankful for the UN workers. Even though we couldn’t understand each other, we used gestures to communicate. They gave us food and provided some school supplies such as notebooks and pencils.

But in 1991, Ethiopia split into two countries and Eritrea declared a war against Ethiopia. The refugees were given 24 hours notice to immediately evacuate the camp. After 24 hours Ethiopian and Eritrean forces clashed in the camp and I—along with many of my young friends—were forced into the Gilo river. The Gilo is very deep and full of crocodiles. I had learned how to swim in Ethiopia, but many of my friends perished on that day. After I crossed the river I was on Sudanese land. But as soon as I stepped my foot onto my home soil the Sudanese Islamic government forces aggressively moved in with the intention of capturing and killing me. So, again, I ran.

For another thousand miles I ran with the boys who survived the Gilo. We fled from the Sudanese troops for many weeks. Again, we had no food or water for our journey. I was older now but when we were given that 24 hour notice in the Ethiopian camp I felt like a child. I wondered to myself ‘Where will we go? What are we going to eat?’ We passed through many different villages of other tribes but few people were around and we were a large group. We kept walking until we reached an area in southern Sudan that was controlled by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (the SPLA was comprised of southern Sudanese rebels who were fighting the Sudanese government). Finally we had someone to defend us. When the SPLA saw our rag-tag group of kids being chased by the government forces they rushed out in front of us to fight. We were pushed behind them and directed to walk towards a place called “Kenya”. I had never heard of such a place but I knew it was safer than Sudan.

Kakuma refugee camp is located in northern Kenya and I was one boy among thousands of other refugees who came to seek protection. Kakuma is in a dry desert where it seldom rains. Life in the camp was miserable. There was no shelter provided for us, it was always hot and windy, and there was never enough food. We lived on one small meal a day, which was comprised of ungrounded corn. Again I had to start from scratch The UN was the only source for food and medical supplies.

While I was in the camp, I asked the UN aid workers to teach me the English alphabet and I also asked for education to be provided in the camp. Both in the Ethiopian and Kenyan camps, I used to ask the UN aid workers to teach me an English word and what I learned I would teach to my friends. The aid workers were very kind and helpful in most cases. A lot of them were white from the European countries and the United States of America and few from other nationalities. I deeply appreciated the help I got from the UN workers and I wanted to be like them. I hoped that someday I would be able to help people in distress.

Kakuma was my home for ten years, until 2001, when the United States offered the so called “Lost Boys of Sudan” a chance to come to their country.

After 14 years living in refugee camps, the United States government kindly approved me to come to the country. Because I was thirsty for education, I didn’t waste any time, but went to school and got my GED and then went to college. I studied International studies and political science. My dream was to someday join the United Nations and advocate for those who are in need. I wanted to somehow pay back all the people who had helped me during my time of need. After a lot of thinking, I decided to a form a nonprofit organization to raise money to build an elementary school in my hometown in southern Sudan. I knew that there were thousands of war orphans who needed help and the only way that they could have a better future is through education. In 2005 I started Rebuild South Sudan Inc, with an aim to provide an education for the many children of Jalle Sudan, in particular for the many war orphans and for Jalle’s girls—who so often are discriminated against and denied an education.

Today I want to encourage countries in this same way. I am left over from the war. There is still much pain in my heart and I will never forget what I have seen and endured. However I want to use my experiences to help others—both individuals and nations—heal. I want to bring people and nations together through diplomacy so that conflicts can be settled with words instead of with guns and tanks. I will do everything in my power to prevent another child from losing her family, her home, her country. I am again asking to be taught, but this time I recognize that I too have much to offer.