Who are the Lost Boys of Sudan?
As I got more involved with Bol's clinic in South Sudan, I met others who were working in the country. I found an agricultural expert who helped me organize a training on best practices.
While working on this project I met another Lost Boy, Dr. Jacob Atem. When my husband and I met him one day over lunch, we were impressed with his knowledge of the healthcare in South Sudan. We learned that he had given up his job so he could devote fulltime in helping his country. I joined Jacob in working with his non-profit a year later.
​​​​​Project S.U.C.C.E.S.S. is dedicated to helping to bring a brighter future to the children in South Sudan through education. No one works harder at achieving this than the Lost Boys of Sudan. Here is their story.
When civil war broke the country of Sudan, approximately 20,000 young boys were forced to flee their home villages. Jacob Atem and Lual Deng – co-founders of the Southern Sudan Health Care Organization – were among those boys. Many were as young as six years old when their villages were burned, and their families were killed by northern soldiers. After walking over 1,000 miles, only half of the boys survived.
As they trekked through the wilderness, they endured malnutrition, dehydration, exhaustion and worse. One night when Jacob was hiding in the bush, one of the boys yelled “lion!” He fled—and ran into a sharp branch that cut his leg so deeply he could see bone. There was no way to get medical treatment. Miraculously, it didn’t get infected.
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Of the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 children who started the journey from South Sudan, about 10,000 died before reaching Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. Walking nearly 2,000 miles, he saw many boys die from communicable diseases such as hepatitis B, measles, pertussis and tuberculosis. Like them, he had had no vaccinations. The refugee camps where they ended up were overcrowded and prone to outbreaks of cholera, shigellosis and other diarrheal diseases, affecting younger children the most.
After ten years at Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, he was resettled in a foster home near Lansing, Michigan. he found himself in a classroom for the first time, as a high school freshman.
He became interested in biology. He majored in it in college, thinking he might someday return to the refugee camps as a doctor. In his senior year of college, with a fellow Lost Boy, he co-founded Southern Sudan Healthcare Organization (SSHCO), which provides health education and health care through a medical clinic. When he sat down with his adviser to figure out his next steps after graduation, he told Jacob about the field of public health. The more Jacob learned, the more he saw this as a way to help the vulnerable populations he left behind in Africa.
Jacob has never forgotten his homeland. His journey from South Sudan has in some ways taken him back to his home. He saw and lived the public health problems of refugees on his way to a career in public health. Now he wants to be part of the solution. He has been helped in so many ways by others, and to be able to give back—by helping people in the U.S., in Africa and someday around the world—is the greatest gift.
