La Voz

Issue date: 4/21/08 Section: Features

Media Credit: Dahlia Seroussi Eating tree leaves and sleeping in bushes was the only way to survive for Abraham M. Makuei. "It made us responsible, eight years old, 10 years old to think like 20 years old, even 60 years old," said Makuei.

Abraham Makuei wasn't expecting kindness. Since Sudanese political upheaval forced him from his community as a child in 1987, his experiences had taught him not to expect friendliness from strangers.

Strangers could be snakes. Strangers could be shooters in the bush, bought and paid for by the Sudanese government. However, Makuei found family with the other Lost Boys displaced from their villages, 20,000 children aged 6-10. "You have no mother, no father. Somebody close to you, they're your brother," Makuei said.

The boys motivated each other in their long months of walking barefoot from refugee camp to refugee camp. As one child said to him, "Look, Abraham, this is walking, why are you crying?"

"A lot of children were, 'Oh, my mother, oh my father,' and they died," he said. Makuei took a different approach: "If I put my mind into it, I would lose my life."

He held onto this outlook even after reconnecting with members of his family. After having survived ten years without any contact, Makuei managed to reach his family via letter correspondence with help from Red Cross.

His mother, three brothers, sister, and half-brother were alive, but they made no mention of his father. In the last of the ten letters they exchanged, Makuei made a simple plea demanding to know his father's fate, citing his experience as evidence of his resilience: "I've been in the bush by myself, so if my dad's alive - tell me."

The answer was no.

"And I put [the letter] in my pocket and said, 'OK,'" Makuei said.

As well as he was able to distance himself from news of his father's death, Makuei couldn't suppress the physical sickness he felt when he heard his mother's voice in 2003. For years his memory of her, appearing only in his sleep, had been that of a young woman, but now "I count the years. I felt that she was older."

Continued...

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