It was a terrible ordeal for thousands of boys and girls – but each group faces a very different future

by Emmanuel Nyabera

Remember The Lost Boys of Sudan?

Well, what about The Lost Girls of Sudan?

The amazing odyssey of thousands of youths ripped from their homes in the late 1980s by fighting in Sudan and forced to wander for years across the East African savannah became the stuff of African legend.

They eventually reached Kenya where they languished in flyblown camps for years, becoming known as The Lost Boys of Sudan, intriguing refugee officials by their very survival, before the United States eventually agreed to resettle nearly 4,000 whose parents were dead or missing.

As they flew in small groups to all parts of America, the boys became instant celebrities, interviewed endlessly in the media about their amazing survival, their reactions to seeing snow, washing machines and skyscrapers for the first time and their thoughts about starting brand new lives.

Forgotten in all of this hoopla were the fates of several thousand girls aged between eight and 10 who had undergone similar ordeals.

Achol Kuol (not her real name) was seven when she, her mother and four brothers fled their southern Sudanese village because of vicious fighting between rebels and government troops. They trudged first to Ethiopia, returned to Sudan and then headed south to Kenya in a trek that lasted for years.

"There was little water to drink, we survived on leaves and wild fruit," the teenager recalled. "Some of the girls were eaten by lions." Somewhere in the bush she lost touch with her mother, who is still missing.

Another girl, Adeu, recalls crossing the River Gilo on the Sudanese- Ethiopian border: "I can remember being held by two of my uncles who were helping me across. One of them was swept away and that was the last time I saw him. I was later told he had been eaten by a crocodile" as had other civilians trying to cross the river.

The Sudanese youngsters, girls and boys, reached Kenya's Kakuma refugee camp in the early 1990s. The boys remained a reasonably identifiable group which f inally caught the attention and sympathy of resettlement countries.

UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Following Sudanese cultural traditions, many of the girls were absorbed into foster homes and left to a very uncertain fate, overlooked and forgotten by the outside world. Achol Kuol has already survived one brutal attempt to kidnap her back to Sudan and into a forced marriage. Three Sudanese men tried to abduct the 17-year-old from the refugee camp, but she was saved by the intervention of local social workers and other refugees who chased the attackers away.

The girl believes this will only be the first of repeated attempts to marry her off. Arranged marriages, after all, are big business. Her first suitor had offered her foster parents 50 cattle, which represents a huge sum in Sudan, as a dowry.

Yar Jok (not her real name) was nine years old when she left her village. She does not even know where and when she lost her parents during her wanderings.

When she arrived at Kakuma she, too, was adopted by foster parents.

One night, a man entered her hut, stuffed her mouth with a piece of cloth and raped her. Initially, she kept the assault a secret. As in many societies, the victim of a rape among Sudanese is often judged as a guilty party and Yar Jok worried that "if people got to know I had been raped, no man would want to marry me."

However, she was also now pregnant and her secret became obvious. She was rejected by both her foster parents and the refugee community but eventually moved in with a woman from her mother's clan.

She named her baby Monday Riak-riak meaning 'war' in her Dinka language.

Like Achol Kuol, she is a worried woman. She fears no man will want to marry her, because her rapist may one day return and claim her daughter Monday who, among other things, would eventually be a source of wealth when she is ready to marry. Life on the fringes of Sudanese society can be very harsh.

At home both girls, like many others, are little more than unpaid servants, cooking, cleaning and collecting firewood.

Yar Jok joined a school for dropouts but cannot attend regularly because she must look after her baby. Other girls attend Kakuma's secondary school.

Education, no matter how limited, offers a sliver of hope, but none of the girls have yet been given the opportunity to board a gleaming aircraft, learn to use a computer and plan a new life full of hope in a strange country.

There is a final small irony in this tale of two groups who shared the same tragedy but ended up with very different futures.

At one point in Kakuma, the boys were offered dry rations to eat. Out of tradition they refused to attempt to cook the food. That was women's work. Sudan's Lost Girls ended up preparing the meals.

Source: Refugees Magazine Issue 126: "Women – Seeking A Better Deal" (April 2002). Download the complete issue (pdf, 1.3Mb) here