Bringing hope to his homeland (Badger Herald)
Badger Herald
Bringing hope to his homeland
by Bridget Roby
Thursday, May 1, 2008
As an 8-year-old, Augustino Ting Mayai didn’t ask God for a new bike, a homerun or an A on his spelling quiz. He asked God to keep him alive.
When his village in southern Sudan was attacked nearly 20 years ago, Mayai became one of thousands of young boys to flee their war-ridden homes and walk hundreds of miles to safety, many never to see their families again. As word spread about these young refugees, they soon became known internationally for their hardships as the “Lost Boys of Sudan.”
After living in a Kenyan refugee camp for nearly 10 years, Mayai was selected by the U.S. government to resettle in the United States in 2001.
Today, as a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Mayai and several fellow “lost boys” are finding ways to help bring hope and lasting change to their homeland. Through the Machara Miracle Network, a nonprofit organization they founded in 2006, these young men hope to help improve the quality of life for those who continue to struggle in the wake of civil war.
“The fact that I was able to survive all these tragedies that I went through, and the fact that I was able to go to school and get a bachelor’s degree and now I’m trying to get a Ph.D. through individuals that came and said, ‘We will support you and make sure that you reach your goals’ — I feel like I could do the same and give back that way,” Mayai said. “As I have been helped, I could also help my community.”
Although southern Sudan is currently isolated from the violence in Darfur, the region continues to reel from the 21-year-long civil war that left more than two million dead and forced approximately four million into refuge.
“It’s hard to overemphasize how devastated the area is,” said UW assistant political science professor Scott Straus. “There are so few roads, no telephone landlines, [it is] very difficult to get access to clean water, very difficult to get access to electricity. It’s one of the poorest regions and most destroyed regions of the world.”
Through the Machara Miracle Network, Mayai hopes to raise funds to help fix some of these widespread problems regarding health, education and economy within his community of 50,000 in Apuk Padoc.
Living without
“It wasn’t my choice to leave,” Mayai said, remembering the day he was chased from his home by northern armies. “Many places were being attacked randomly. … In some cases you would just run off and never have a chance to see your family again. I never got to say goodbye.”
Throughout the brutal north-south civil war that began in 1983, the north destroyed the south through a variety of means, according to Straus. The north would often carpet-bomb wide areas and send armed militias to destroy southern villages, often killing many and capturing children to be brought north as slaves, he said.
“When the northern forces would raid areas, people would flee for safety,” Straus said. “Oftentimes children — their houses were destroyed, their parents were killed — tried to find a way out to one of the neighboring countries. They had nothing left.”
After joining up with a group of approximately 3,000 boys he had never met before somewhere outside his village, Mayai began the nearly 800-mile-long journey to safety.
“The thought was ‘I am going to die or survive, and I don’t know how I’m going to make it,’” Mayai said. “The chances of surviving all depended on the chances that were randomly coming along. You survived today because you survived.”
Mayai said he vividly remembers the journey years ago, trekking hundreds of miles across Africa without food and clean water. Approximately 30,000 young boys were forced to flee their homes in the late 1980s and set out on foot to find safety, and nearly half of them died along the journey, mostly due to starvation and dehydration.
“If we needed anything to drink, it would be water from stagnant pools, the dirty water that was available,” Mayai said, adding that the boys scavenged for roots and leaves of plants to provide nourishment. “Some even reported having drank their own urine because they did not have access to water.”
Today in Apuk Padoc, health issues caused by unclean water continue to plague Mayai’s community. Only six water wells serve the entire population of 50,000, leaving more than 80 percent of the population drinking from stagnant pools often infected with parasites, Mayai said. The area also has only one health care unit located in the region’s capital.
“If you had to change something for [Sudan] to be better, you have to look into their health conditions that they currently experience,” Mayai said.
Approximately one in 10 children born today in southern Sudan die before the age of 5, according to UNICEF. Additionally, more than 20 million people lack access to sanitation and 17 million are without safe drinking water.
Mayai hopes to eliminate the diseases caused by unclean water by raising funds through the Machara Miracle Network to drill clean water wells and build new health clinics in southern Sudan. According to Mayai’s research, one $5,000 donation to the organization could pay for a new well that would bring clean water to over 1,400 people in his community.
‘A coping strategy’
After years of long walks, makeshift camps and near-starvation, Mayai and his fellow “lost boys” eventually found their way to Kenya, where Mayai stayed for nearly 10 years in a refugee camp.
With Kenya’s political stability and strong educational system, Mayai was able to go to school throughout his time there, studying a variety of subjects such as math, science, English and history.
Yet even so, life in the Kenyan refugee camp was not without its hardships. Mayai still had heard no word about his family back at home and had to live with the uncertainty of not knowing whether his mother and father, and brothers and sisters had made it out alive.
“I actually thought of going back to Sudan in ‘96 to look for my family, but I got scared,” Mayai said. “Two things stopped me from doing that. One is the need for education — which was available to us in Kenya — and also the fact that there was a continuum of civil conflict in [Sudan].”
With only one meal a day for years, Mayai said he would force himself to study through both breakfast and lunch to help drive away the hunger.
“I guess I would call it a coping strategy,” Mayai said. “The hunger itself hurt a lot if you didn’t do something else. So for me, as an individual, it was better to do something that was useful, and that is studying and getting knowledge.”
Education has indeed proved a powerful force in Mayai’s life.
When he was selected by the U.S. government to resettle in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2001, Mayai continued his studies at Salt Lake Community College and the University of Utah, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology. Mayai continues to pursue his studies today through the doctoral program at UW.
While the story of the “lost boys” appears dismal on the surface, his opportunities for education alone have helped Mayai find meaning in his plight and purpose to his survival.
“A majority of people who stayed in Sudan never had a chance to go to school,” Mayai said. “Maybe that was the way that God wanted to rescue southern Sudan. Maybe this way we were able to have an opportunity that we never would have had, had we stayed in southern Sudan.”
Mayai said the Machara Miracle Network is currently working to provide training to Sudanese teachers and scholarships for Sudanese students to attend schools abroad, so that they may one day return to Sudan and “become better teachers for their own people.”
Home at last
After nearly 20 years away, Mayai finally made the journey home to his village in southern Sudan in the summer of 2006.
Gripped with both fear and excitement, Mayai hardly knew what to expect of his now distant homeland.
“After so many years, [I was] going back to find out what had happened to the family that I knew nothing about,” Mayai said. “But another part of it was going back home, a place you called home that you had lost for so long, and there was also a hope that you would be able to find some life, some family members, which would be an exciting thing.”
Upon arrival, Mayai first encountered his nephew, who was only two years old when Mayai was forced to flee as a child. Then other cousins appeared, and more cousins. Finally, his brother.
“It was such a relief to see that part of me was still in Sudan,” Mayai said, smiling. “We talked for hours and hours and hours trying to catch up.”
Although Mayai learned his parents had died soon after he fled home years ago, he was reunited with four sisters and one brother who had scattered throughout Sudan during the civil war.
During his stay that summer, Mayai was inspired to find ways to help his war-torn homeland, which has spent nearly 10 years in internal armed conflict since independence in 1956.
“As an individual or human, we all have a moral obligation to sort of step in and try to help other more than 500 books to local schools with the help of both private donations and funds raised by Action in Sudan — a student group at UW working for change in Sudan.
According to Action in Sudan’s co-president, UW sophomore Rebecca Gilsdorf, the group raises money exclusively for the Machara Miracle Network because it can work closely with Mayai to ensure their funds are used wisely.
“We can really see directly what we’re doing, rather than just giving [our funds] to an NGO and not knowing where the money’s going,” Gilsdorf said.
Already this school year, Action in Sudan has raised nearly $1,500 for the Machara Miracle Network through benefit concerts and selling T-shirts and fair trade African art. With Action in Sudan’s help, the Machara Miracle Network strives to collect $500,000 for its many projects within the next five years alone.
Through such funds, Mayai said he hopes the Machara Miracle Network can help create a stable, healthy and self-sustaining community within southern Sudan.
“We are supporting the community,” Mayai said. “But we are making it theirs.”
