<b>Chapel Talk: Dut Leek Deng & the Southern Sudan Health Projects</b>

My name is Dut Leek Deng.  I was born on January 1, 1980 in Bor area of Jongeli state of Southern Sudan.  This is what one of my relatives told me, but most of us as Lost Boys do not know when we were born.  I did not know the exact date, but that is the birth date that the U.S. government gave me when I came.  All I really know is that the year was 1980.

The rest of the Lost Boys and I left home in 1987, when the Islamic government in Khartoum in Sudan attacked our villages and cattle camps by randomly shooting.  We did not know where the guns were coming from, but we just ran in the opposite direction from the guns.  The government was planning to finish off all the people like our elders and had a purpose for us to be soldiers and to take the girls to use them as concubines and sex slaves in their own houses.  The purpose for the boys was to convert them to Islam and take them to the north to go to Islamic school.  If we refused, we were killed.

In 1987 we ran to Ethiopia from Bor over the period of three to four months.  We arrived in Ethiopia on September 4th.  On our way we lost a lot of lives.  We lost about 4,000 Lost Boys due to starvation and wild animal attacks (like lions and cheetahs).  Snakes were killing people, too.  The weather caused some of us to die because we did not have water or food.  This caused dehydration and starvation. We crossed a lot of rivers and the alligators and crocodiles were there.  A lot of people died there, too.  Along the way, the government in Sudan was still motivating the militias and bribed them and different tribes to kill us so we could not reach where we needed to go for safety which is the refugee camps in Ethiopia.

By that time we did not know what is called God or Jesus Christ.  We used to believe in African gods until 1987 when the missionaries from America, Australia, Canada and the UK began to pour into the refugee camps.  That is where I learned about Jesus Christ, and I was baptized in 1989 in the Ethiopian refugee camp.  This is where I got the name Abraham, which I picked.  Before the missionaries baptized us they taught us about the Ten Commandments and what the Bible meant. We had to show that we understood that before we could be baptized.  They told us that Abraham was the head of the nations, and God told him that he would be the one.  The whole nation would look up to him as the elder.  I heard that Abraham would lead the people for 100 years.  I took the name of Abraham so that God could let me lead for 100 years.  God was very close to Abraham because of his faith and his dedication.  I wanted to be like that and be one of the people who could follow God’s footprints. At the same time I did not forget who I am as an African.  I still was proud of who I was as a Dinka man.  I would not believe in other gods except Jesus Christ, but I would remember my culture and my background as the pure African.

The Lost Boys stayed in Ethiopia for four years from 1987 until 1991.  On May 25, 1991 the Sudanese and Ethiopian governments hooked up to kill us all.  They knew we were learning new things like Christianity.  They just wanted us to be slaves forever, so the Muslims made a deal with Ethiopia.  They wanted us to go back to Sudan so that would be the end of us. The United Nations would not allow this to happen and told us to leave Ethiopia.  The UN knew it could help us get to other places.

We left Ethiopia heading back to Southern Sudan but we were not allowed to enter into the South.  We were on the border between Southern Sudan and Ethiopia heading west toward Kenya.   We went in the direction of Kenya because the government of Sudan refused to welcome us back because of our faith.  They wanted to finish us.  They had already destroyed our villages and taken a lot of our girls.  They did not want us to experience what they had done.  They just wanted us to be in exile for the rest of our lives and take over our land.  That would not be the case now because I have learned how important our home, our country is.  Now we will go back.

We arrived in Kenya on August 14, 1992 with the help of the UN and World Vision.  These were the organizations that were taking care of us from Ethiopia back to Sudan and all the way to Kenya.  We stayed there in Kenya from August 14, 1992 until 2000.  This was a time when God blessed some of us  to come to America to start a new life. 

The causes of the wars that made us leave our homes were oil, religion, power, and racism.  The Arabs or Muslims who are in the North had been ruling Sudan since 1956 with the purpose of controlling the natural resources and occupying the land. They also had the purpose of converting the country of Sudan to become an Arab country. They do not want to share the power with anybody.  The country has been running with the Sharia law which follows Islamic commandments.  These are the causes of the war.  They do not want any other religions other than Islam in the country.  You do not deserve the basic human rights like food, water, shelter, and health unless you are Muslim.  They do not allow any Africans in the country to hold any powerful positions.  They considered Africans in Sudan as less than a woman.  In the Islamic culture a woman is less than a person—just half of a person.  We were not allowed to know anything about the country. 

We would have been enslaved or treated like slaves.  This was the time that they introduced slaves.  They took slaves so they could sell them to other Arabs.  I know many people who have been slaves.  The Arabs and Muslims came to Southern Sudan and took some of us by force to be slaves.  A girl named Yar Majok from my village was one of them.  They took her in 1987 and she was sold in the North.  They took a boy named Majok Deng in our village at the same time.  They taught him to be a Muslim and they sent him to Afghanistan to fight the holy war.  He died over there.  That was very sad news. 

Oil also caused the war and the displacement of 4 million people.  2.5 million people have died in the war from 1983–2005.  Our villages were attacked and people were killed or displaced.  This freed up the land for oil production.  Sudan produces 500,000 barrels of oil per day.  The NIF, National Islamic Front, is the party that has been ruling Sudan since 1956 when Sudan became independent from British rule.  They are the ones who are in power. Oil also caused the deaths of 2.5 million people because the NIF uses the oil money to buy weapons and people.  They convert the people and also buy people by promising to give their families money.  These people are then supposed to kill others in the name of Islam. 

That is why you see the situation in Darfur.  About 400,000 Darfurians have been killed since 2003.  That is genocide, and it will be too late if people do not pay attention now.  Oil has played a very vital role in Sudanese history.  The oil has not been used as a resource for development in the country.  The Sudan regime has been using oil and other natural resources in our country for themselves along with the purpose of killing people.  They kill people who speak up for their own rights, for their own health, and for their religion.  That is the reason why the Lost Boys lost their parents, homes, resources like animals, and churches.  We left home because there was no choice.

Racism is another problem in Sudan because the Arab people in the north think that they are better than the black people in the country.  The black people are the native people in the country–not the Arabs in the north.  The Arabs run the country.  Sudan is considered to be a country of the Middle East because it is Arab.  Geographically, Sudan is in Africa and religiously Sudan is not Muslim.  We are either Christians or we believe in the African gods.  50 % of Sudanese are Christians and that is now why Christianity is facing Islam.

We can provide solutions for the country.  One of the solutions is that the Lost Boys came to the U. S. for education.  We call education our mother or our father.  Our people have not been in school which is why our people have been taken advantage of.  Education will help us work on health care and schools back in Sudan.  We can learn how to bring a good water system to Southern Sudan.  Education opened our eyes to learn things that are right.  For me, I learned to believe in Jesus Christ.  Part of my education was to learn about God and about what I could be in the future.

One of my dreams is to build a clinic in Southern Sudan which is why I have joined together with the United Methodist Church to form the organization, Southern Sudan Health Projects (SSHP).  We hope to bring good health care to Southern Sudan.

SSHP plans to develop community based primary care health systems in the Bor region of Southern Sudan.  That is the result of education and what we believe.  We will travel to Bor in April 2008 to collect data and to talk to the people about what they need.  We can share how we can connect them to resources for education, health, clean water, and other things they may say that they need.  We hope to train volunteer workers in each village who can be able to provide basic health training to the villagers and also provide SSHP with updated information.  We will train these volunteers through the United Methodist Church’s offices in Uganda and Kenya.  This will give us many ways in which to help. 

Some of the solutions to improving health care and life would be training these volunteers, connecting medical resources with the area, drilling wells, teaching people how to cultivate better, and  teaching people job skills.  We may work with micro-financing in order to provide small loans which people, especially women, can use to start small businesses.  That is a way for the women to get enough money to be able to send their children to school and provide them with food and clothes. 

This is what I mean about hope.  Hope is a very important tool in human life.  Hope means love; it means perseverance and patience.  That is why the Lost Boys made it out after 21 years of suffering until we came to America.  It is hope that always drives us every morning to do something better for ourselves, our community, and for God. Jesus is our hope because he taught us how to live in this world.  Someday he is coming back, and as Christians, we know that.  Jesus will save us.

Hope is a foundation for success and belief.  That is what we always say–never lose hope.  When you lose hope, you fall under a lot of problems like depression and frustration.  You may end up losing your life.  If you have hope, you will succeed in anything you are doing.  It does not matter how hard it is or in what condition you are in.  That is what the Lost Boys are always trying to preach to American children.  With hope we go to school to become doctors, lawyers, pastors, teachers, business people, engineers, politicians and nurses–anything you can be in the future.  It is hope that drives all the Lost Boys and Sudanese who want to go back home someday to rebuild our country.  Hope is the tool that always drives us.  Hope is the tool of our dreams.  Hope is the foundation for what we can achieve in the future.  By teaching hope to those left behind, they will be able to have what we have achieved by living here in America.

Hope is something that always drives you.  For me, my hope is to become an educated person and to do something for my people and myself.  That is why I have my dream of building a clinic and that war will stop for good so that people can coexist with different cultures, religions, and races together.  My hope is that I will be able to do something with what I believe so I can give back to other people so that they can experience what I have experienced and know what it is to believe in God. 

Follow these links to view addtional information about the Southern Sudan Health Projects:
SSHP Brochure 
SSHP Business Plan

Dut Leek Deng

166 Chatham Road

Syracuse, NY 13203

315.491.2033

dut134@yahoo.com

To Schedule Speaking Engagements:

Nancy Williams

315.218.5827

Nancyew235@hotmail.com