Sudan's 'Lost Boys' To U.S. Homes

Thousands of Sudan's "Lost Boys" — youths driven from their homes and into the African wilds by civil war — are hoping the United States will give them a chance at a new life.

About 50 of the Sudanese boys arrived in New York City on Monday. By next year, 300 to 350 will be resettled in the United States under a State Department-brokered program. Within a year, organizers hope to resettle 3,600.

Olao Nyakwan, 28, a Sudanese refugee himself, will take in two 17-year-olds, who were expected to be in Philadelphia late Monday night.

"These children had no idea about the United States and about the situation," he said. "It will be very difficult for them if there's nobody there to stand with them and to help them to be successful."

Nyakwan, who left Sudan in 1994 and now works in a warehouse, hasn't talked to the boys but has been told they speak English. Lutheran Family Services will give him $1,140 each month for their room and board.

The boys were driven from their villages by war in the late 1980s when most of them were 4 or 5 years old. Many saw their parents killed.

While girls were taken in by other families or forced into marriage, the boys walked for weeks before several thousand of them reached Ethiopia, which forced them out in 1991. The boys traveled with streams of other refugees to a camp in neighboring Kenya called Kakuma.

"A lot of kids were drowned by the rivers. A lot of them were eaten by wild animals. A lot of them starved," said Fouzia Musse, who worked in the camp and is a resettlement agent in Philadelphia.

The boys have spent the ensuing years in the dusty, crowded camp, where education and food were scarce. Many have been there for a decade.

The State Department organized the resettlement through 10 charitable agencies. Boys under 18 will be sent to foster homes in Washington; Boston; Philadelphia; Lansing and Grand Rapids, Mich.; Fargo, N.D., and Seattle.

"We tried first to find their families," said Musse, community services director of Lutheran Family Services in Philadelphia. "But now, it's been determined that there are no families for these kids."

Authorities assigned Jan. 1 as the 18th birthday for many of the boys because their actual birthdays are unknown.

Resettlement officials are scrambling to put them in foster care before their 18th birthdays, said Susan Schmidt, director for children's services with the national Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services.

"Whoever meets these kids is touched by them in some way and can't forget them," she said.

The civil war in Sudan pits black Christians and animists in the country's south against the Islamic government based in the north. According to the CIA, the war and resulting famine has claimed 1.5 million lives.

The U.S. State Department has sharply criticized the government of Sudan for human rights violations — including allegedly permitting the practice of slaver — and for conducting aerial bombardments on civilian areas in the south.

The U.S. also lists Sudan as a state that sponsors terrorism; in August 1998, the U.S. launched air strikes on a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant that was allegedly manufacturing chemical weapons.