Blog #6: My Book

"When two elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled." -African proverb

For my book, I read They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky. It is a narrative written by two brothers, Benson and Alephonison Deng, and their cousin, Benjamin Ajak, a few among thousands of boys who become known as the "Lost Boys of Sudan." The boys were born into the Dinka tribe of Sudan, but their childhood was cut short when civil war broke out and they were forced to flee the only home they knew and loved. All under the age of seven, they were separated from their families amidst the panic of attacks on their small village and fled into the night. Over the next five years, they along with thousands of other orphaned boys, travelled by foot over a thousand miles through Sudan, Kenya, and Ethiopia  to find safety.  After several incidents of separation and reunions, the three boys all eventually ended up in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Six years later, the boys were given the opportunity to move to the United States as part of an international refugee relief program where they still live today.

Once I started this book, I could not put it down. The way it is written is in short memoirs written by the individual boys. It starts out with the boys retelling memories from their young childhood in Sudan, in which they paint a vivid picture of the simple life they embraced in their remote village. The Dinka tribe, who were primarily cattle herders, lived in a very close-knit community residing in mud huts thatched with grasses. Although the lifestyle described seems primitive, the boys lived happy, fulfilling lives, in which the greatest threat was lions and pythons who crept beyond the village fences.  That is, until war broke out.

Over the next two hundred pages, the boys describe, in short flashes of memory, their grueling journey across thousands of miles, with little or no food or water, in a desperate search for safety. They trekked through deserts with thousands of other young boys in the same situation, often falling dead around them. Their struggles were so great, but I was constantly amazed by how their inner strength and resilience conquered the odds.

At times, the graphic images the boys recalled were disturbing, but there was always an underlying feeling of unwavering hope and determination. Although the hardships they faced were utterly unimaginable to most people, their ability to survive was even more amazing. All in all, this was a fantastic book that I would highly recommend to anyone.