Lost, Then Found
The Lost Boys got the attention, but what of the Lost Girls who fled Sudan's civil war? One of them, now an adult, tells her story of finding love, family, and a future in a strange land.
One day in the spring of 2000, 17-year-old Rebecca Madut came to her hut in Kenya's Kakuma refugee camp to find that her younger sister, Amina, had vanished. Even as she searched, Rebecca knew what had happened: Amina had been taken back to Sudan to be married. A week earlier, a man who said he was their uncle had come for both of them. Rebecca had never seen him before. But she only had dim memories of her family, since she was a child when she fled her burning South Sudanese town as it was being attacked by Northern army troops and Arab militias. She was separated from her parents then, and still didn't know if they were alive. She had grave doubts about this so-called uncle.
Rebecca, now 22, tells this story sitting with her legs tucked under her in an apartment in Everett. She was one of the so-called Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan - parentless children who, in the late 1980s, trekked more than 1,000 miles through Sudan and Ethiopia and survived horrifying traumas. Her journey has brought her to Everett by way of Natick, to the University of Massachusetts, and to a man and a life she chose for herself.
Five years ago, afraid of being carried off like her sister, Rebecca persuaded United Nations workers in the camp to put her on an emergency resettlement list. That was how she found herself on a packed jet flying from Nairobi to North America. "I knew coming here was a good opportunity," she says. "I could go to school and have a good life."
But Boston in winter was a rude shock. She was met at the airport by social workers from Lutheran Social Services and by the woman who would be her foster mother, Pam Goloski of Natick. In the car, heading west on the turnpike, Rebecca felt sick. "There was just white everywhere," she says. "I wanted to go back."
Goloski was a single woman with a new job as a database manager. She had also taken in two other Sudanese teenagers, including Rebecca's brother John. But even that didn't keep Rebecca from feeling lonely and frightened. "I couldn't sleep at night," she says.
"At first it was a challenge," says Goloski, "because I think Rebecca expected me to be this woman who did all the traditional things, cooking and cleaning and so on. But then she began to see a more liberating aspect to it."
At Natick High School, Rebecca's English wasn't just inadequate for schoolwork; it made it hard for her to relate to American kids. "The way they talked, the way they dressed," she says. "They were always together, boys and girls mixed. And we don't do that. Boyfriends and girlfriends, holding their hands, kissing. I didn't know if they should be doing that."
As her English improved, she became more comfortable, but Rebecca still wasn't tempted to date American boys. There were young Sudanese men around, and with so few girls for them, the boys were insistent, even demanding. In South Sudanese life, a young man becomes an adult when he marries. Many of the Lost Boys were four or five years past high-school age, so finding a wife was a priority. At 18, 19, or 20 years old, many of the Lost Girls were of marrying age.
"We talked about it very openly," Goloski says, "how things were back home and how they are here. I would say, 'Well, that's a valid way of doing things in another country, but in this country, this is why it doesn't work out that well.' But I'd also emphasize that to have an equal relationship, you have to be an equal. You have to get an education. You have to work."
These ideas got Rebecca thinking. "I wanted to be educated," she says. In Kenya she had seen young women marrying and having babies immediately. She had seen the subordination of wives to their husbands. "If I was married back in Africa, there'd be no school for me," she says, "just babies and taking care of things at home." That was the life she had fled. Goloski was a living example of her own aspirations. "I wanted to be like her," Rebecca says. "Even now, I have that dream. I'll go to school, make a career."
Then Rebecca began dating Mayen Deng, a tall, handsome Sudanese boy she had known in the Kenyan camp. This was a potential problem if his expectations were different from hers. Some of the Lost Boys had left girlfriends behind. Many have green cards, and a growing number were returning to South Sudan to marry in the traditional way. "In our culture," says Mayen, a student at Bunker Hill Community College, "the man is responsible for every decision." But, like Rebecca, he was absorbing American values. "Here, everybody has the right to make a family together the way they want," he says. "It depends on how the girl and the boy understand each other. I told Rebecca, 'I want my wife to be educated.'"
Still, Mayen and Rebecca had strong ties to their traditions. Two years after arriving in the States, Rebecca got a call from her sister, Amina, who had indeed been spirited off to an unwanted marriage and was in Canada. Then came bigger news: Their mother was alive, living in Nairobi. Ecstatic, Rebecca talked to her mother for the first time in 15 years. She wanted to get married and needed her mother's approval, so she asked her to arrange it with Mayen's relatives. To do so, Rebecca's mother needed a male spokesman, another of Rebecca's brothers. Mayen's parents had not survived, but he had an uncle, also in Nairobi. They struck a deal and decided on a bride price that Mayen would pay Rebecca's relatives. Goloski's parents gave Rebecca away, and Sudanese and American friends packed the First Lutheran Church in Lynn.
A young Sudanese couple was starting married life in America. Back in Africa, their families had struck an agreement, but it was here that love alone had brought the bride and groom together. "I can't take all of American culture, and I can't forget my Sudanese culture," Rebecca says. "I have to keep them both together."
David Chanoff is a freelance writer and academic adviser to the Sudanese Educational Fund. Send e-mails to magazine@globe.com. 