Celebrating progress of lost children

54 from Sudan look back at how far they've come

Yar Ayuel is one of the "lucky ones."

At age 7, she was forced from her home in Sudan. She was separated from her mother, running with her brother and father from a government that threatened to kill them all. Her father was killed along the way. As far as she knew, her mother was, too.

But she and her brother survived. They made it to a refugee camp, and in the winter of 2000, they were two of the 54 lost children of Sudan to come to Boston.

Eight years later, Ayuel, now 25, has created a family in Arlington. She has married another of the lost children. She is now the mother of a 2-year-old boy. And she is attending Pine Manor College.

That is why she is "lucky." And that is why, she and others say, she feels compelled to pay it forward.

When the 54 refugees - 48 boys and six girls - arrived in Boston, they carried little with them. Their birthdays were unknown. Their identities were linked to a number they had been given at their refugee camp. They wore clothing given to them by the United Nations. Now all these children have grown up. All 54 have completed high school, and all 54 have gone on to some form of higher education.

Yesterday, many of the 54 gathered at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Arlington to celebrate the progress they had made.

The journey was striking, said Jeanne Woodward, director of the Unaccompanied Refugee Minors Program of Lutheran Social Services, which welcomed the children years ago. "They are self-sufficient. They all have jobs. They passed the MCAS, which is no small thing."

In many ways, the story of the lost children has come full circle.

Aduei Riak, 24, could stay at the celebration only for a short time. She is leaving today for Sudan. The Brandeis University graduate is going back to visit a school she's helping to build.

"It's a duty," she said just before she left. "We are some of the very few lucky ones. It's something we need to share."

She is not the only one who feels this way. Bol Riiny, 25, arrived in Boston when Riak did. He graduated from Concordia College in New York and works at Southern Sudanese Community Center in Boston. "I feel like I'm working for my people," he said. "It's to help those who didn't make it here."

Like Riak, Riiny hopes to return to his home country at year's end. He'll spend a month there, he said, helping to build a school and looking for relatives.

Ayuel, too, has decided that she must give back. Once she graduates she plans to work with some sort of refugee advocacy group. She has also taken in a recent Sudanese refugee - Ayak, her 17-year-old sister.

One evening in 2004, after she had settled into life here, she was forced awake by the ringing of a phone. On the other end of the line was an unfamiliar voice. "It was my mother," she said. "I didn't believe she was alive."

But she was, and so, too, were her sisters, whom she had never met. Before she could visit, her mother died in the refugee camp, and her sisters were sent to Boston. The younger sister, Adut, 13, is living with another foster family. But Ayak, and her 1-year-old son, Joshua, are living with Ayuel.

Living together, Ayuel said, has been "difficult and different" at times, but she wanted to help with their transition in a way few others can. She speaks her sister's language. She can empathize.

"I didn't want her to go through the things I went through."