Just children when they were driven from their homes by terrifying violence and forced to trek across hundreds of kilometers of desolate desert and dangerous jungle, facing armed militias and wild animals, the “Lost Boys” of Sudan are some of the world’s most traumatized refugees. This week, the Trent University chapter of World University Service Canada (WUSC) will be bringing their story to Peterborough.
WUSC is hosting a two-night event to raise awareness about the Lost Boys and refugees in general. On Wednesday, November 7 the group will be showing a documentary and the following evening, Ariic Aguto Reng, a Sudanese refugee now studying at the University of Toronto, will make a presentation. He’d rather not be known as a Lost Boy, however.
I detest being referred to as a Lost Boy, Reng said in an interview. For sure I have many life experiences, some of which I sometime don’t feel telling because of the inherent refugee stereotypes here in the West.
Reng was still a pre-teen when he joined a group of refugee boys in their long journey across the south of Sudan, eventually ending up in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya.
In my opinion a refugee is a living body carrying a dead soul, said Reng. Constant worries kill your inner self even if you seem to be living.
After years of growing up in the refugee camp, Reng was selected by WUSC to be part of the organization’s Student Refugee Program, which provides refugees with an opportunity to study at Canadian universities. It was at this point that he met Kayembe Tshikele, the president of WUSC at Trent, himself a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Being a refugee takes a lot of courage, Tshikele said. You’re leaving behind your family and people, leaving behind your land and sometimes your language. Refugees are not treated as people in some ways you have no access to facilities, no way to work or attend schools.
The purpose of Reng’s presentation at Trent is not just to raise awareness of the Sudanese situation, but to educate the community about refugee issues in general, Tshikele said.
People in a place like Canada are pretty ignorant of refugee issues. Refugees need lots of support, especially psychologically, but also materially the best way of explaining that is to have someone speak who’s gone through the experience.
Paul Shaffer, an International Development Studies professor at Trent, echoes Tshikele’s comments regarding the level of awareness in the university community about the reality of refugee situations.
For most people the popular perception is determined by little media clips and images. The big information deficit is that there are a number of underlying issues that aren’t discussed, Shaffer said. It’s very contextual, the typical clip we get doesn’t do justice to all this complexity.
Complex is definitely an appropriate term to describe the current situation in the Sudan, according to Reng, who tries to keep abreast of events in his home country.
I communicate with people back home frequently, right from those working in the government, relatives, to former fellow lost boys, he said. Reng returned to Sudan for a visit in 2005 and he is hopeful that a change for the better is possible in the near future.
There is much publicity about what is going on there now, it is not like during the dark days of 1988 when ruthless killings more cruel than any you have seen or heard anywhere on earth were going on and the world kept quiet, Reng said.
Both WUSC-sponsored events are taking place in Gzowski College room 117 on Wednesday and Thursday (November 7 & 8) starting at 7 p.m. Admission is free. To find out more about WUSC at Trent, visit the group’s website at www.trentwusc.co.nr.
Last Updated on Tuesday, 02 September 2008 05:43
