Migrating to the New World

Sudan is in the northern part of Africa, south of Egypt, west of Chad and east of Ethiopia. In 1956 Sudan was occupied by two groups. North was Muslim and the South was Animist and Christian. When the separation happened many conflicts merged. Both regions wanted superiority, with more land and more religion population. The north attacked first by invading the south and destroying Christian and animist villages. This was the beginning of the 20 year civil war in Sudan that has killed millions. Only twenty thousand boys (and some girls) escaped the massacres. The lost boys of Sudan lived their whole life orphaned when their parent were killed by the government and were all by themselves when they were religiously prosecuted by the same people who killed their parents and their tribe. The boys had to live through twenty years of civil war and were living in Sudan at the time when two million people were murdered. The lost boys of Sudan have had a very hard life dodging bullets, animals and poverty, until they finally reached Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. But still life in the refugee camp was strenuous and toilsome. They had no electricity to cook, clean or in their mud huts. They had little or no provisions and had minimal supplies. The food wasn’t very good and they had to cook it themselves over a fire. The Sudanese people had to use and reuse clothes over and over again. For example in the movies when one of the boys leaves we basically gave all his belongings to his friends and family even though they weren’t in great condition and he doesn’t have many clothes.
Some of the boys were chosen to journey to America, or heaven as many of the boys thought, to start a new and better life but also to help the Dinka people in Sudan by sending money. They had to leave all their friends and family in Sudan to leave to America to support them. The change in people culture and in the environment was shockingly huge for them. At first the two boys that the documentary focused on, Peter and Satino, lived in Houston. They had to work long hours at low wage jobs like working at factories and supermarkets. They were put to work at low pay jobs because of little to no education, their extremely dark skin color and their little experience with the English language. For instance one boy named peter was made to work outside in the supermarket parking lot because his boss said “he could withstand the heat better.” For the first four months YMC, the company that helped them migrate over to America, paid for their rent and gave them some money to help them get on their feet. A charity organization was also helpful enough to bring them old furniture that no one else needed, like bed mattresses, couches, and tables.
The ‘heaven’ that the Dinka boys were living in had turned out not to be the heaven they thought it was. Yes, they had had more food than they could eat a big house and a job that paid, but their cultures ways were all but not eliminated. For example in Sudan it was normal to hold hands with other men, but in America you were considered homosexual if you did. Another discomfort was on the bus and in the street people would stare at them, and make them feel left out and different because of their abnormally dark skin. One of the Dinka boys said “I feel too black”, which shows he feels ashamed of is skin color and being a little bit different from everyone else and that he just wants to fit in. Also the boys from Sudan have to get used to living in a big house with electricity and using electrical appliances every day. In the docudrama Satino was having trouble at his job putting on sticker onto appliances because he wasn’t used to using his hands in such am activity that required nimbleness and speed. Another trouble the lost boys of Sudan met in America was managing their time; they woke up and went to school then cooked dinner then went to their job to support their and their families’ life. Many of the boys commented on the fact that life was so differently busy for them and one boy said “times is money” and in America it is true, unlike in Sudan. One part of the documentary showed a group of the relocated Dinka boys outraged that they were robed because in Sudan no one would ever do that because everyone relied on everyone else.
Later on in the movie Peter got a standard form of high school education and slowly got better and better jobs. Pete got a job as an electrician’s apprentice and hoped to one day become an electrician and maybe even bring electricity to the refugee camp in Sudan where his family was staying. Both Peter and Santino both learned English to the state where they could use it freely and speak fluently. They both adjusted to American culture, like going to school, making friends and even going to church. They overcame the difficulties of the language barrier by using it and learning it as much as they could. They also overcame the hardship of the new American culture by trying to act like the rest of America; they ate American food whore American clothes and even tried to do like the rest did. America was very different than they expected but they worked out all their differences and lived their life in America making a living but also supporting their family and friends back in Sudan. They found out that “it is clear; there is no heaven on earth.”

The Underwater World

On the rocking ship with 20 pounds of equipment on my back, looking down to the sea below full of wondrous creatures, I closed my eyes, held my breath, and plunged into the ocean with fear and excitement in my pocket. Underwater everything seems to go slower, my body and my mind, everything but the fast moving, fast paced fish of the sea. At first I felt tense and frightened but quickly adapted to this new environment. This world was so new and magnificent; everything was unique and different but strangely similar. The seaweed and other sea grass that I had never seen before were always swaying like grass does when there is a breeze, clown fish darting in and out of anemones, like squirrels scurrying in and out of the safety of their trees. There were plants that looked alive, as if they would at any moment stand up and swim away like a jellyfish. There were eels lurking in the depths of their burrows in the rock walls, sting rays drifting along the ocean’s bottom, and fish with every color of the rainbow darting around looking for food.

I was aroused from my tranquil thoughts by several splashes and three other figures sinking down to my level, with the same amount of gear and the same suits. These other figures were my two brothers and my father. I looked back towards our instructor who had been in the water awhile because it took him a lot less time to put on the equipment than it took us. We were wearing big silver air tanks obviously used before with all the rust on them, a black mouth piece, a special life jacket and a pressure gauge. He made a few signals and started to swim away, while I stayed there motionless, suspended in the ever swaying water like an astronaut drifting in space, trying to remember all the training I had to go through to get to this wondrous scene in the first place.

I remembered sitting in the small classroom with the baby blue walls and an old small TV in the corner. Little grey rusty chairs, old whiteboards on each desk and our teacher in front of us. Our teacher was Malaysian with black hair and dark skin. He helped us through our textbooks, and studying for the test. Everyone passed except my little brother. It looked like he was crying rivers. After he got over his failure and went back to the textbook he passed the next time. I tried to remember reading the turquoise book, the cursed turquoise book. I tried flipping through my memories like flipping through my horribly boring text book. I tried to remember the chapter on hand signals. I put all the signals together and realized our guide was signaling to follow him. I was jostled out of my flashback by a tap on my shoulder by a figure wearing a jet black diving suit and big goggles that covered his face. After a pause of confusion I realized it was my dad, who was trying to signal me to swim down. I deflated my controllable life jacket a bit so I could float down to the depths of the ocean.

I looked around in amazement at the multi-colored coral and the fish that almost blended together, as if they were part of the same organism. Once we were down at the lowest level, we started floating along the rocky bottom; the sand was coarse and dark, there were saddening dead brown coral scattered along the bottom. But I saw the breathe-taking groups of plants brimming with life where more towards the top. I was a bit disappointed at first because I thought I was going to miss all the vibrant fish and all the other astonishing creatures of the sea. But when I bumped into my father in front of me, because I was looking above me with eyes full of envy at some other divers at the top with all the sea life, I saw with astonishment a huge arch of rock covered in what seemed like dead moss in front of us. What was even more astonishing instead of stopping and going up and around the rock, to look at all the beautiful sea life, we glided through the arch and I was expecting boring rock and lichen. But when I swam into the arch it seemed if I had just stepped through a portal to some underwater marvel. The scenery was extraordinary and the critters were even more incredible. I had never seen half of these creatures, some were dark and some were colorful, some were herbivores and some were carnivores, some were tiny and some were frighteningly large, some were shy and some swam right up to us. There were fish camouflaged against rocks like how chameleons hide on leafs, there fish striped like zebras and fish spotted like jaguars.

After a long period of exploring this new wondrous place it was time to depart because of our low oxygen in our old, grey, rusty air tanks. The guide signaled us to follow him and we slowly lifted up. I felt like a rocket ship in slow-motion, slowly ascending straight up using my fire red flippers. Once we broke the surface, we immediately took out our mouth pieces and chattered excitedly about our experiences with the underwater world.