There has been a lot in the news about the 4,000 “Lost Boys
of Sudan” who started coming to our country in 1999. Little has been known about the Sudanese refugee
girls. This is largely due to the way
girls are treated culturally in Sudan.
Boys in the refugee camps were placed in one area together-thus they
were more visible when United Nations workers came to relocate them. Girl refugees were fostered by families who
would take them in so that they could profit by arranging their marriages.
Lost Girl Found
is the fictional story of a Sudanese girl named Poni. When soldiers begin killing villagers and
when bombs hail down from the sky, everyone in Poni’s village runs for his/her
life. As Poni is swept with others who are fleeing, she loses her mother and
siblings.
Days stretch into weeks before
the survivors arrive at Kahuma. Kahuma was supposed to be their refuge. Instead the camp is very overcrowded. It is desert land. The dust is
everywhere. There is barely enough food
to feed the masses.
Poni helps her foster mother erect a shelter with a piece of
corrugated tin and a few chunks of wood.
This will hardly keep them safe.
Life will be constantly filled with dust and dirt. All sense of time and passage of years are
lost to Poni. One day her foster mother
tells her she has found a man in the camp who wants Poni for his wife.
Since this is the worst fate Poni can imagine, she strives
to find a way out of the camp to a life where education and promise of a better
future await.
Imagine the obstacles she must overcome. Read Lost
Girl Found to understand her plight.
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