If ever there were a staple of social media (aside from selfies and photos of food), it would be the practice of super-complex world issues being distilled down to a meme. I’ve watched the Syrian Civil War and refugee
crisis get the “grumpy cat” treatment, with everyone from “Guy I went to Jr
high with” to “Family member I never talk to” to “Who the fuck is this guy”
weighing in on foreign and domestic policy this week on Facebook and
Twitter. I’m not going to do that. I
don’t have a comprehensive understanding of the situation in Syria, and, more
importantly, I am pretty sure that, in the history of the internet, nobody has
ever read a Facebook post and said, “You know, he’s right. This totally changes
my view on this complex hot button issue about which I feel so
passionate.” I wanted to talk about this
topic, but I wanted to do it in the right way.
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| Jany Deng |
As I drove to his Central Phoenix office, I popped some ibuprofen and cursed my aching tooth. I quickly put my stupid tooth pain in perspective. You see, my man Jany was a “Lost Boy” - a refugee who fled his home in Sudan after his mother and father were killed in the country’s nearly three decade civil war. He walked over 1000 miles in three months, naked and hungry, first to Ethiopia, and then eventually, to Kenya, where he arrived at a refugee camp. It was there, in his teens, that he began the arduous process of becoming a resettled refugee. The vetting process involved more than 30 hours of interviews, conducted by the State Department, CIA, FBI and others. Applicants were questioned and re-questioned. “They asked me the last meal I ate before fleeing Sudan,” said Jany. “They asked what my mother did before I left the village. They ask you random questions to make sure that the story you told in your application matches.”
For some applicants, the process is hindered by incompetent
or corrupt translators. “After you’ve
filled out the application,” Jany gestures to a stack of papers two inches
thick, “some translator is sitting there and they aren’t translating. They can screw you up. If they don’t like you
they can translate incorrectly. In some
cases, refugees have to bribe the translator to make sure it’s done
properly.”
Once a refugee has completed the application and vetting
process, a journey that can take a year and a half or more, they are resettled,
and assigned to one of five or six major aid agencies. They are given an unfurnished apartment and
in their first month are required to find work, despite in most cases, not
knowing the language in their new homes.
After 90 days, they are on their own.
Being on their own isn’t something most Sudanese are
accustomed to, because of the group-centric nature of the Sudanese
culture. If someone is mentally ill in a
village in Sudan, the elders meet and decide how to work together to help their
charge. Jany told stories of people in
refugee camps, which I’d always imagined as an ‘every man for himself’ type of
environment, taking on children as “brothers,” so that they could exit the
camps together. Isolation isn’t something that Sudanese in their native
environment experience; however, post re-settlement, many refugees found the
isolation crippling.
“We had a large
center, at 19th avenue & Van Buren, to help refugees after the
ninety day resettling period was over,” recalls Jany. “Some days I would spend eight hours just
listening to people talk. We provided
community and fellowship.” The effects of
debilitating isolation were deadly for Jany’s older brother Simon, who was
killed by a police officer in 1997 during a confrontation at aid organization Catholic Charities
during which Simon was armed. “We didn’t
know about PTSD at that time,” said Jany.
“My brother, and many of The Lost Boys, were child soldiers. Some of the
people went to the front line at a young age. You see killing, you kill people,
friends are killed. I was still in high
school, and was working. My brother was
isolated and having trouble. He walked
into the Catholic Charities building with a gun.
We still don’t know to this day how he got his hands on a gun. He had no
money. They called police, and over 100 officers
surrounded the office. He threatened the
staff, and shot at an officer. The
police killed him instantly. He was shot
and killed there right in the office.” Jany
indicated that, with a better understanding of post-traumatic stress syndrome, the
assimilation process has improved for incoming refugees. After they’ve been resettled, however, mental health services are still lacking.
I asked Jany if he and the other Lost Boys faced persecution
or a community revolt at their arrival in the days before the internet and
social media gave everyone a platform to voice their opinions. He told a story of a Payless Shoe Store
employee calling the police when he and three other refugees he was helping
assimilate shopped at the store she was manning alone. “People looked at us crazy. We were so dark,
and sometimes when we’d bring refugees to employers, they would just stare at
us. The incoming refugees didn’t speak English.”
The community as a whole, however, welcomed The Lost Boys
with open arms, in no small part due to the easy-to-digest moniker that had been
bestowed upon them in the early days of their arrival to the States. “It was just two guys, following our story
from the refugee camps to our resettling in America that gave us that name,” said Jany. “There were refugees flooding in from
everywhere, Liberia, Congo, Burundi, Afghanistan, Syria and even Russia. Because of our name, our brand, we were the
only group that people recognized and supported. We were the example, and people were watching. I don’t know where we’d be without Bob Simon
and 60 Minutes. He told our story, and
because of that and the name – that’s why we got the attention from the world
that we did.” This attention would
result in countless books, movies and documentaries that told the story of the
group.
Local city and state government officials were the group’s
biggest supporters. Jany was especially
grateful to the City of Phoenix. “They were
our biggest supporter. They did so much for us and the other refugees. Ann Wheat, who was a city Parks and Rec
supervisor, she always brought us anything we needed. She was able to recruit city workers to help
us and our refugees. Former Mayor Phil
Gordon and former Governor Janet Napolitano came to our center, and brought
pizza.”
Even now, Jany recognizes local politicians Kyrsten Sinema
and Ruben Gallegos among those still trying to educate the masses about
refugees. He isn’t upset at Doug Ducey’s
proclamation that he wants to halt Syrian refugees. “Of course, when you have
mass migration, there are going to be bad guys, but ISIS is recruiting
everywhere. They are recruiting on the
streets as we speak,” Jany gestures to the windows. “If the governor wants to review the process,
and wants to understand how people are being vetted coming into Arizona, I will
stand next to him.” It wouldn’t be the
first time the influx of refugees would be interrupted by terrorism. In 2001, after 9/11, the Lost Boys program
was halted, and didn’t resume until 2004.
The process, Jany indicated, is much more stringent now, than even what he experienced
in the mid-90s.
Today, the Lost Boys Center of Arizona has transformed into
The Lost Boys Center for Leadership Development, aimed at helping its local
community prepare and deploy to help in the still-unstable country of South
Sudan, formed in 2011 when it became independent of Sudan. Jany is returning to his home village in two
weeks for the first time in thirty years.
“Like many refugees, we send money home. I’m going there to see my
sister for the first time since I left my village, and to see what I can do to
help the people of South Sudan.” The
Lost Boys, for its part, was a success story, resettling countless refugees,
widely documented in various writings and movies. If hindsight is 20/20, then it’s worth viewing
today’s Syrian refugee crisis and its parallels to the Sudanese Lost Boys with
this narrative in the rear view.
Jany isn’t discouraged by people’s attitudes toward
refugees. “It doesn’t matter what we
have to through as a human being. It doesn’t matter if your life is upside
down. Life is not perfect, no matter where you are in the world. They say
America is the best country in the planet. It isn’t perfect here. We have our
own crap here…whether it’s refugees coexisting…political crisis, racism. As a
citizen, or a community person, we can only do the best of our ability to serve
and educate others. We aren’t going to change them. We can try to educate
them.”
Jany’s optimism is infectious, and I thanked him for taking
the time to meet with me, given that I’m not a member of the media, and don’t
have a huge following. “I’m nobody,” I
said as I walked out the door. “If one person reads our story, and you can help
educate them about refugees, you’re somebody,” he answered.
“Oh one last question,” I fit in at the very end. “What do you think about our President being
from Kenya?” He laughed heartily. “You’re so funny.”
I’ll leave this with a quote I found during my research for
this blog post, courtesy of an NPR interview with former Congressman Tom Lantos
before his death in 2008.
“Today the world's refugees
have one central commonality — they are fleeing persecution. Either they have a well-founded fear of persecution at home on account of their race,
religion, political opinion, nationality or membership in a social group, or
they are survivors fleeing actual events of persecution on account of one of
these factors. They are the most vulnerable of the millions of vulnerable
people in the world. They seek refugee status because they have no choice but
to seek that designation so that they and their families may survive.”
Thank you, Jany Deng, for
your time and contribution to this post.
You can find me on most social media sites as @emilyboxing
