By JACK DAVIS Special to the Palisadian-Post Students at Palisades High heard a challenging speaker on April 13 when a former Lost Boy of Sudan, Alephonsion Deng, came to school to share his inspiring story. Alepho, a 32-year-old Sudanese refugee, currently resides near San Diego, where he has lived since he moved to the United States in 2001. PaliHi’s student-run club, Human Rights Watch Student Task Force (STF), organized this event to raise awareness of injustice around the world and the importance of education. This year, the chapter is advocating for the ‘Right to Education’ with other 11 schools in the Los Angeles area. Led by seniors Jonathan Castillo and Julian Duarte, the Pali STF meets every Wednesday at lunch under the guidance of teachers Angelica Pereyra and Sandra Martin, and Human Rights Watch STF Interns Suzanne Johnson and Kristina Bruno. Each week, students have been coming together to gain awareness and take action to fight the barriers that deny children the right to education here in the United States (for example, the challenges faced by homeless children, child farm workers and students in failing schools) and around the world, especially those in refugee camps and conflict zones. Alephonsion told the Pali students about his harrowing journey that began in 1987 when his Southern Sudanese village was attacked by government troops who desired the ‘black gold’ beneath their homes. Alepho, then only 7 years old, ran into the night away from his home and never returned.’This was a chapter of terrible injustice that left five million citizens misplaced and over two million perished.’ Waking up the next morning with nowhere to go, Alepho and 27,000 young boys just like him assembled from all over the countryside and began their thousand-mile walk across the African desert. The boys walked for five years through Sudan and Ethiopia, somehow living off the land, and eventually ended up at the Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya. On their harrowing journey, the boys dodged attacks by enemy soldiers and lions, feared crocodiles as they swam across rivers, faced thirst, starvation and disease, and saw their comrades ‘die like flies.’ With few elders to look up to, it was every boy for himself, though they survived because they chose to look out for each other. After nine hard years in the Kakuma camp, Alephonsion was included in a program that brought 3,800 Lost Boys of Sudan to be resettled in the U.S. Alephonsion was flown to San Diego, where he was assisted in adapting to his new life by the International Rescue Committee. Speaking in Room B-101 at Pali, Alephonsin urged students to take action. He asked them, ‘What’s your story? I am asking of you today not to feel pity, but to continue to be involved and to learn stories, to be the voice for those who cannot speak up.’ Alepho, his brother Benson Deng and their cousin Benjamin Ajak recorded their story in the book, ‘They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky,’ which was co-authored by Judy Bernstein. She accompanied Deng for the presentation and set the stage for Alepho’s story by providing context that students could relate to. She told about taking the trio to Wal-Mart back in 2001, where they were overwhelmed as newcomers to American culture. There were many things they may have been drawn to, but what they really wanted were their own composition books and pens to share their story. Throughout his talk, Alepho emphasized the importance of his education and how it ultimately saved his life. He said that his English education began at the Kakuma refugee camp where he sketched out ‘A, B, C’ in the sand. Alepho described his gift of education as magic, a catalyst for one ‘to learn to see things and other worlds that exist.’ Alepho’s story relates closely with the work of the Human Rights Watch Student Task Force. As part of our international Right to Education campaign this year, we partnered with Gabriel Stauring and Katie-Jay Scott from i-ACT and created two Human Rights Mobile Libraries for Darfuri refugees living in southeastern Chad near the border of Sudan. The Human Rights Mobile Libraries consist of a chest filled with learning tools, including e-readers loaded with books and documents, maps, utensils and other student-made resources and curriculum’focusing on human rights. Per requests from the refugee students, the libraries include English-learning materials. Along with the chests, the mobile libraries also have tables, chairs and mats to make a comfortable learning environment. The libraries are mobile (two donkeys can carry it all), so they can move to the different schools and classrooms within the refugee camps. For more information go to http://hrwstf.org/mobile_library/ Jack Davis is a junior at Palisades High and a member of STF. He previously wrote a Lifestyle feature for the Palisadian-Post (January 26) about his trip to China with the international Green Explorer program.
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