They Poured Fire On Us From The Sky: The True Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan

“Yier wanted to be a lawyer but didn’t qualify—because when the trouble started and the government started killing all the smart students he had to flee, so he joined the freedom fighters. I hardly remember Yier except wearing the clothes of a soldier.”

Alepho describes his oldest brother, Yier. When the boys later reunited with Yier, he told them about how the government massacred all the Black students who refused to convert to Islam. Yier became an SPLA soldier and was immensely helpful materially and psychologically to the boys throughout their exile, as he fulfilled the role of an elder or parent.

“When a boy ate alone, they said he was cruel and not following the traditional ways. His age-mates would throw bad words at him when they saw him walking on the street or in the jungle taking care of his cattle. The advantage of this tradition is that you got to know all the other boys in a wide area. It encouraged friendliness, building unity between the children’s parents. Parents always knew that if a boy wasn’t home, someone would bring him home.”

Benjamin reflects on the Dinka value of togetherness. The importance of sticking together with one’s “age-mates” became crucial to the Lost Boys of Sudan, as they fled their homes without any adult support or help. Banding together and helping each other out was imperative to their survival in the wild. Benson, Alepho, and Benjamin all remembered and adhered to these values throughout their journeys.

“And stop your playing with guns. You must play like a Dinka child. Model cows or some other kind of animals. Dinka don’t own guns. They are the most evil thing I have ever seen in my life. It’s bad luck pretending to be a rebel soldier.”

Benson’s mother chastised him when he pretended to be a rebel soldier and played with guns. His mother’s response to violence even in play displays the peaceful culture of the Dinka. Thus, when war arrived, the atrocities it brought with it were a shock to the community. In time, however, war hardened even the Dinka and eroded their sympathy, as evidenced by how the boys were mistreated even by their own over time, reflecting The Impact of Civil War.

“Burned alive in their house. These were my lovely friends. Achol was my best friend ever. I loved her so much. My eyes were fixed on the sight of death in front of me. I smelled it, tasted it and felt it. I hurt so much I could not live with it.”

Alepho mourns his best friend, Achol, who was burned to death in her house during an attack on the village. Alepho was barely school age at this point, and he already had to contend with not just the death of a dear one but also the gruesome manner in which it took place. The realities of war forced the young boys to grow up sooner than most do, illustrating the theme of The Journey From Childhood to Adulthood Under Extreme Circumstances.

“Just when I most wanted to lie down in my house and be with my parents, I saw, far down the street, a boy sitting on a mat who looked like my cousin Benson. I was happy to see him because he was a little bit older than me and I thought he would know what we should do.”

Benjamin was thrilled to see his older cousin Benson, especially since he was so far from home and his own parents. Benson was only a couple of years older than Benjamin but was already being cast in the role of an “elder.” Benjamin hoped that he would be able to offer guidance, even though the situation was unprecedented and both were young boys. Once again, this passage highlights The Journey From Childhood to Adulthood Under Extreme Circumstances. It also underlines the Dinka value of togetherness and community in Benjamin’s pleasure at finding a relative.

“Everything was quiet and calm. Nearby many skulls were clustered under a huge tamarind tree. A soldier told us, ‘That is a skulls tree where you can see all types of bones from a lot of people who went to rest in the cool shade and never got up to continue their journey.’”

Benson and the group he was with crossed the Ajakageer desert. This instance of finding skulls scattered under a tree illustrates how treacherous the terrain was: There was no food, water, or other resources to be found for miles, and the heat and exhaustion could be fatal. That the boys managed to cross this terrain at such young ages points to The Importance of Resilience and Resourcefulness for their survival.

“It was not what I had expected. The elders had told us there would be schools and thousands of people and that we would be safe. There were thousands of people but only a few shelters made of sticks and branches for protection from the sun. Not one school. The whole place was full of the smoke of small fires that mingled with the dust. People were everywhere.”

Panyido in Ethiopia was the first refugee camp that Benson and Benjamin arrived at; it was, however, a disappointment, and they experienced unkindness and cruelty there from the others. This passage displays the lure that education held for the boys, even in these trying times: Benson was disappointed that there were no schools there as promised. Later at Kakuma, it was the educational opportunity present there that served as the saving grace for the boys despite the other hardships.

“You are not in your mama’s house anymore […] You have to think about what brought you here. You can’t complain about being a hen; you have to do everything to stay alive. You’ve already seen that boys like you are dying. They always cry and they’re always depressed. I’m not saying I’m a grown adult, but this is the situation.”

Alepho counseled his younger half-brother Peter to make himself stronger. Alepho stressed how they were not under their parents’ care anymore, even as he asserted that he was not a grown adult either. This is yet another situation highlighting The Journey From Childhood to Adulthood Under Extreme Circumstances: Alepho was forced to care for his younger brother when he himself was still a young boy. Furthermore, he had to sincerely counsel Peter on staying strong when Alepho himself faced the same hardships that Peter did and lacked the same support and resources that Peter needed.

“The body is like an engine. When the engine is shut down, there is no way you can even think of taking care of yourself. When you have food, the mind can take care of all those things.”

Alepho describes the physical and psychological effects of hunger as he experienced them in Palataka. Throughout their journey, the Lost Boys constantly faced starvation due to the lack of food and resources while they were on the move, as well as at the camps they arrived at. Hunger played havoc with not just the body’s strength and health but also the will and motivation to take care of oneself and survive.

“Some of the boys, like ten-year-olds, didn’t listen. They’d seen a lot of killing and they also wanted to kill. They wanted to be warriors. They didn’t want to have mercy. I think it is because they were worn out by so much killing.”

Alepho describes how some of the boys a little older than him continued to fight among themselves at Palataka, reflecting The Impact of Civil War on their mental health and behavior. He reflects on how the amount of violence the boys had already seen had made them immune to the pain it could cause and even left them with a thirst for more. These early experiences of violence had a range of psychological effects on the Lost Boys, and in some situations, an erosion of empathy appears to have been one of them. This is true of the adults and soldiers around the boys as well.

“I longed to go home, but not like this—not running again, not back into the battles. My beautiful homeland wasn’t a home in wartime. But to avoid conflict we agreed to leave their land and our lovely crops behind us.”

Benson describes how, after having found temporary peace in Ethiopia, the Sudanese were driven back out again due to war there. The refugees had to flee back into Sudan, which was still not safe for them to return to. The years that the boys spent between leaving their homes and villages and eventually resettling in America were marked by this kind of constant movement, conflict, and uncertainty.

“This gave me real hope. I’d found a brother, an SPLA officer, who was able to search for the rest of the family. I’d be staying in Yier’s home. He was an elder who cared about our family and could do something. That sense of loneliness finally left my heart. Things were going to be better. Maybe Akoon, Alepho and Nieu-nieu were in the same situation.”

Benson felt a sense of hope and relief when he finally found Yier. Not only was Yier older, but he was also in a position that afforded him some degree of power and control as an SPLA officer. Benson was briefly able to be a child again and have someone else take care of him. Furthermore, he was buoyed by the hope that reunification with the rest of his family was possible, and this did indeed come to pass. Along with the physical toll of constant movement, the Lost Boys also battled the loneliness of not having family with them, especially older caregivers, during such trying times.

“At that moment I knew I’d never been closer to dying than I was under that tree. My body almost had not risen again; my mind barely knew I was there. Even though I knew with certainty Peter could not have survived this, it didn’t take away the heavy pain I felt for leaving him behind.”

Alepho and joseph escaped Palataka, leaving Peter behind. It was a conflicted decision for Alepho because he did not tell Peter that he was leaving. He knew that Peter could not accompany him, as the journey would have been far too strenuous for him; his experience of almost dying of exhaustion confirmed this instinct. However, Alepho also felt pained at having left Peter behind, as he did so not for selfish reasons but so that both of them could separately survive. The harsh and dangerous conditions that the boys constantly found themselves in necessitated some difficult choices for the sake of survival.

“Once the shooting stopped soldiers came toward us, checking, searching, looking for the living. There were so many people who had been killed, I made myself like a dead person, so they couldn’t recognize me. One of the soldiers pushed me with his boot, turning me over. I didn’t breathe. He would have killed me.”

When Torit was attacked, Alepho, who was surrounded by shooting and gunmen, had the presence of mind to lie down and play dead. This saved his life. At different points in their respective journeys, each of the boys displayed similar instances of a presence of mind and a survival instinct that explain how they made it across to the other side of these harrowing experiences.

“War had ruined a lot of things. I had become convinced that people were not good; people were bad. Sometimes I try to remember the man who shared his small meal. That incident made me think differently about people.”

Alepho remembers a man who once saved his life by offering him a spoonful of grain just as Alepho was going to pass out from hunger and exhaustion. In general, the boys had overwhelmingly negative experiences with people, even as adults. However, even in the darkest of times, they have experienced moments of positivity and kindness—either from others or from among themselves—that have saved them from total despondency and given them the strength to keep going. This passage showcases one such instance.

“It didn’t matter if you were a child or an adult. Nobody cared. That’s what war was doing to people. They only cared for themselves.”

Alepho was distraught when a soldier cruelly defecated on Alepho’s bag and ruined the few possessions he had inside. War had changed the otherwise peace-loving, community-minded Dinka into callous men who acted with indifference or cruelty even toward the children of their own tribe. Alepho reflects on these unfortunate effects of their situation, highlighting the theme of The Impact of Civil War.

“They just didn’t want us to go to Kakuma. But all I wanted was school. In Natinga we would have to depend on the soldiers. We would live under trees and it would be years before we had a good school. All I’d dreamed of, going to Kenya and learning to speak English and Kswahili, reading words in books or doing figures, was lost.”

Benson reflects on how the soldiers hijacked the boys headed for Kakuma and took them to Natinga, breaking all their promises of a safe space and good schools. Once again, the promise of education was a valuable one to the boys, with Benson having dreamed of learning new languages and concepts in school. This was the most devastating aspect of them being kept at Natinga.

“Now I knew for certain why they had brought us here to Natinga and why they were keeping us here. They wanted more boys for their army. Soon we would be on the front lines, where they didn’t care whether you lived or died. They said, ‘Thousands die and a hundred are born a day. Who cares about your life at your age?’ Our lives seemed of no consequence to them.”

Over time, Benson divined that the soldiers had brought the boys to Natinga to recruit them into the army—it explained the hard labor they were forced into and the soldiers’ adamance that they could not go to Kakuma. This passage highlights the intersecting themes of The Impact of Civil War and The Journey From Childhood to Adulthood Under Extreme Circumstances: These young boys came to be seen as merely resources or commodities to be used by the adults to further their own violent causes. There was no value placed on individual life anymore, and much less for that of a child.

“The rebels controlled you like a dog. I’d seen it was that way with Yier. He’d disappeared from Wau school and joined the Southern Sudan Rebels, where he fought as a warrior for years. None of our family knew where he was until I met him in Kapoeta town. The SPLA high commanders ordered him around to any dangerous battle, whatever they wanted, and he had to obey them and fight for his survival.”

Benson was determined to escape Natinga and a life of conscription, as he had seen the lack of freedom it brought to his brother. At this point in the war, the SPLA were behaving almost as brutally with the boys as the opposing side—while they were not actively killing their own, they were forcing young boys onto the frontlines to fight and risk their lives all the same. Benson’s reflection shows how The Impact of Civil War is inescapable, irrespective of which side of the fight one is on, with the collateral damage equally far-reaching.

“Even though I was shivering and exhausted with sickness, going to Kakuma was my only choice. No one was going to help the older boys back on the road and I couldn’t do it alone. If I could make it, I knew they could. This was my chance.”

Benson made it to Lokichokio and willed himself to complete the journey to Kakuma despite the severe exhaustion he experienced following the journey. He was driven by a desire both for survival for himself and also to help the boys he left behind in the desert. Throughout their respective experiences, the authors consistently displayed a concern for others’ lives even as they fought for their own. This sense of community and togetherness was what also helped them survive, physically and psychologically, at different points of their journeys.

“We are so happy and thankful that the American government has come to take you out. Some of you will come back and try to help us out here in this desperate situation. You’ll shape our lives in the future. We are too old and we will stay and do our best with the babies and kids. You, the young men, have the chance to go to such a place as America.”

Before the boys left for America, the older community within the refugee camp got together to give them advice and see them off with joy. Despite the fact that these people would not get a chance to leave since they were older, they were thrilled by the opportunities that the younger boys received to start their lives over. The Dinka spirit of community and togetherness shines through once again, where one celebrates rather than resents another’s good fortune as one’s own.

“‘We are now back to a world of eating green leaves again,’ said my friend, Santino, who was sitting next to me. ‘Why do American people eat flowers?’ I didn’t know much about Americans, but I’d eaten abundantly of leaves on my way to Ethiopia in 1987. I told Santino, ‘This is probably not a good time for me to be eating those leaves. I’m not starving anyway.’”

Benson was puzzled by fairly commonplace aspects of American life, such as the food. The boys’ experiences on the flights to America hinted at a whole new set of challenges that lay ahead of them. The acculturation process was predictably going to be a long and difficult road for the boys, presenting a fresh challenge that they would have to contend with after everything that they had already endured.

“That question lingered in my mind as the plane’s engines roared into reverse […] Find peace in my heart. That wasn’t something I’d been searching for. Revenge had been there so long. It would have to move aside first and I wasn’t willing to let go so easily or quickly.”

Alepho contemplated the question of finding peace as he flew to America. Although he was leaving the war behind, it was difficult for him or the other boys to shake off the effects of the violence and trauma they had experienced. Simply moving locations would not negate or heal all of their pain. This points to the theme of The Impact of Civil War, particularly the different kinds of long-lasting consequences it can have.