Help Jok Ngor relocate his family out of Sudan

My name is Evan and I have known Jok and his family for 10 years as have many of you who are reading this. If you have ever met Jok in person, his smile is not one that you will soon forget. Once you have taken the time to understand his family's story you will be astonished that he is able to remain so positive after facing adversity that most people could never imagine, let alone survive and overcome. Our goal is to help him relocate the rest of his family out of war torn Sudan and help them establish their lives in the safer neighboring country of Kenya.

 

Jok has been living and working in the US for 20 years as a refugee, he is one of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan. Jok is a compassionate, selfless and hard working man who is doing everything he can to improve the lives of his wife Juer and their children Ngor (6), and Abak (9), as well as the rest of his family that remains in Africa in a very unstable environment. Sudan Recent News

 

Jok works more than full-time in downtown Boston at two residential properties. He spends his days helping others and sends the majority of the money he earns home to help his family. Recently he has moved out of Massachusetts to New Hampshire to reduce his cost of living. No matter how many hours he works and how much he sends back to Africa, it never seems like enough.

 

 

The goal here is two-fold:

1. To raise money for the physical relocation of his immediate family to Kenya. 

2. To raise money to purchase farming equipment that will allow them to be self-sufficient on their land in Kenya. He is hoping to break the endless cycle of sending money home to be used on subsistence items that only solve that day's problems.

 

With the holidays approaching, please consider making a donation to benefit a good man and his family who have been through the worst possible circumstances and continue to persevere in the face of a continuing humanitarian disaster in their homeland. The situation in Sudan is rapidly deteriorating and thus we are hoping to raise this money so that they can safely start their new beginnings as soon as possible.

 

Below is Jok's life story written in his own words. Please take the time to read this understand the gravity of what they have survived. I hope you can find it in your heart to make a contribution that will forever change their lives for the better.

 

My Life Story By: Jok Wieu Ngor

My name is Jok Wieu Ngor and I am Dinka by tribe and Christian by faith. I was born in 1978 in a village named Mabior in the Aweil district of southern Sudan. My father and mother had seven children: me, my three brothers, and my three sisters. Like many Dinka men, my father had multiple wives, so my siblings and I were raised with the children of these women as well. Our large family was very poor because no one had ever had the opportunity to attend school. My parents worked as farmers.

 

From the ages of seven to nine, I tended herds, taking care of my family's cows, goats, and sheep. It was my responsibility to protect our cattle from predatory animals and to ensure that they would not wander off and get lost in the desert. Herding cattle is a major part of a Dinka's way of life, forming the basis of our livelihood as a family.

 

In 1983, a civil war broke out in the Sudan between Arab/Muslim northern Sudan and the black African peoples of the southern villages. This north-south conflict lasted for more than 20 years, displacing and killing millions of people. Government troops controlled by radical northern Muslims massacred Dinka and other southerners, many of whom were Christian. They attacked our villages to force their religious beliefs on us.

 

One fateful evening in 1987 a group of Arabs raided my village, setting fire to my family's home, stealing our animals, and brutally killing two of my brothers and my uncle. Tragically, after watching her sons and brother slaughtered, my mother died of a heart attack. The raiders stole livestock, abducted children, raped and kidnapped women, and killed countless villagers. When the attack happened, I ran off with a friend, looking for safety and realizing that in the midst of all the chaos, I couldn't find my parents.

 

With my loved ones nowhere to be found, I joined a group of other children and started a long journey to reach safety in neighboring Ethiopia. Thousands of other Sudanese youth did the same. We walked for three months through the desert in terrible conditions. Along the way, many of the people in our group- my friends- died of hunger, dehydration, disease, or were killed and eaten by wild animals including lions.

 

After walking for hundreds of miles across the desert, I finally reached Ethiopia in 1988. I stayed in a U.N. refugee camp for more than 4 years. My life there was extremely challenging both physically and psychologically. The camp was overcrowded and lacked sufficient food, water, and medicine. We were given a tiny amount of food that was supposed to last for a week, yet it was barely sufficient for 3 days. We even had a name for the days when we had no food at all in the camp: "black days."

 

Despite the fact that I had gone there for security, the camp was unsafe. In addition to being an unstable, dangerous environment, it did not provide me the freedom to speak my mind. I felt powerless.

The instability of the camp mirrored the mayhem erupting in Ethiopia. When a war broke out between the Ethiopian government and rebel groups in 1990, we ran back to the Sudan. This was our only route to Kenya, where we arrived in 1992 through the UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency, Relief workers called us the "Lost Boys" because so many of us had been displaced and/or orphaned during the war. I myself had lost my mother and two brothers to the atrocities of what many refer to as the "Second Sudanese Civil War."

 

Years later, I came to the United States with the help of the US government, the UNHCR, and churches. Under a special State Department initiative, the U.S. admitted 3,600 young Sudanese men, like me, as refugees in 2000.

Though years have passed since my escape from the war, I still feel the pain of my country. To this day, I have nightmares about being in the refugee camp. And, my sister, a young mother, recently died from a bite inflicted by a rabid dog, the kind of incident that is all too common in my village and others throughout Africa. My family and the Sudan continue to face extreme adversity—struggling against poverty, disease, lack of access to basic services, etc.

 

Nonetheless, despite the hardships I've confronted, I consider myself very fortunate to have survived my journey to the camp and to have made it safely to the United States for a fresh start in life. I will continue to work diligently to move beyond the trials of war and loss to meet my personal goals and to contribute to the progress of this country. I am a refugee and I will never forget the depths of the cruelty I have witnessed carried out by people in the name of power, religion, and greed. Yet I have also experienced the kindness of humans who have since shown me that the world can be different. I am filled with God's grace and profoundly blessed for the inspiration it has given me to be a better, more resilient person who can look to the future with hope, I may be a Lost Boy of Sudan, but I am not lost in my heart.