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Jewish Community News
News: June 2007
From Sudanese refugee camps to San Jose
After a lifetime of sleeping on the ground and eating wild berries or U.N. food rations, young Sudanese men build lives in San Jose
By Cecily Ruttenberg
 |
| Magai Majak, 26, in his San Jose apartment |
Twenty-six-year-old James Magai Majak’s two-bedroom apartment off of San Thomas Aquino in West San Jose is much like that of any other twenty something’s. There are bare walls, stained carpet and a bottle of Scope mouthwash in the bathroom.
But unlike other 26-year-olds, Magai works two jobs, goes to school and wires the bulk of his income to relatives and friends living in refugee camps in Southern Sudan.
“I have sent so much money,” Magai laughs warmly, showing his Western Union receipts stuffed in two large, clear envelopes. “You get a call, and someone you know asks you to send money. If you have $50 or $100 you do it. Because you know if you don’t, they will starve to death.”
Magai, 26, is one of the “Lost Boys” of Sudan. Around age six (he doesn’t remember exactly) he was playing peacefully in his Sudanese village when gun shots sent him running with a group of children into the forest. He traveled through various refugee camps and horrific conditions for 15 years, until he was granted immigration to San Jose, California, at age 21. He never saw his parents again.
Today Magai lives in San Jose, among some 60 other Sudanese “Lost Boys.” He works nights as a security guard at St. Francis High School in Palo Alto for $12-an-hour, mornings at the Santa Clara Valley Water District, and afternoons as a student at San Jose State University. He wires all his money to friends and relatives still in the Kakuma refugee camp.
In the brief moments he does not work, Magai and his fellow “Lost Boys” attend rallies for Southern Sudan and Darfur. In late April, Magai spoke after a film screening about the “Lost Boys” called G-d Grew Tired of Us organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Silicon Valley (JCRC). The event raised $7,000 to send solar cookers to Darfur Sudanese living in refugee camps.
The event was organized as part of the Jewish community’s pledge of “never again.” “Because of the Holocaust and the killing fields of Cambodia and Rwanda, we know that genocide does not end until the international community demands it,” said STAND’s Elissa Test, who spoke after the film. “We will not stand idly by in the face of this genocide.”
Magai and other “Lost Boys,” find great meaning in speaking and attending these events. They say they are unable to simply shake off their past and take advantage of their newfound luck. They feel forever connected and responsible to those they left behind. They feel compelled to help.
Will they ever be able to relax, to work one job and enjoy their new-found freedom?
“Yes, when they can start cultivating at home,” said Magai, referring to a time before the war when Sudanese would plant crops, raise livestock and live self-sufficiently in peace.
HIS JOURNEY
Before his small village was attacked, Magai recalls a peaceful existence with his mother and father and siblings. His community subsisted on milk from cows, meat, maize (corn) and sorghum, a grain that was used to make flour for bread. Although he had no electricity, plumbing or even shoes, Magai remembers these as happy times when he and the other children would care for the livestock and just play.
When the gunshots and helicopters arrived, Magai ran to the forest with a pack of children. Somehow the group found an adult to lead them, and began a month-long trek to the Ethiopian border. On this journey, children in the group were consumed by wild animals, or hunger and famine. For the first of many occasions, Magai was one of the lucky ones.
Along the Ethiopian riverside, some 40,000 refugees lived for four years, first eating bark and leaves from trees, and then receiving food and medicine from the United Nations.
War broke out again, and the refugee village was attacked from the Ethiopian side. Running for the river, countless children drowned, or were eaten by alligators. Magai found himself, miraculously, alive.
Wandering again, another temporary shelter was located in Southern Sudan. Magai stayed here, until, again, unthinkably, this refugee camp was also attacked.
His final travel was across a blistering desert, for more than a month, to reach the largest refugee camp in Kenya. Red Cross water tanks placed at intervals were the only reason he survived. Many did not.
“It was just by luck,” Magai reasons. “You cannot say we were smarter. It was just by luck.”
Across the desert, the final refugee camp offered little refuge. Kakuma, as the camp is called, sits on a sandy, dry stretch of desert with no animals, no vegetation and no water. “You cannot see a green leaf,” Magai said.
Local tribes in the area, with no food or economy, attack refugees at night by knife or gunpoint to obtain meager U.N. rations of food and water.
It was Kakuma, where Magai lived for eight years, that he refers to as “back home in the camps.”
A TICKET OUT
In early 2001, the United States government granted immigration visas to nearly 4,000 “Lost Boys.” Magai applied, and one day his petition surfaced. He received a packet of paperwork and the date of his departure.
The day came, and aboard a plane to San Jose (he called it San Jo-Zee), Magai was safe for the first time in 15 years.
IN SAN JOSE
Today, seated on his floral print couch off San Thomas Aquino, the contrast of Magai’s life then and now is stunning. The simple couch pillows adorned with doilies, a bedframe and mattress, light switches, a refrigerator stocked with food, a wooden entertainment center donated from someone at his church.
Catholic Charities volunteers met Magai and other “Lost Boys” at the airport in 2001 and provided them with three months' worth of rent and food stamps for him. The charity taught them how to flush a toilet, store food in a refrigerator and operate a light switch.
Soon after landing a job, Magai peti-tioned the authorities at Kakuma to obtain immigration for his wife from Kakuma. Because the United States had filled its immigration capacity, Magai’s wife was sent to Australia. A trip to see her two years ago resulted in a son, but the family cannot yet be together.
Magai still sends money to other friends and family at Kakuma, and he sponsors orphans, who have no one.
The “Lost Boys” in San Jose and throughout the United States know they are fortunate for new opportunity. But they can’t help but feel loss and loneliness. For those still in Kakuma, for their tribe, their culture, their homeland, and that long ago time when life was peaceful.
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