One barrier broken
Patrick Springer, the Forum
Published Sunday, December 09, 2007
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Justin Machien Luoi found a welcoming party waiting for him when his airplane taxi landed on a dusty strip on the edge of an African village he’d fled on foot years before as a child.
His relatives, eager to be reunited with their lost cousin, gave the pilot a gift to show their appreciation: a sheep, which the pilot accepted on behalf of a relief agency.
But before Luoi could meet his mother, another sheep had to be sacrificed in a cleansing ceremony, and he had to wait a week for his older brother to return home to preside over the important occasion.
He’d last seen his mother almost 20 years earlier, at the age of 4, and couldn’t remember what she looked like. He was forced to flee when the civil war arrived unexpectedly in his village one day.
Luoi was swept up in an exodus that eventually wandered out of
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The former Lost Boy’s return last spring marked not only a joyous reunion after a journey of more than 8,000 miles, but an early milestone in a development project with ties to Concordia College, where Luoi graduated last spring.
Today, hundreds of books are piled in a storeroom in Moorhead’s former Riverside Elementary School – waiting for the day they can be shipped to Luoi’s native Ganyiel province in southern Sudan, where a
Fargo-Moorhead nonprofit plans to build a library.
Blueprints call for a humble building – no electricity is available in the community of Panyijiar – to house the assortment of donated books, everything from a law library to novels and used textbooks.
The library, with an estimated price tag of $20,000, is the first project planned by the nonprofit Panyijiar Community Development Services, based in Fargo-Moorhead.
“We have to do something that makes a difference,” Luoi says. “To me, knowledge is power. We can only do that through giving books.”
There is so much to learn in Panyijiar, where people live in grass huts with their livestock and walk on dirt streets. In
Books can help villagers learn how to grow crops, how to protect themselves against diseases, how to build with masonry, to give just three examples Luoi rattled off.
“They’re starting from the ground up. They need everything,” says Roy Hammerling, a religion professor at Concordia and one of those helping Luoi and fellow Sudanese refugees rebuild their homeland, ravaged by years of civil war but now at peace.
In fact, Luoi’s idea to build a library back home had its improbable origins several years ago in a discussion in Hammerling’s classroom.
The class was reading “How the Irish Saved Civilization,” and learned how Irish monks had helped save important texts, copies they’d made when visiting the library in ancient
The notion occurred to Luoi: Some day in the unforeseeable future, somebody might lift a book off a shelf in the
‘Now is the time’
When he finally was reunited with his mother on that homecoming journey last spring, Justin Machien Luoi saw a woman, her head wrapped in a traditional shawl, who sang and dropped her walking stick as she rushed to meet her son.
He had been unable to remember what she looked like, but could listen to her voice on a tape-recording he received from relatives nine years ago. He was surprised to see that her hair was gray.
Luoi had brought a second bag with him, filled with clothing to donate to family members. But he had already given away most of the clothes, having met so many needy people along the way.
In turn, the few remaining gifts he had for family members were quickly given away, in keeping with tribal customs of the Nuer people – a culture now foreign to him, with its cleansing rituals for important guests.
“It was exotic,” Luoi says. “I never associated myself with such welcoming.”
He and many of his fellow Lost Boys, who number between 150 and 200 in Fargo-Moorhead, are dedicated to doing whatever they can to improve the lives of those who remain in
Luoi had joined an association of other refugees from his area who agreed to donate $50 a year for a fund to help rebuild the country – modest sums, but small numbers can make a big difference in a place like Panyijiar.
“The Lost Boys have been helped,” he says. “Now it is the time for Lost Boys to help. Nobody is shooting at each other now. Now is the time to fight ignorance.”
Their cause was taken up by Hammerling and others, including the Conmy Feste law firm in
“They just wrote off the cost,” Hammerling says of the law firm’s assistance. “It was kind of the first big hurdle to get over, and they just swept it away. I just can’t say enough.”
Panyijiar community leaders donated land for the public library. Meanwhile, Luoi, Hammerling and the others have long-range plans, including humanitarian assistance, clean water and agricultural assistance.
“It’s taken a year to really get it off the ground,” Hammerling says of the nonprofit organization. With the framework now in place, he hopes to raise enough money for the library building by May.
“These people need to see some action,” he says. “We all feel the obligation to do something as quickly as possible.”
Luoi moved recently from
But he expects he will have to interrupt his graduate studies from time to time to return to Ganyiel, a place that is both familiar and foreign to him now, to help rebuild. He won’t go back until the time is right, when he can bring tangible signs of hope.
“I don’t want to go back empty-handed,” he says. “It has to inspire them. Make them believe in what we’re doing.”
How you can help
- To learn more about Panyijiar Community Development Services: www.pacodes.org
- Location: Northern Africa, bordering the Red Sea, between
- Area: 2.5 million square kilometers (slightly more than one-fourth the size of the
- Capital:
- National holiday: Independence Day, Jan. 1
- Voting age: 17
- Unemployment rate: 18.7% (2002 est.)
- Population below poverty line: 40% (2004 est.)
- Internet hosts: 21
- Internet users: 3.5 million
- Climate: Tropical in south, arid desert in north
- Natural hazards: Dust storms and periodic, persistent drought
- Factoid: Largest country in
- Population: 39.4 million (July 2007 est.)
- Population growth rate: 2.08%
- Life expectancy at birth: 49.11 years
- Religions: Sunni Muslim 70% (in north), Christian 5% (mostly in south and
- Literacy: (Age 15 and over can read and write) 61%
Source: CIA The World Fact Book
Readers can reach Forum reporter Patrick Springer at (701) 241-5522
Justin Machien Luoi embraces his mother when they were reunited for the first time in almost 20 years after he returned to his home village in southern
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