NEW WILMINGTON — (Second in a series of stories on education as Lawrence County students return to the classroom.)
Without education, there is no way to pursue goals, David Dau told Wilmington High School students on Monday.
Dau, who walked 1,000 miles across Africa as one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, was one of two classroom visitors.
He and William Mwizerwa, both African refugees, talked about their survival from a society that had offered their childhoods only war and death.
The two men met in 2001 and have teamed as motivational speakers in Nashville. They visited Wilmington through contact with instructional support teacher Tawnee Hunter.
According to Mwizerwa, director of Refugee Ministry, the New Wilmington Presbyterian Church youth group met the men while in Nashville on a missionary trip in 2009. From there, Hunter, who was involved in that visit, arranged for the men to come to Lawrence County.
The two presented programs for teachers and the community on Friday and were in the classrooms for the students’ first day back to school.
Mwizerwa survived the Rwandan genocide.
Rwanda is a country between Congo and Tanzania. “We don’t have oil, we don’t have a gulf, we don’t have diamonds,” he said.
A million people were killed within 100 days in 1994 in the genocide during civil war.
“We survived, and that’s how we came here,” he said. His family was sent here in 1998.
Dau’s plight is similar. Strife in his country also was over religious, political and cultural differences. The second Sudanese civil war began in 1983. Government troops attacked villages, people were killed and schools were destroyed.
Dau was among 30,000 boys between 5 and 10 years old who walked for 1,000 miles without water, food, clothing or shelter.
“People were dying of starvation,” he said. “We were by ourselves — no parents, no one to protect us. But God gave us opportunity.”
The boys had survived the warfare in large numbers because they were away tending herds and were able to flee into jungles. They walked for five years to get across borders to relief camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, facing thirst, starvation, wild animals, insects and disease.
The International Rescue Committee resettled some of the refugees from Sudan to the United States, and in 2001, about 4,000 Lost Boys were sent here and now live in about 40 cities.
According to Mwizerwa, more than 150 of them are in Nashville, and 100 have become college graduates.
Dau is in a documentary film about the Lost Boys that was shown to Wilmington students.
He spent 10 years in a Kenyan refugee camp and came to the states on Aug. 24, 2001. He formed a plan to get his secondary and college education, get married, then earn his master’s degree. He is studying for his master’s in business administration and management and plans to become a lawyer.
“I’m still a student,” he said, touting the benefits of schooling. “Education meets fundamental needs. You can change your future and you can change your life.”
In the United States, he said, “everything is available to you. It is up to you to think now about how you can get to that highest vista.”
