Far from Sudan

At the age of 21, Tereza Awan feels her life is hopeless. Her children will reach for the American dream, but she can’t, the Sudanese refugee said through an interpreter. “I grew up. What am I going to do now?” the Sudanese refugee asked through an interpreter.

“These kids will be American,” her husband, William Akon, 30, said through an interpreter, during a recent interview at the family’s small South Hill apartment.

Bol, 4, and Achan, 6, ran through the warm apartment – occasionally stopping to watch the small television that gave the room its soundtrack – as their parents described the horror and beauty of life in Sudan and their struggle to cope with their new life.

It’s been four months since the family arrived at Spokane International Airport, brought here as political refugees through World Relief, a Protestant group that helps with resettlement. The family had fled to Egypt after a man who had once enslaved them tried to recapture Achan and Bol. Yet the situation in Egypt wasn’t good.

The family applied to come to the United States because Awan knew some people from her Dinka clan in Spokane.

Making a new life in a new country

Arriving in Spokane was a disorienting experience, both said.

They spent their first night at the Spokane Valley home of Jack and Cheryl Lewis. The Spokane Valley couple had hosted other refugees, including a Dinka family from Awan’s clan.

The first day, a cool August afternoon, was spent in the Lewis’ house. Cheryl Lewis showed Awan how to use the washing machine and the stove. Akon sat at the kitchen table with pen and paper. Achan and Bol watched their father draw a picture of a regal-looking peacock on a limb with a fish swimming below. Through sign language, it became apparent that Akon drew pictures that Awan would then stitch by hand into intricate patterns on sheets of cloth.

The Sudanese family’s first days in Spokane were a blur of adjustment. Within a few days of arriving, Awan and Akon had applied for public assistance, registered Achan for school, found an apartment, learned how to use the bus and how to shop for groceries.

The goal is to quickly find work for refugees, said Linda Unseth, World Relief’s director for the Northwest region. The Spokane office of World Relief settles approximately 300 refugees each year. The majority are Russians. Approximately 20 percent are Africans, which include people from Liberia, Somalia, and the Congo as well as Sudan.

Awan and Akon got jobs at the Davenport Hotel. The hotel works closely with World Relief and has about two dozen refugees working there. Both said they like the work, although Akon feels unsafe walking back to his apartment at 3 a.m.

Awan is visibly frustrated by her inability to communicate in her new country. She paces around the living room, a torrent of Arabic coming from her, hands making graceful, dance-like gestures.

Akon is quiet and steady. He seems more hopeful about his future and knows a few English phrases. Akon wants to live a decent life with dignity. He plans to improve his English and get a better job. At one point, before getting married, Akon considered becoming a Catholic priest and wants to study theology, he said.

Children make quick progress

Bol is in preschool and seems less bewildered than during his first days in Spokane.

Achan has made friends at Roosevelt Elementary School. She goes to kindergarten in the morning and first grade in the afternoon. She also receives extra instruction with the English as a second language teacher. Achan is one of approximately 20 Arabic-speaking students in School District 81’s ESL program.

While Achan was quiet during her first few weeks, she can now count, sings with her classmates and has no fear about trying out her English, said her first-grade teacher Char Russell. By the end of the school year, Achan will communicate easily, Russell said.

Achan sat with two girls during reading time one October afternoon.

“Boy. Boy. Mommy. Doggy,” she said, pointing to pictures in a book.

“Elephant, zebra, monkey,” her classmate said, pointing to others.

Achan repeated the words.

“She is a doll,” Russell said. “She really pays attention and takes cues from the other kids.”

Bol and Achan will grow up with only vague memories of Africa because they came to the United States as children.

War prevents family from returning

For Awan and Akon, the ache of being torn from Sudan remains strong.

Akon recently heard his mother was alive after he hadn’t heard from her for many years. He wants to help her, but can’t go back to Sudan, even for a visit, unless there is peace.

Africa’s largest country has been at war with itself for most of the last five decades.

Both Akon and Awan are from Dinka clans. Currently, their tribal lands are in the rebel-controlled south of Sudan. Dinkas survive on raising cattle and subsistence farming. Rebels, government-backed militias and government troops have killed their cattle, destroying their way of life. Entire villages have been forced to seek refuge in large cities. Many Dinka people have been forced into either the military or the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army.

Akon is from Gogoryaal, a small village approximately 100 miles north of Wau, the region’s capital. Akon drew a picture of his village, which had a series of huts, each with a distinct communal purpose. In the center was a raised platform that served as a meeting place, Akon said. There was also a building on stilts, where the villagers would go when lions came.

Akon carries a deep sense of loss for his way of life in Sudan. He fled his town in 1986 as war raged around him. Famine was rampant in the area. Human Rights Watch estimates that 250,000 Dinka died of starvation during the fighting of the late 1980s.

In the Darfur region of western Sudan, there have been alarming reports of famine, the massacre of civilians and the burning of towns and villages. The Dinka lands in the south also remain a dangerous war zone. The government continues to fight the rebel Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, which has its stronghold in southern Sudan where Akon and Awan lived. The SPLA is led by an American-educated Dinka man named John Garang.

Soon after Akon fled to Wau in 1986, that city also became dangerous. He hitched a ride on a truck north to the capital city of Khartoum. It was there he met Tereza Awan, a teenager at the time and of traditional marrying age. Akon followed Dinka custom and talked with Awan’s brother before marrying her, he said. Their families settled on a 31-cow dowry. Akon’s family did not have enough cattle to pay the dowry because of the war. He will work in Spokane to send money back to Sudan to pay off the debt, Akon said.

The couple married in Khartoum in January of 1997.

Couple enslaved, then freed

A few months after they married, Awan got word her mother was sick and the newlyweds began a dangerous journey south to visit. In order to avoid militia and rebel forces, they hired a guide in the Baggara region, which borders the rebel-controlled territory. As Akon tells it, the guide went to gather firewood and came back with a gun. The man forced Awan to work in his house and Akon to tend his cattle. If one of them tried to escape, the other would be killed, they were told.

Bol and Achan’s biological father is the man who enslaved Awan and Akon.

In 2001, there was a great deal of unrest in the Baggara region. The government sent troops to stop fighting between farmers and cattle ranchers. One of the soldiers who came to Baggara was a man Akon knew from Khartoum.

Akon told the soldier about what had happened. The soldier helped free them.

The couple headed back to Khartoum, but found no peace there. The man who enslaved them followed the family, intent on taking the children. With the help of a Catholic priest, Akon adopted Achan and Bol. He filled out paperwork for them to go to Egypt. There, they were granted refugee status.

Akon thought Spokane would be good for the family because members of Awan’s clan live in the area. Yet Akon has not been accepted by Awan’s people, who believe she was promised to a man from their clan. Akon worries other Dinkas in Spokane will try to take his family from him.

The rift has isolated the family from other Dinkas.

Awan decried the injustices recently through an interpreter.

“America. Africa. No good,” she said in English.

“How come I come to the heart of America and I’m in this situation?” Awan asked through an interpreter.

Loneliness plagues families during transition

The family has reached an unhappy time, said Unseth, of World Relief. Most refugees go through this culture shock where they despair at their new life. Eventually, the anger will go away and be replaced by acceptance, Unseth said.

“America does not have streets of gold,” Unseth said. “They will find that contentment and the peace they’re looking for.”

Faisal Arshin, a Sudanese man who has befriended Akon and Awan, said he thinks once the family finds a Catholic church to attend in the area, things will improve. They don’t need worldly possessions – they have the basics – but long for a connection with others, Arshin said.

It’s difficult to describe the sense of longing that many Africans have for friendship. The Sudanese culture centers entirely around a large clan and extends beyond it to the tribe. Coming to the United States is disorienting because Americans are individualistic and broken into nuclear families, Arshin said.

“They need people to talk to them,” Arshin said.

Awan said she longs for a time when she can speak English with people.

“If I knew English, I’d have a lot of things to say,” Awan said through an interpreter.