Lessons for a new life

In a little green notebook with crisp blue lines, the boy begins to write: E L I O W.

The letters emerge from his pen in careful, clunky strokes.

When he finishes, he looks up from the notebook and announces, “My name is Eliow.”

Eliow Jok Eliow is 12 years old. He speaks Arabic and Dinka, but virtually no English. After eight years of separation from his parents, the Sudanese boy has never been to school.

“It’s a fascinating case to look at a young boy who’s had no exposure to computers, to television, or to education and to see what he can do,” said Cheryl Lewis, a special education teacher who has worked closely with Eliow. “He knows almost nothing, but he learns very quickly.”

Eliow arrived in Spokane one month ago, after finally winding his way through government regulations that had prevented him from immigrating to the United States with his family. Civil war in Sudan scattered Eliow’s family in the 1990s, and only now are they learning to live together.

When he arrived in Spokane last month, Eliow had never met his three sisters – Akon, 5; Nebol, 4; and Adio, 2. He had not seen his father, Georges, in a decade.

His parents, buoyed by a local Christian family, fought for and championed his immigration to the United States.

At the airport on July 6, the exhausted and bewildered boy was met with flashing cameras and a throng of supporters who had donated money, prayed and appealed to government officials.

Dodging through the crowd, tiny Nebol sneaked up behind Eliow and slipped her hand into his. For Nebol, Eliow was both a brother and a fourth-birthday present. As family and well-wishers pressed in, she refused to let go.

Learning language, absorbing culture

Eliow is a mini-laboratory on how language emerges. First, the smile – white teeth shining, eyes bright. It is often accompanied by a giggle that rattles his skinny body. The smile is a great, disarming defense when Eliow doesn’t understand a question.

In his apartment building in south Spokane, where dozens of immigrant children live, a group of new friends translate English into Arabic. Because the children speak such a vast number of languages, they play in English – the one common denominator.

Each day, he absorbs the language.

From soccer – played in the asphalt parking lot of the family’s apartment complex, with yellow speed bumps for uprights – Eliow has learned “Goal!” and “Pass it!” and the rudiments of the high-five. He has learned to count well enough to keep score.

On a warm August night, in shorts and T-shirt, he ran barefoot across the pavement, bumping into the other boys, maneuvering through the pack of shoulder-high defenders. In the northern Sudanese city of Khartoum, where the boy lived in a windowless shack with his grandmother, Eliow played a lot of soccer. Those skills now give him instant playground credentials.

His vocabulary grows by necessity and curiosity. He has learned “bathroom” and “money” and “airplane.”

Other words are cultural keystones. Lying on the floor of the family’s apartment, Eliow pulled again and again the string on a child’s toy that emits animal sounds, connecting the pictures to their English names.

Chicken.

Pig.

Cow. Cow. Cow.

“In Sudan,” his mother, Akout, said with a laugh, “cows are more important than money.”

Television, that cultural abyss where a generation of young minds goes to stagnate … actually helps. As Bugs Bunny tiptoes across the screen, Eliow stares expectantly, transfixed, listening to Bugs’ intonations, subconsciously sorting the inscrutable syntax of Porky the Pig.

Fortunately, exploding dynamite and pratfalls require no translation.

He has learned some intangibles as well: Skateboards can unexpectedly shoot out from beneath your feet.

Seattle in July is cold.

Boys need to lift the toilet seat.

Last month, at Skookum Lake near Usk, Wash., Eliow raced down a wooden dock with two other young boys and then plunged into the cold water as family friends, Jack and Cheryl Lewis, watched.

“We thought, ‘Huh. Does he know how to swim?’ ” Jack said.

He does not.

Celebrating one month, with a lifetime ahead

The Lewises, as well as their children, advocated tirelessly for the boy. For Jack Lewis, the associate dean of faculty at Moody Bible Institute in Spokane, Eliow’s arrival represented more than three years’ work.

When Georges and Akout arrived in February 2003, they asked the Lewises to help them bring their son to America. In broken English, Georges told how the family had been separated after he left a refugee camp to find work in Lebanon. Akout later joined him, but the family decided the trip was too dangerous for Eliow.

By the time they landed in Spokane, Georges and Akout were desperate.

In the intervening years, Jack and Cheryl appealed to politicians, attorneys, foreign service workers – even Oprah. While many people chipped in to help – their church, Valley Fourth Memorial, donated thousands of dollars – the Lewises often found themselves struggling to navigate international immigration laws that had tightened after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

“After about a year, we said that when we get done, we’re going to dance,” Jack Lewis said.

On Saturday night, hundreds of friends and family convened at the church to officially welcome Eliow. Akout fixed steaming plates of kisra, a pancake-like bread, as well as curries and stews.

Gifts sat on the tables: A soccer ball. Sticker books. A life jacket.

“I am really thankful that all of you did this for us,” Georges said, addressing the crowd. “Thank you.”

The Lewises’ son, 23-year-old Andy, said he was inspired by the efforts of the community to unite a single small boy with his family. Andy, who plans to pursue a graduate degree in forced migration, said Eliow’s story is a powerful reminder of the turmoil facing millions in Africa.

“This is a celebration in honor of hope for the rest of them,” Andy said. “This is what life is truly about.”

At times, Eliow seemed overwhelmed by the attention. He stood quietly next to his father and politely greeted guests with handshakes and hugs.

After dinner, he took center stage, leading a rambunctious drum circle as people gathered around him to listen.

Slowly, the guests departed, the drum circle dissolved, and Eliow joined a group of children playing with a soccer ball. In that moment, he was no longer the night’s honored guest, but another shouting, running, laughing kid, an immigrant child who in a thousand small ways becomes an American boy.