A true survivor to cross bridge

Sudanese refugee overcame tough odds, now aids others

Grace Beahm
The Post and Courier

Runner Jany Deng, one of thousands of refugees who fled Sudan after war threatened their lives, talks to a group of North Charleston High School students about his life.

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At the starting line of the 31st annual Cooper River Bridge Run on Saturday, more than two dozen East Africans will stand out as the "elite runners" — world-class, professional athletes who will claim most of the top 15 fastest times for males and females.

Another one, Jany Deng, won't be far behind. But he's not running as a professional.

He's got a higher calling. Unlike most elites hailing from Kenya and Ethiopia, the 33-year-old Deng is from Sudan, and his inspiring life story is one of ultimate endurance. By most odds, Deng shouldn't even be alive. Yet his story goes beyond just survival.

Today, his mission is to spread the word of the plight of Sudanese refugees, to help his fellow countrymen who have settled in the United States and to improve the situation in his home country, as well as to stress the importance of education to young people of all nationalities.

Deng is among a group of refugees known as the Lost Boys of Sudan, thousands of mostly boy refugees who started fleeing the villages in southern Sudan when civil war broke out in the 1980s. The refugees, who later got their nickname from the lost boys in "Peter Pan," were mostly boys because it was their jobs to herd cattle, usually many miles away from villages. When villages were attacked, their parents often were killed and their sisters raped, sold into slavery or killed.

In all, 2 million Sudanese died in the war.

When Deng was 7, his village was struck by a bomb. He was miles away tending cattle with 10 other boys. Like so many others, they abandoned the cattle and began walking across a vast, mostly barren desert. They had to resort to drinking their own urine and eating leaves or mud to survive. They walked by day and slept around bonfires at night. Many died from thirst, starvation or attacks by rebels. Some were eaten by lions.

Deng was among 12,000 who made it to a refugee camp in Ethiopia, which then erupted into civil war. They were chased back to Sudan and encountered more violence there, and eventually ended up in a refugee camp in Kenya in 1992. Three years later, Deng became among the first to come to the U.S.

Like those to follow, he was thrust from a Stone Age existence into modern life with no knowledge of everyday life skills. Grocery stores, ice cubes and freeways were beyond imagination for him. And he knew no English.

However, Deng knew the importance of education and immersed himself. Living with foster parents in Phoenix, he worked two jobs — at a grocery store and cafeteria — while going to school and running on cross-country and track teams. He graduated from high school within 3 1/2 years, then went to community college and received an associate's degree.

About four years ago, he started volunteering at a refugee assistance center, the AZ Lost Boys Center, that was established in Phoenix. The city became a hub of Sudanese refugees when the U.S. stepped up efforts to relocate them in 2000.

He later became the full-time program manager, while also continuing to run competitively and attending Arizona State University. Last year, he received his bachelor's degree in social work. This December, he will get married.

Deng says he runs for many reasons. One is to handle stress — Sudanese refugees are among the worst sufferers of post-traumatic stress syndrome in the world. The second is to tell the story of the Lost Boys.

Deng was lured to the Cooper River Bridge Run not because race officials invited him. Instead, a friend — Colleen Santiago — told him that she was moving back to Mount Pleasant and that he should do the big run. Santiago first found out about Sudanese refugees by reading "What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng" by Dave Eggers. She later volunteered at the center and was stunned to find how happy and resilient the refugees tended to be.