Les Enfants de l'Exil

Recently saw a screening of the film. Afterward had the pleasure of meeting and listening to John Dau speak. This film should be shown on TV as well, to enlighten, educate the UNITED STATES, because we can be very ignorant about our knowledge of the outside world.

These young boys and men, proved to be so endearing, very bright, hard working people. When one of them commented about someone asking about them living in the forest...he was lovely with his response. For him it was just common sense "No you can not live in the forest, it's impossible" It made me think of what Oprah is currently doing with her school for girls. These young people want the education for the em-betterment of their families and countries. These Lost Boys came here and even though they're putting Ritz Crackers in a coffeemaker w/milk, somehow managed to receive their education (Masters, B.A.).

We as a nation, need to really take a serious look at ourselves...and perhaps this film.

BRAVO!

"The Lost Boys of Sudan": Documentary. Imagine you're a four year old boy. Countrymen, who look just like your very own Father, come into your town, and kill all the men and older boys, rape and kill all the women and girls, including your Mother and Sisters. You were in the fields, tending the goats, and saw it all. Now you – a four year old boy – are being hunted by these countrymen. You gather with other little boys, and set out barefoot, running and walking the wild countryside – hiding during the day, hiking only under the cover of night – when the lions come out – who stalk and kill many of your group. Imagine you somehow survive, and find yourself living in refugee camps run by Americans. You are there the next ten years. This is your home. The other boys, now men, are your Family. One day, YOU are offered a free trip to America – to better your life, make money, and send some of it home to help your surviving family and friends. Take the offer! You grew up in a mud hut on the Sudanese Plain, and suddenly you are welcomed/dropped into America. "Toto, we're not in Sudan anymore." This is a frightening, funny, interesting, frustrating, VERY sad look at Life with Nothing but Struggle. Their daily observations and realizations about this culture make you wince. Often.

Like college students after exam grades have been posted, boys in the U.N. refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya, gather around a wooden board to look for their names on a stapled piece of paper. Finding them means a chance for a new life. Not finding their name means more waiting and hoping. Christopher Quinn and Tommy Walker's documentary God Grew Tired of Us chronicles the odyssey of members of the Dinka tribe of Sudan who emigrate to America after years of hardship in a refugee camp in Kenya, some of the survivors of the people that have come to be known as the Lost Boys of Sudan. They are part of what remains of 27,000 Sudanese boys who escaped from their civil-war ravaged country in 1983 and walked more than one thousand miles over a period of five years, first to Ethiopia and then to Kenya in search of relief from government oppression and civil war.

The subject matter may sound depressing, but in the hands of Quinn and his team who spent more than four years in the project, the result leaves us feeling good about humanity. Though there is little historical background about the civil war or its causes and only a few words about how the Muslims in the north attacked the Christians in the south and threatened to kill or maim all underage boys, the film is not about the past but about the future. Produced by Brad Pitt and narrated by Nicole Kidman, God Grew Tired of Us centers around three boys who were given the opportunity to come to the U.S. after years of struggle for survival.

The boys are John Bul Dau, Panther Bior, and Daniel Abul Pach, all handsome, articulate, and highly motivated. Panther and Daniel end up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and John goes to Syracuse, New York, two of twenty-three states who accept the Sudanese Lost Boys. We get a real sense of what they are up against the minute we see them boarding a plane for the first time. No one bothers to tell them that butter is a spread and not to be eaten whole. When shown their new apartments in their new environment, they are amazed that they each can sleep in a single bed with a mattress and are wide-eyed when shown how to use electricity, garbage, and toilet facilities.

The first trip to the supermarket is another perplexing occasion. When shown a donut covered with sprinkles, one justifiably asks whether or not this is food. They are told that in the West, they don't have to cook potatoes but can eat them out of a paper bag labeled as chips but they are not told that it contains little but empty calories without a hint of nutrition. The film flies by in less than an hour and a half and we only scratch the surface of the problems that arise during their first year in their new country but their growing sense of loneliness and cultural isolation and their economic exploitation is not glossed over and we often wonder if perhaps coming to America was not the best idea.

John has to get up at 4AM to be driven to a factory job one hour away and to wait for two hours in the cold before the factory even opens. Others work two or three jobs, lamenting the fact that they never can see their friends. They wonder aloud how a society can function when everyone lives in fear of their neighbor, but no answers are forthcoming. What is astonishing is their mental toughness in pursuit of their goals and the film shows their efforts to attend schools, build a support community for other Lost Boys in the States, and make enough money to visit or provide help for their families and friends in Africa.

God Grew Tired of Us is a paean to the human spirit that avoids sentimentality and brings us closer to what is truly important in life: closeness to family, knowing who we are, remembering where we came from, and a desire to help others. We feel good about these boys and the opportunities they have received but wonder about the lives of those left behind - other refugees and lost boys and girls around the world whose stories would probably not be as commercially viable. "Everything has an end", says John Bul Dau in celebrating his new surroundings, yet for millions of others the end is not in sight.

Just saw this at Sundance. Truly, an excellent, humane look at immigrant/refugee assimilation in the United States. The parts where the boys discover electricity, cars, and supermarkets are funny as hell. The parts where the boys question whether people are better off in the U.S. or Africa are poignant and revealing of our luxuries and ignorance.

The film briefly covers the history of the mid-80s civil war in Sudan, and the subsequent exodus of young Sudanese men and boys into a refuge camp in Kenya. It focuses on the first four years of the lucky few "lost boys" who are offered refuge in the U.S.

By far, my favorite part, is the film's effective portrayal of these young men as articulate, intelligent beings. It's too easy for us to create a stereotypical picture of Africa in our minds. This film blows all of my previous conceptions away.

Immediately after seeing this at Sundance, someone wrote a $25,000 check to help one of the main character's projects. If I had the money, I would have done the same.

If nothing else, watching "God Grew Tired of Us" will make Westerners realize just how much they take for granted in their daily lives. For this is a wonderful and deeply moving documentary about three young men from Africa and their first, awe-inspiring encounter with the modern world.

John, Daniel and Panther are refugees who fled Sudan when war and genocide ravaged that once-beautiful country in the 1980's. They were part of a group of young boys who made an arduous and, for many, deadly trek from Southern Sudan to a refugee camp in Northern Kenya (those who survived the journey became known as "The Lost Boys of Sudan"). After living many years in substandard conditions at that site, 3,600 of the young men were given the opportunity to leave Kenya and start a new life in the United States. John, Daniel and Panther were three of those individuals.

As written and directed by Christopher Dillon Quinn (and narrated by Nicole Kidman), "God Grew Tired of Us" begins in despair, relating a heartbreaking tale of harrowing mass murder and deadly privation, and ends in hope, showing how one changed life can positively affect the lives of so many others the world over. For even though it vividly points out the bold line separating the haves from the have-nots in this world, the film also provides a great deal of optimism and humor, as the three young men explore the technological marvels of the strange new land in which they find themselves living: food that comes prepackaged from a freezer, staircases that move up and down seemingly of their own accord, hot and cold water that comes flowing out of a tap, light that appears at the command of a switch. One of the boys even admits to never having "seen" electricity before moving to America, and he worries over whether he will ever be able to master its use. But all is not roses and soft mattresses for the three men when they arrive in the U.S., for they must also work hard, establish themselves as members of their communities, and adjust to some of the "peculiarities" of American culture, such as a marked tendency towards suspicion and a lack of friendliness on the part of some of the people they meet. And, as with virtually all people who move to an alien yet economically advantaged society, they must cope not only with the loss of deeply-ingrained cultural traditions but a feeling of guilt for those they've left behind.

Yet, thanks to John, Daniel and Panther, "God Grew Tired of Us" becomes much more than a mere curiosity, a mere fish-out-of-water tale for the amusement of the Western elite. Through lengthy interviews, the three men provide a rich and thoughtful commentary on their lives, their experiences, their values, their goals and their aspirations. And though they struggle mightily with the psychic scars left by the traumas of their past, through their own inner strength and commitment - and never a hint of self-pity - they not only persevere to go on and make something of their own lives, but they are able to turn their personal tragedy into a force for Good, inspiring others in their neighborhoods to join them in raising America's consciousness about the atrocities still occurring in that corner of the globe. And when, after three years in America, two of them are already making plans to go back to their homeland in the hope of bringing positive change to the region, we come to understand just how powerful a force commitment and caring can be in this world.

After immersing yourself in "God Grew Tired of Us," you may never look at your own life - or the place you occupy in the world - in quite the same way again.

By all means, don't miss this one.