PART A: SOURCE ANALYSIS
This assessment is based on the accompanying documents. It is designed to test your ability to work with historical documents. As you analyze the documents, take into account the source of each document and any point of view that may be presented in the documents.
Each document is followed by questions. Read each source carefully and write your answer to each question on the test answer sheet. You will do this on Thursday in class.
Following the source analysis, on Friday in class, you will discuss the following:
Discuss how the Lost Boys' past influences their story today.
- Give a brief overview of the conflict in Sudan and their stepped migration.
- Identify 2 problems (from the sources) the 'boys' have encountered in the US.
- Make connections between their past experiences and their problems today.
- Explain how some 'boys' have managed to overcome these problems and move forward.
SOURCE #1: News Article
"Sudan's 'lost boys' in America"
By Leslie Goffe
BBC, New York
Education
"I do not worry now about war," says Abraham, who was adopted by an American family and now lives in a suburb in Connecticut near New York, where he plays soccer and is a runner for his high school athletics team. Abraham has been luckier than other lost boys, many of whom have had difficulty adjusting to life in America.
All hoped they would get a high school and university education in the US and one day return to Sudan. But getting an education has turned out to be the lost boys biggest problem. Because neither the boys nor the re-settlement agencies knew their correct ages, caseworkers simply guessed.
The lucky ones were those judged to be below the age of 18. They were allowed to complete their secondary educations at high school and go onto junior colleges free of charge. The unlucky ones, those judged to be above 18, were too old for high school and so had to go to work. As they had no qualifications they were forced to take menial, low-paying jobs.
Work
This is what happened to Santino Majok Chuor who arrived in Houston, Texas aged 21 in 2001. "I did not manage to go to school," he says sadly, "because I could not find the time." Too old to attend high school, he works loading trucks for minimum wage. Santino tried working in the day and studying at night but found it impossible.
With much of his salary sent each month to his disabled brother and his brother's three children in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya and other family and friends demanding money, Santino can barely afford the apartment he shares with another lost boy in a tough section of Houston…"There's no way out," Santino says, "unless you get education."
A few of the lost boys, like Samuel Garang, 23, who lives in California, somehow managed to work in the day and attend school at night. "America wasn't paradise and it wasn't as easy as they told you in the camps," says Samuel, who has done the rounds of menial jobs: he's been a security guard and is now a bagger, someone who puts shoppers' groceries in their bags at supermarkets. He won't be a bagger much longer. Samuel completed his high school diploma, went on to junior college and did well enough to be accepted at one of America's most prestigious universities, Stanford, in California in September.
"It was easier for me," says Samuel. "I didn't have a wife in the camp or people wanting money. I could study.
Back in Africa they do not know how hard it can be here for us."
SOURCE #2: Radio Interview with Lost Boy
“Revisiting Sudan’s Haunted ‘Lost Boys”
By Steve Goldstein
Click on the link and listen to the story titled, “Revisiting Sudan’s Haunted ‘Lost Boys'"
SOURCE #3: News Article
“Stolen moments: For some refugees living in Louisville, a South End soccer field is a good place to forget their tormented past”
scwade@netzero.net
December 11, 2007
“It’s a late October afternoon when the heavens begin to rumble and stir. Dense clouds boil into a threatening mass and block the sun, leaving on the edge a brilliant silver lining. But the brewing tempest above scarcely slows the pick-up soccer match unfolding beneath. The players remain oblivious, focused on the game, even when a Zeus-like lightning bolt pierces the blue-gray cloudbank, followed by a nearly simultaneous thunder crack. Then another sound, a tornado warning siren wails from a speaker nearby. Children cover their ears and look up. The players look skyward briefly, then resume, unfazed, even while most everyone else around the Metro is heading for a basement……….
………The men and boys who regularly visit this South Louisville lot to play soccer bring an obvious international flavor. They come from Bosnia, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq. In their previous lives, they’ve experienced the savagery of war and unfathomable brutality — mortars, machine guns, machetes, burning villages, tanks and bombs. They’ve cried over slain fathers, buried sisters. Some carry bullet wounds and have the scars to prove it. A tornado warning? Game on……….
…….These men and boys, who feel powerless and homesick in their new homeland, get some measure of relief when they gather to play a game they find familiar and comforting. Soccer, with no holds barred. Dust stirring, legs churning, eyes wide- soccer. Attack. Defend. Collide. Attack. I’m open! Pass. Stop him! Score!.......
…….It is a field where men who carry constant nightmares can smile, play hard, speak the language of the sport they love and, for a stolen moment or two, forget the torment and turmoil of their past……..‘It’s a passion’ When people flee war and seek solace and support, thousands are sent from refugee camps around the globe to their new home, Louisville’s South End. Once moved in, they look for the familiar, something they understand in their strange surroundings. It doesn’t take long to find that familiar thing — soccer — and then it becomes the part of their life that transports them back to good memories, before their lives got hijacked.
SOURCE #4: Art Work by Lost Boy James Aguer Tungadiit
Lost boy artist, James Aguer Tungadiit’s, painting symbolizes the conflicts he faced while living in Sudan as well as the conflicts he faces assimilating into a new culture. When studying the painting, it is evident that the mental and emotional stress caused by the atrocities he experienced in Sudan lingers on whilst trying to adjust to life in America. This ‘post-traumatic stress’ impacts his assimilation into American culture.
War Victim Recalling in Exile by James Aguer TungadiitBIBLIOGRAPHY
Aguer Tungadiit, James. "Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studirs." University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts. 29 July 2008. Regents of the University of Minnesota. 21 May 2008
Goffe, Lelie. "BBC World News." Sudan's 'lost boys' in America. Tuesday, 31 August 2004. BBC. 21 May 2009
Goldstein, Steve. "Revisiting Sudan's Haunted 'Lost Boys' ." National Public Radio. September 26, 2005. NPR. 21 May 2009
news-features/major-stories/features/stolen-moments-for-some-refugees-living-
louisville-a-south-end
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