It is all about helping the children in South Sudan. I took this photo in 2007 of some children in Lile Village, South Sudan. The photo helps me to think about what we can do to help them realize the dreams of their parents for their children. Akol is standing behind the children with a black case under his arm.
Akol came straight from Kakuma Refugee Camp in Northern Kenya to Salt Lake City, Utah, USA in 2001. We have been good friends since shortly after he arrived. Akol, Mabior and Matoc traveled with me from Salt Lake City and introduced me to their home villages in South Sudan in 2007. Southern Sudan Humanitarian supports a primary school of 800 students in Akol’s home area in the village of Nyamlel. Akol appreciates you sponsoring me on my walk.
When I told Akol about my Thousand Mile Walk to raise funds for the school, he related it to his walking from Malual Loc, his home village near Nyamlel, to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. He was about 5 years old at the time. It took him six months. He went more than a week at a time without food and more than a day at a time without water. The media used the term “Lost Boys of Sudan” to refer to the unaccompanied minor boys who fled to refugee camps. Akol was one of them. The media often refer to it as the Lost Boys walking one thousand miles from their home villages to Kakuma Refugee Camp. I am thinking of their thousand mile walk on my thousand mile walk. I expect to eat regularly, not have people shooting at me, and don’t expect to have lions eating me.
I walked 23 miles on Monday, going from Tabiona to Duchesne, Utah.