From Africa to America:Lost Boys of Sudan

For anyone living in miserable poverty, anything would look better than what you currently have. And for someone living in a Third World country, especially one where misfortune just seems to be par for the course, to be able to escape to a better place would be a chance of a lifetime. But sometimes a life change presents its own problems.

The Lost Boys of Sudan focuses on many young men from the African country who travel to the United States in search of a better life. The reason these men are called "lost boys" is because they were orphaned after a war in which Muslim extremists killed many people. Some of the lost boys who were able to escape to refugee camps participated, years later, in resettlement programs in the States.

The documentary focuses specifically on two guys, Santino and Peter, who turn out to have two fairly different experiences. As the film begins, the two are getting ready to leave the camp. Even at this point, we see how much Western culture has intrigued these guys. Peter is playing basketball with some of the other guys at the camp, and gives away a pair of his (very beat-up and worn-out) sneakers before he leaves.

Santino and Peter, along with many others, catch a flight which soon takes them to Houston, Texas. I could not imagine what it must feel like for someone who has only known small, isolated villages without electricity or any other typical comforts such as we have here, to suddenly encounter in front of their eyes something they could only have seen in pictures before. But it's clear these guys are witnessing something they feel is amazing once they touch down at the Houston airport.

Once they see how big the city is, they joke about how it would take a long time for them to walk to their home -- but of course they end up meeting the people who run the resettlement organization and are driven to their new home in a car, something I doubt any of these newcomers have ever experienced. Other things they haven't experienced include a completly-furnished house with electricity and all the other goodies (including the food disposal in the sinkdrain -- which frankly I've never experienced either...which is good because I'd be terrified of getting my hand too close to the drain!?). As well, the men are taken on a trip to the grocery store where they learn exactly how to shop and understand the price tags.

It's always a bit of a rush to see a new place, a new town, a new province/state, even a new country. But it would feel so odd to walk into a completely different culture where everything is totally different! Most of us have never had to go through that experience. And travelling to a different state doesn't count. No matter how "remote" or "isolated" some places in Canada and the United States are, or however slightly different they may be in some things compared to you, they are still connected in some way to modern society -- most people still have electricity, and many of the other comforts. (although perhaps some of the places way up north in the Arctic may be the most removed and isolated from "modern" society, and in some ways, unfortunately, could almost be like Third World countries).

But for these guys, it's a culture shock. It would be almost the same thing as you going into the village depicted in the beginning of this film, or in the village depicted in the film Moolaade, a film from Senegal in which, among other things, shopping would consist of buying some goods from a merchant who drops into town from time to time, and a little battery-powered radio would be a prized poesession and not something you could just buy for ten bucks whenever you felt like it.

In your case, settling into such a place would be hard, because you'd have to make do with much, much less. With the Sudanese men living in America, it is also difficult, but for a different reason -- they realize just because America represents opportunity doesn't mean it's easy living.

That's another thing -- these guys experience other new things. Finding work, paying rent, getting a driver's licence... things they'd never even think about while living in self-sufficient, tightly-knitted communities back in Africa. These things are not easy! And while the fact they are not finding it easy could be a result of them not being used to this country, the truth is that these things are often not easy even for citizens.

Fairly quickly, the two men go their separate ways. While Santino stays in Houston, Peter moves to Kansas hoping to find better work (and experiences another first when he finds out how cold it gets further north). Santino finds it even harder and harder because he has to pay rent while less and less people are staying in the house with him. Another issue is the fact he's been driving a car without a licence or insurance -- a reality which comes back to bite him later on.

Peter, on the other hand, takes a different route. He is able to get into high school, although this involves a bit of interesting paperwork, since of course he doesn't have any official records of age, etc. In fact, even Peter doesn't really know exactly how old he is, but he does soon mix in well with the kids in the school (he doesn't really seem much older than high school age anyway, if he is actually older). He hangs out with a group of Christian kids, and tries out for the basketball team.

The movie takes a low-key approach which while showing things aren't very easy, does its best to be hopeful. For the most part, Santino and Peter meet people who are nice and helpful. We don't see any negative encounters between our protaganists and any of the locals, although there is one bit of frank talk when Santino talks about the looks he gets on the bus to work, not just from the whites but from the blacks as well, because he is "so black" while the African-Americans are "brown." To be honest, I was very surprised there were no depictions of any racial tension or other uncomfortable situations, other than the general discomfort of trying to fit in to a new society. Did the filmmakers cut those scenes? Or maybe we are so used to seeing more volitile situations in fiction films or in more explotive news reports that we forget real life is far more subtle than that.

The nice thing about this film is that it's not a talking-heads documentary. There is no narration or interviews of any kind. Well, this isn't really unusual for documentaries, but I don't rent a lot of them, so I feel I have the right to state such obvious observations. What we see is simply a year in the life of two people trying to make a better life for themselves. We don't know if they will completely succeed, but they are trying.