Yout tells the story of their family during the Second Sudanese Civil War, as well as roughly twenty thousand ‘Lost Boys’ - boys mostly between the ages of 8 and 12, who had been sent to refugee camps unaccompanied.

Although some of the subject matter is dreadful, this is a beautifully written book that maintains a generally upbeat tone, and makes sure to talk of joy as well as sadness.

Provided in an appendix is a brief history of South Sudan, which is one of the clearest summaries of several hundreds of years of history that I’ve seen in a long time. ( )

Father of the Lost Boys is the true story of Mecak Ajang Alaak, a teacher who led 20,000 of the Lost Boys of South Sudan to safety during the Second Sudanese Civil War (1987-2005). This memoir is written by his son, who came to Australia with his parents as a refugee in 1995.

The book begins with the story of an idyllic childhood in the village of Majak in Sudan. It is 1952 and Ajang is born into a Dinka life where family is paramount and the foundation upon which the tribe stands. He turns out to be gifted and the elders ensure that he gets a good education, ultimately attending Rumbek Seconday School—the best school in South Sudan—because they hope he will make a terrific translator for them in their negotiations with the Anglo-Egyptian rules that govern Sudan. However, in 1963, when he is nineteen and in his second year there, war erupts between north and south. The school is regarded as a breeding ground for future leaders of the south and it is shut down, but Ajang and his fellow students walk for over three months through a barren landscape to Ethiopia, where the UN accepts them as refugees and after two years Ajang is able to finish his education with distinction.

When a peace agreement is reached in 1972, he returns to his village, and soon after he begins a career in teaching at the Rumbek Secondary School where he had been a student.

He has a burning desire to educate every boy and girl in the country. His belief in education is almost religious. As he sees it, education is the only solution to the problems that his people and his country face. He has hope for the future of his people and country. His dream is to build hundreds of schools, technical colleges and universities across South Sudan. (p.19)

It was not to be. In 1983, trouble erupts again. The Islamic north imposes Sharia Law and Arabic on the south. The south rebels, in protest against a religion they reject and a language they don't understand. Ajang is away in Khartoum at the time, organising supplies for southern schools, but Yuot, his mother and siblings escape the fighting on foot, surviving the journey because uncles help with carrying the young children. They hear nothing of Ajang for three years, and then learn that he is a political prisoner in Malakal in the Upper Nile. Five months later, they hear a radio report that he has been executed.

Yuot is only seven, but he now carries his father's legacy.

To the other children in the village, I cease to be one of them. I become the boy whose father has died. I begin to wonder what I have done to deserve this, but really don't have time for self-pity. I must take care of my family, do whatever it takes to defend them. My spirit is strong, my age and size irrelevant. (p.25)

While the memoir is primarily an homage to his heroic father, his mother Preskilla is also an amazing woman. She is courageous and enterprising, somehow keeping the remnants of her family together in circumstances that would crush a lesser spirit. Even when the report turns out not to be true and Ajang is restored to them, the situation is still desperate and she is the one who enables their survival because she is the one who adapts to a different life and learns to make saleable goods so that they can eat.

Yuot's own experience as one of the Lost Boys dragooned into becoming a child soldier is only a small part of this book.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/05/24/father-of-the-lost-boys-by-yuot-a-alaak/ ( )