Lost Boys find new home

[Times photo: Brendan Fitterer 2001] Three of the Lost Boys get acquainted with the electric lamp after their arrival in Pasco County last year. Peter Deng, 22, left, shows Jacob But, 23, center, and Abraham Achiek, 25, how to turn on the light in their Holiday apartment.

Abraham Deng and his cousin, Abraham Malok, are no longer lost.

The two Sudanese refugees who resettled last year in Pasco County have since moved north and settled in a suburb of Fargo, N.D.

The story of their first puzzling, wonderful months in the United States was featured in Floridian in September 2001. Deng and Malok were among the Lost Boys of Sudan, a group of young men who were forced to flee their African villages when Muslims killed their families and burned their homes during a bloody civil war.

The boys, who were barely teenagers when they were forced from their homes, battled wild animals, disease and famine until they reached a refugee camp in Kenya. From there, 4,000 were resettled to the United States; 43 ended up in Pasco County with the help of World Relief, a resettlement agency.

According to Nancy Gray of World Relief, 23 Sudanese are still in Pasco. They all work locally, (nine at a Wal-Mart), and many are attending Pasco-Hernando Community College.

The rest moved north.

The Lost Boys Savaged by war in EastAfrica, the young refugees had lost families, friends, their childhoods. Now a group of them had arrived in Florida. Could they find the American dream?

"It's typical for any refugee," she said. "If they have a close relative or close friend somewhere else, they want to be with them."

Deng and Malok had friends in Fargo and were dismayed that there weren't more educational opportunities in Florida.

The pair took a Greyhound bus from Port Richey to Fargo. They settled in Moorehead, Minn.

Deng enrolled in a local high school. He graduates soon and plans to attend North Dakota State University. That's where Malok goes to school; he is thinking of majoring in journalism.

They love their new home, said Deng, now 20. They have made friends in school, their English is getting better by the month, and they own an answering machine.

The two have reached another quintessentially American milestone: They are driving. Malok has his license and a Ford Taurus; Deng has his learner's permit.

They have even gotten used to the bitterly cold winter, although snow came as a bit of a shock.

"I walked outside and I closed my mouth," said Deng. "It got in my nose and my eyes."

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