Olivia Natan | Phoenix Staff

Valentino Deng, co-author and subject of “What is the What,” speaks in Science Center 199.

BY JACQUELINE SMALL

In print | Published November 5, 2009 — Updated November 21, 2009 16:55

Valentino Deng had been forced from his village, his country and even the Ethiopian refugee camp where he took shelter by the time he was old enough to attend college. A native of Sudan, he is one of the “Lost Boys” who lost his childhood to the civil war that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Today, he is a lecturer and co-author with Dave Eggers of “What is the What,” which is Deng’s autobiography. On Monday, he spoke to a group of students and faculty in Science Center 199.

Born in Sudan, Deng became a child refugee when his country’s civil war destroyed his village. Today, he is an activist for universal rights to education and has started the first secondary school in his childhood home.

The war that would bring Deng to a refugee camp, and later to the United States, was fought between rebels and the government, who employed the same militia group that currently terrorizes Darfur. The militia killed men, abducted and raped women, burned villages and committed “all kinds of human rights abuses.” Deng was one of thousands who were displaced when his village was attacked in 1986.

He latched onto one of the groups of people leaving the wreckage and traveled by foot without shoes for four months until he arrived at a refugee camp in Ethiopia. The journey to the camp was extremely difficult and many people died from starvation. Often the refugees were not even able to bury their friends and relatives because they needed to hurry to safety.

Once they reached Ethiopia, Deng and the other children were able to attend school. Initially, it was a very rudimentary program, with high school and university students teaching younger children without even the use of chalkboards. Soon, though, the U.N. brought in enough pencils and exercise books that the children were able to share them with only one other person.

“We became children, and I was a happy boy,” Deng said. Because of the terrible reports of Sudan he heard from recent arrivals to the camp, he did not have any desire to return home.

After a few years, the Ethiopian government was overthrown and the refugees were forced out of the camp at gunpoint. When Deng relocated to northern Kenya in 1992 he was able to become a peer counselor and youth leader whose clients included children of the Rwandan genocide. In late September 2001, he moved to the United States through the Lost Boys Foundation, a program to help children whose lives were disrupted by the Sudanese war to achieve stability in America.

Deng attended Allegheny College, where he contacted Eggers to write his autobiography. In the writing process, he reunited with his family members, most of whom survived the war.

Currently, he uses the proceeds from the book, as well as private donations, to help his former village by building the region’s first high school, the Marial Bai Secondary School. Because of the number of people who apply, the school is selective, using an entrance exam to choose students. All instructions are in English. When the first class graduates, Deng hopes that they will send many students abroad to universities all over the world.

“Maybe some will go on to local teacher training colleges and return to help the high school,” Deng said.

Though the overwhelming culture of the region does not value education for girls, the school is co-educational, he said.
“Next year we hope to have at least half of the students be female,” Deng said.

He said that he plans to build dormitories for female students so that they won’t have to live at home, where they are expected to do laundry, take care of younger siblings and prepare meals on top of schoolwork. Male students who live far from school currently board with local families, but Deng said that dorms will be built for them, too.

The talk was hosted by the English department, the history department, the peace and conflict studies program and the political science department. There was also a grant from the Forum for Free Speech.

“It was very interesting to hear him speak because it’s very rare to have an opportunity to hear an actual refugee speak instead of hearing it second-hand, like from a documentary or a book,” Matthew Heck ’13 said.

Other students mentioned that although parts of it were emotionally harrowing, the lecture was overall very uplifting.

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