Why write the story?

I’ve been asked often. One phrase by Mr Kizito, my high school English teacher in Kenya stuck in my mind: ‘Life without reflection is life that lives without you.’ Socrates, one of ancient philosophers, states: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’

This book is my heart-felt tribute to thousands of South Sudanese boys who, like me had their childhood innocence brutally snatched away at a very tender age. For the first five years after I was separated from my family, my heart and mind craved to be with my siblings and parents. Awake or asleep, I thought about them and things they were doing at that particular moment. I lived my childhood on the edge, not knowing what the next day or month would bring. I survived the horrors of the Sudanese civil war. I was fortunate to survive without physical and mental injuries.

Thousands among us perished of preventable deaths. During my teenage years, I asked myself: Why do adults, supposed leaders, abuse children? In most part the rebels treated us like expendables, yet they claimed we were the future of the ‘New Sudan’ for which they were fighting. I did not point a finger at my parents because I was removed from them by force.

The lesson I draw from this experience is the importance of seizing the moment, of acting in the now for no one knows what tomorrow will bring. I believe what we do today determines our future. I want to record my story, my journey now.

Today, too many young people are disillusioned. I see young people who are lost and bargaining their lives with the devil – ignorance. Many have dropped out of school and engaged in self-destructive behaviour – alcohol and drug abuse. Many blame everything and everyone except themselves – for example a school environment of bullying and racism. Bullying and racism are ever-present in human society. The question is how you respond to racism and bullying. Engaging in criminal behaviour can never be justified. Bullying and racism are never an excuse.

Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor and who was a neurologist and psychiatrist wrote: ‘Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.’

We do not control our external environment; we only control our internal environment – ourselves, our feelings, our emotions and our responses. People can treat me badly or say hurtful things but their actions do not change who I am.