The dramatic story of a Lost Boy from Sudan who ended up in Australia is told in The Boy Who Wouldn’t Die by David Nyuol Vincent and Carol Nader. It is an emotional journey about war and cruelty, loss of childhood and innocence, great risks taken in times of great desperation, daily struggles for survival, years wasted in refugee camps, and ultimately kindness, generosity and new hope for a new country.
David’s story begins with his childhood in the village of Wau, in the Western Bahr el Ghazal state of southern Sudan. The war between the predominantly Muslim northern Sudan and predominantly Christian southern Sudan started affecting the village, and each morning there was news of more people who had been killed during the night. Then the day came when David’s father decided it was time for him to leave.
After a long and dangerous walk across a desert in which many people perished, David ended up in a training camp for child soldiers in Ethiopia, where he acquired soccer skills but had not yet been selected for deployment when Ethiopian rebel forces hunted them out of the country and David eventually reached a refugee camp in Kenya where he remained for more than a decade before finally achieving resettlement in Australia.
In addition to providing a gripping adventure story, the book provides some helpful insight into the struggles that Sudanese refugees have been through and the traumas that many of them are still experiencing. I highly recommend it to anyone who lives near migrants from Sudan or who is worried about how they might integrate into a developed country.