Sudanese refugee’s story gives civil war a face

Caramie Schnell
February 7, 2007

Issac Khor Bher was six-years-old when he ran from his home in the middle of the night and became a refugee. The little boy who had spent his days looking after the family goats and playing with other children in his village in Southern Sudan, woke to the sound of gunfire one night.

“It happened at night, in the dark,” Khor Bher said. “… I thought I had fire, but it was bullets.”

The small boy ran as fast and as far as he could, he said, while his village burned. He found one of his brothers afterward, but feared the rest of his family was dead. In the span of a few hours, Khor Bher became one of the thousands of Southern Sudan refugees, displaced by one of the worst civil wars in history.

Over the next month, Khor Bher walked 1,000 miles to Ethiopia, mostly at night, alongside thousands of other refugees. Screams were often heard as wild animals attacked the war orphans under the cover of darkness.

Sitting atop a stool in a dark room, Khor Bher recounts his memories of nearly 15 years living as a refugee in Africa in a documentary, “One Story: Memories of a Lost Boy.”

Khor Bher is one of the Lost Boys, Sudanese refugee orphans who came to the United States six years ago. The 27-year-old (he estimates) lives and works as a maintenance man in Englewood. Nearly 70 lost boys are estimated to have settled in Denver and the surrounding areas.

Reunited with a lullaby
Denver resident Rinehart met Khor Bher and some of the other lost boys five years ago, when she and her husband delivered a bicycle to them.

“I got to know them and I was moved by their perseverance, vulnerability and desire for education,” she said.

As a former teacher, Rinehart was especially touched by the fact that the boys were the first generation in their country to become educated.

“They would rather go without food to get a book,” said Rinehart, who became Khor Bher’s American mother – helping tutor him, teaching him how to drive and cook and find a job. When she saw a photo Khor-Bher had printed off the Internet of his dead father, Rinehart suggested he contact the photographer for a copy. Not only did the Washington Post photographer send a copy of the photo, she included a photo of his mother, who Khor Bher had assumed was dead.

Twenty years after Khor Bher fled from his home, he returned to Sudan with Rinehart to find his mother. His mother sang him a lullaby as they were reunited.

“She was telling me I have been so brave and that she was very excited to see me after 20 years.”

‘It’s really my pleasure’
Khor Bher and Rinehart spent over a month in Sudan witnessing firsthand what life is like there.

“There’s rampant disease, no infrastructure, no roads, no clean water, nothing. It’s like no other country in Africa,” Rinehart said.

The two kept asking the Sudanese people what they needed besides clean water and health care.

“People kept saying ‘you have to build schools, we have to be educated.’”

Khor Bher and Rinehart returned home to Denver and co-founded Project Education Sudan, an organization dedicated to building a primary and secondary education infrastructure in communities throughout Southern Sudan. They pushed Denver Public schools to start educating their students about the 2.2 million people who were killed there in the ’80s, as well as the genocide that’s being duplicated in Dafur right now.

“As a teacher I love the fact that Sudan is in the geography classes,” Rinehart said. “They’re learning about a war torn country, they’re responding and making a difference.”

Students, community members, and business leaders came forward to donate time and money to the non-profit and last month a group of Colorado residents and Lost Boys traveled back to Sudan. While there they started construction of a co-ed boarding school, negotiated construction of an all-girls school in Khor Bher’s home village and assessed a third site that a chapter in North Carolina will head up. Four lost boys were also reunited with their parents.

“This is all in one year,” Rinehart said. “Part of me could cry because it’s so overwhelmingly positive.”

Returning to his home country had been on Khor Bher’s mind since he left, he said.

“I hoped sometime I can be a part of a solution to bring something that can help. I know the needs of my people, I know the suffering of my people, but I cannot just go and be crying with them, I want to go and be part of life changing, help them. Now (I’m) going in with the project to build the schools, and it’s really my pleasure.”

Caramie Schnell can be reached for comment at cschnell@vailtrail.com.