'The children were in a war where they might be attracted to be child soldiers, but my aim was to have the education for them. That is why I say the pen is mightier than the gun.'
Mr Alaak had been a headmaster at a secondary school in Sudan before the country was plunged into its second civil war in 1983. Like many others, he fled to Ethiopia. As Pinyudu camp’s director of education, he was given responsibility for the schooling of ‘lost boys’, thousands of youths who had been displaced by war.
“We basically left in the wet season, it was raining so we walked through the mud. A lot of the boys were attacked by wild animals and eaten along the way. Some fell and broke bones,” Yuot, 42, recalls. The survivors made it across the river to Pochalla, but they arrived emaciated and faced more starvation.“Everyone went hungry, there was no food. People then started eating tree roots, hunting rats,” Yuot says.
The group crossed the Sudan-Kenya border in June 1992, first to the town of Lokichogio and then relocating deeper into Kenya, to the town of Kakuma, to avoid cross-border attacks by militias. “The United Nations started to pay teachers, most of the teachers got a paycheque for the first time in their lives, and Dad got his first paycheque in about 10 years,” he says.Mr Alaak’s efforts to help lead the lost boys away from war and to ensure they received an education were not forgotten by the warlords at home.
“But there were people who made it difficult, and it became an insecurity for me. That is why I was brought by the UN to Nairobi, and they recommended me to come to Australia.
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