Father of the lost boys: The Mecak Ajang Alaak story by Yuot A. Alaak

This edition of Father of the lost boys: The Mecak Ajang Alaak story by Yuot A. Alaak has been adapted for younger readers from the original text, Father of the lost boys (2020). It is a very important read on so many levels for young people living in a privileged country such as Australia.  Despite the fact that currently Australia is now home to around 16,000 diasporic Sudanese people, many Australians know nothing of the horrific nature of what happened to the South Sudanese. This true story documents the lived experience of the four year journey(1989-) of thousands of displaced and orphaned boys (the Lost Boys) from Ethiopia to Kenya under the leadership of Mecak Ajang Alaak, undertaken in order to protect the boys from becoming child soldiers. It is told by Mecak's son who was beside his father the whole way. Australians need to know about where the Sudanese people living in our cities have come from, what they have been though and why they had to leave their beloved country. Understanding this would go a long way to build relationships between the Sudanese refugees and the Australian populace. Yuot Alaak's family eventually arrived in Henley Beach Adelaide after the horrific journey so this book is an especially powerful read for Adelaide schools as it is globally significant local material for the school curriculum.

Father of the lost boys: The Mecak Ajang Alaak story is movingly dedicated to Yuot's parents and to the lost boys. The accompanying photos are of Mecak and Yuot in 1991. The horrors of their experience seem to be present in their eyes. (A later photo at the end of the book in 2020 is a much happier one). During their escape, the boys, beside walking, travelled at various times in military trucks, tractors and canoes. They suffered attacks from wildlife including lions, hyenas and snakes, aerial bombardment of the Sudanese army and rebel forces, landmines, harsh desert conditions, dense jungle and crocodile infested river crossings. We could not imagine this kind of horror being forced upon our young boys of the same age.

There is a map of the  area that the boys had to traverse in the front of the book showing the towns, countries and rivers that featured in their story. On the inset map we see the relative location of Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda and Kenya on the continent of Africa. What would have been useful would have been a map showing the path taken by the boys. As a classroom teacher it would be helpful to provide an outline map for students to trace the path that the boys travelled. In the prologue Yuot begins: 'Once, there was a man who rescued 20,000 boys from becoming child soldiers and facing almost certain death. That man was... my father. One of those boys was me. This is our story.' Yuot concludes...'Every time I turn on the television and see images of suffering children, I see myself...I am one of the South Sudanese diaspora and I still dream of home.'

Written in the first person narrative, the reader gains the intimate perspective of the young Yuot Alaak. Despite the horror of the story, Yuot does not play the victim card or wallow in self pity or anger. Rather this is a clear eyed account of events revealing love, loyalty, perseverence and belief in the pen being mightier than the gun.  It moves and humbles the reader in the vein of A.B Facey's A fortunate life. Additional reading could be They poured fire on us from the sky; The true story of three Lost Boys from Sudan by Deng. B., Deng, A. and Ajak, B.(2005). Books like these speak for the millions of African children who have witnessed and been victims of genocide. Like The diary of Anne Frank, it is important that books that tell the true story of genocide are made available and studied by students everywhere so that they understand the fragility of our world, their current relative safety as opposed to many children elsewhere in the world and the need to be informed and educated so that it does not happen again.

Highly recommended: moving and accessible account of the journey of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Teacher's notes are available.

Themes: Refugees, The Sudanese civil war, Child soldiers, The Lost Boys of Sudan, Genocide.

Wendy Jeffrey