Along time ago I was in Sudan. I was only ten years old when my brothers and I were separated from our parents. It was midnight. My mom and my dad were sleep- ing in a different house than my brothers and me. I heard people walking outside with heavy shoes. I thought it was my dad because he sometimes came out to see the cows to make sure they were sleeping well. But then I realized that it couldn’t be my dad because he did not have those heavy shoes. And then I started waking up my brothers. My brothers and I talked about calling our parents. But if we called them we worried they might just come and be killed. So we were afraid. After a little while, the men outside start- ed shooting guns in every direction throughout the village. Then they started burning the house. The bad thing was, it didn’t matter to the men that people were inside the house. They didn’t care if they burned you inside the house. Thank God that my brothers and I got out in time.
There were groups of people outside and we started walking with them. That day it was raining so hard. My little brother Paul Ruot was about two and couldn’t even walk well. It was hard for me to carry him, and even though I tried my best, we couldn’t walk that fast. But then one guy whom we had known before in our village started to carry my brother. He also helped us out to find food. It was hard to get the food to eat because we were not carrying any food with us. Fortunately there were little lakes, and we went fishing there. We got some fish but did not have any bowls or pans to cook with. We just brought firewood, started a fire, put the fish onto the firewood, and added more fire on top. In that way we were able to cook our fish.
