God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir | John Bul Dau, Michael S. Sweeney

God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir | John Bul Dau, Michael S. Sweeney | Great book as well Eyeopener

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God Grew Tired of ...

	God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir John Bul Dau, Michael S. Sweeney National Geographic, 2008 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

"Lost Boy" John Bul Dau?s harrowing experience surviving the brutal horrors of Sudanese civil war and his adjustment to life in modern America is chronicled in this inspiring memoir and featured in an award-winning documentary film of the same name. Movingly written, the book traces Dau?s journey through hunger, exhaustion, terror, and violence as he fled his homeland, dodging ambushes, massacres and attacks by wild animals. His tortuous, 14-year journey began in 1987, when he was just 13, and took him on a 1,000-mile walk, barefoot, to Ethiopia, back to Sudan, then to a refugee camp in Kenya, where he lived with thousands of other Lost Boys. In 2001, at the age of 27, he immigrated to the United States. With touching humor, Dau recounts the shock of his tribal culture colliding with life in America. He shares the joy of reuniting with his family and the challenges of making a new life for himself while never forgetting the other Lost Boys he left behind.

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Incredible will to survive combines with determination to go further

The subtitle of this excellent book ,i.e."the heartbreaking and inspiring journey of a lost boy of Sudan" is such that nothing could be more appropriate. And so does the illustration in the book's jacket design(credits to Newmarker films and Melissa Farris).

After the heart-wrenching feeling of losing their families, the incredible journey of John and the tens of thousands of lost Sudanese boys through a thousand or so miles of unknown and ferocious landscape is beyond human understanding! Yet, it was accomplished, with all those miserable conditions they carried, when they reached Ethiopia. From that land, they were again cruelly driven to the same misery until they reached the Kakuma Refugee Center in Kenya.

Perhaps in order to truly comprehend the essence of what the book narrates, the reader should imagine him/her self to be with the lost kids in their terrifying exodus. That these are YOUNG CHILDREN some as young as 8yrs and 6yrs!That they are NOT adults,like the MOSTLY ADULT refugees we hear about or the ADULT prisoners of war on their death march for a hundred miles more or less. Can anyone truly see a THOUSAND OR SO MILES of terrain associated with desolation,nakedness,terror,hunger,thirst,fear
disease,sorrow,despair and death by wild animals or hostile human beings?Immersed in this predicament,you LISTEN TO and HEAR their sobs,cravings for missing or dead parents,lament for dead or dying companions,cries from their wounds and broken bodies,slow death by starvation and the more
horrible sensation of dying of thirst leading to drinking their own or their friends'urine for survival,their fear of the night and the searing daytime. Then suddenly,gunshots,machine guns,mortars aimed at them!They panic and scatter in different directions to hide.
The aftermath of all these sufferings?-->dead bodies to bury.CHILDREN BURYING CHILDREN with sharp sticks from the bush and their bare hands for lack of axes or shovels. Can anyone comment if there is such a scenario elsewhere in the world,
past or present? Children burying children in a MASSIVE scale.

John's faith in God and himself made it possible to attain his goal from rural Africa to an American university.The adjustments and adaptations to an ultramodern world from a "stone age" type of existence by John and his Sudanese companions in America is fascinatingly told in the book.From there,he is resolved to accept the challenge to go FURTHER to help himself,his family and his people back in Sudan. He has also given us a gift which serves as an example that in the face of unbearable adversity, hope and success are still attainable with a strong faith and will. I'm sure that John Bul Dau has also spiritually added to the title of his book"God Grew Tired of Us" ...the words "But He Did Not Really Abandon Us."

This is a highly recommended reading for everone but perhaps particularly to our youth.

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Great book as well Eyeopener

God grew tired of us was too me a very strong story it's hard for me to rate a memoir of someone's life reason being it makes me realize how u think you have problems and reading memoirs about people from different countries and what they go through there's no comparsion

The Audacity of Hope

Every comfortable American should read this book. It's a quick read and a moving one. As other reviewers have mentioned, even though life was horrifyingly grim for much of John Bul Dau's adolescence and young adulthood, the gentle humor he brings to so many of his experiences makes the book an easy read. More important than his humor, however, is the overwhelming sense of hope that shines through even as he details some of the trials he and others in the refugee camps experienced. It is that hope that continues to be seen in his life as he speaks to people around the country to raise awareness of those still caught in the misery the decades-long conflict continues to cause.

Read the book, rent or buy the DVD (winner of two major Sundance Festival awards), and then check his website to find out where he might be appearing in your area.

(You can learn more at [...])

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from sudan to syracuse

When you consider that John Bul Dau started the first grade when he was eighteen, scratching his first A-B-C's in the dusty ground of a refugee camp, his memoir is inspiring by any measure. It's hard to imagine anyone surviving what Dau describes, much less flourishing once he had the opportunity. By the time he started copying books from the refugee camp library, learned English and Swahili in order to understand the instruction, passed the Kenyan high school exam, then made it to Syracuse, New York, he had wandered upwards of a thousand miles over fourteen years from his bucolic village in southern Sudan.

Sudan is not only the largest country in Africa, and one of the most complex (572 tribes that speak 114 languages), it's also one of the most war-torn. The Darfur genocide in western Sudan rightly grabs our attention, but for twenty-five years civil war raged in the southern part of the country. The "white" Arab and Muslim government in Khartoum has tried to impose strict Islam as the state religion for the entire country, but the black and Christian south rebelled. In 2005 a Comprehensive Peace Agreement was reached.

When the Khartoum government bombed Dau's village of Duk Payuel in 1987, he fled with thousands of other displaced Sudanese. He was thirteen years old. Rape, disease, pillage, daily burials, wild animals, famine (they sometimes ate mud and drank urine), government troops, and hostile tribes did not prevent Dau and some 265,000 Sudanese from reaching refugee camps in Ethiopia to the east. Most of them were young boys and a few men, as women and girls could hardly survive, and so they became known as the "Lost Boys of Sudan." When Ethiopian troops started slaughtering them, the refugees trekked 500 miles south to safety in Kenya. By then Dau was eighteen. Nine years later he was one of only 3,600 Sudanese refugees in Kenya who were resettled in the United States.

Dau is the first to thank the many people who helped him in America, but it bears saying that by his account he was totally self-sufficient about six months after he arrived. He finished community college, entered Syracuse University, met and married a Sudanese woman from his Dinka tribe, started several foundations to help Sudan, sent most of his hourly wages back home, and was featured in the award-winning documentary film God Grew Tired of Us; The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan (Sundance Grand Jury and Audience awards in 2006). It's only fitting that Dau's improbable story ends with reconnecting with his mother, father, and siblings. "God," he writes, "had not forgotten me after all."

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Graphic and Poignant

GOD GREW TIRED OF US

Reviewed by Charles Shea LeMone www.allwordman.com

In 1987, John Bul Dau was 13-years-old when civil war disrupted his peaceful Sudanese village and his heartbreaking and inspiring 14-year journey began. That night he was forced to flee for his life from Islamic soldiers, having no clue as to whether anyone else in his family had survived the attack. So began a tortuous 1,000 walk, barefoot, to Ethiopia, back to Sudan, then on to Kenya where he lived with thousands of other "Lost Boys" in a refugee camp until the age of 27 when he immigrated to the United States.

This graphic and poignant story traces Dua's experiences through terror and violence, dodging ambushes, massacres and wild animals. He writes, "I have witnessed my share of death and despair. I have seen the hyenas come at dusk to feed on the bodies of my friends. I have been so hungry... that I consumed things I would rather forget. I have crossed a crocodile-infested river while being shelled and shot at. I have walked until I thought I could walk no more. I have wondered... if my friends and I would live to see another day. Those were the times I thought God had grown tired of us."

Once he reached the refugee camp, four years later, he began his formal schooling. He also took on a leadership role, mentoring younger refugee children and reminding them of the strong values of the Dinka culture.
He arrived in the United States in May of 2001, and a whole new cultural journey began, as Dau was introduced to the modern wonders that American take for granted, such as the telephone, the light-bulb, running water, grocery stores and plethora of new experiences.

With the same strength of commitment and faith that helped him survive the horrors of war and its aftermath, he has since worked tirelessly to help the countrymen he left behind--while working two jobs at times and attending college. His goal is to one day work with the United Nations here or in Africa. Meanwhile, he has set up two foundations, one of which is raising funds to build the first medical clinic in the Duk County, where he was raised as a boy. The memoirs of this trailblazing visionary is one of terror and triumph, and the hard-won wisdom of a young man who has turned adversity into advantage and has steadfastly refused to be defeated by despair.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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