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A BOOK OF MIRACLES

Inspiring story of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan

Date published: 3/11/2007

THE MOST inspiring stories are the ones that don't need dressed-up language or literary acrobatics to reach our hearts and move them.

John Bul Dau's life is one of those stories, and in his memoir, "God Grew Tired of Us," he and co-author Michael S. Sweeney convey the story of Dau's journey to escape his war-torn home country of Sudan.

"They call me a Lost Boy," Dau writes, "but let me assure you, God has found me."

Dau enjoyed what he called "an ideal childhood" in his hometown of Duk Payuel in southern Sudan.

"I never questioned that I would live forever in this Eden," he writes.

In the 1980s, Dau, as an adolescent, watched as Sudan's second civil war spread terror and tore apart the social institutions of his childhood home.

One night in August 1987, he awakens to the sounds of invasion. Knowing that he must either flee or be captured and killed by the government troops descending upon his home, he follows "the man I thought was my father" to hide and watch his village be destroyed.

At sunrise, he discovers he has actually been following a neighbor, and he begins a long and treacherous journey on foot, first to Ethiopia and then back through Sudan to Kenya, in search of safety.

Dau was one of tens of thousands of boys who made this journey in southern Sudan in the late 1980s.

He tells of going days without food walking under the hot sun, eating mud and drinking urine to stay alive.

"The walk to Ethiopia became a sort of game where the object was to go as far as we could before we died," he writes.

In 1999, the U.S. State Department started allowing refugees from the Sudanese civil war to come to America. Dau was one of about 3,600 refugees selected to be resettled in the states.

With help from the government and most notably from church volunteers and other individuals, Dau builds a life in the United States.

"America's greatest strength is its enormous spirit," he writes. "Nowhere else in the world do people give so much, so freely, with no expectations in return."

The book came out the year after a documentary by filmmaker Christopher Quinn bearing the same name took top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival.

The book is an inspirational lesson on just how much the human spirit can endure, and a reminder of the importance of not giving in to even the most daunting situations.

GOD GREW TIRED OF US: A MEMOIR By John Bul Dau with Michael S. Sweeney (National Geographic, $26)

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Date published: 3/11/2007