No longer “lost,” Dau implores audience to give gift of literacy

Life in southern Sudan was good before the region was enveloped in conflict, John Bul Dau told the audience at an International Literacy Day event co-hosted by the International Reading Asssociation and the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC, on September 11. Dau, one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan” featured in an award-winning film, God Grew Tired of Us, said he and his family lived an “ordinary life” there, raising cattle and farming. One day in 1987 the village was attacked by government soldiers. His family was scattered and he and thousands of other young boys and girls fled Sudan. After enduring untold hardships, he eventually ended in a United Nations camp, where he learned to read and write. The “gift of literacy” opened the world to him and he enjoined the audience to share that gift with others. Look for his story in the next issue of Reading Today.