Just last year, John Manyok walked across the stage dressed in a cap and gown, graduating from Lethbridge College.
For him, it was a dream he didn’t even know was possible.
Forced to leave his village in what is now South Sudan in the late 1980s due to the bloody civil war, Manyok and thousands of others walked over 1,000 kilometres by foot to escape the violence.
“The journey started in 1987, and it wasn’t me alone,” Manyok said. “I think there was more than 26,000 ‘lost boys’ the same age as me that walked from Sudan to Ethiopia.”
After the government was overthrown in Ethiopia in 1991, Manyok and many others returned to Sudan.
“It wasn’t very fun to be in southern Sudan at the time, because… the government of Sudan was chasing the rebels, and we were based on the rebels’ side,” Manyuk said.
After being on the run for a number of years, he came to Canada in November 2000.
Now millions of others in South Sudan are facing the same fate.
“One of the things Canadians need to know is the suffering of the people of southern Sudan,” Manyuk said. “As we speak now, I know there’s a humanitarian crisis.”
Shortly after gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, it wasn’t long before fighting broke out in 2013.
After years of conflict, nearly a third of the South Sudanese population has been displaced.
Famine has been declared in parts of the country, with more than 40 per cent urgently in need of food.
The situation remains a harsh reality for much of Manyuk’s family.
“It’s a lot of hardship — my brother, I talk to him every now and then and I have two sisters who are still living there in war,” he said. “It’s a very difficult situation, and I think if there’s a way for the Canadians to help, it would be nice.”
Just this year alone, Canada has provided almost $37 million to South Sudan. Another $119 million has been designated for South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and Nigeria, also facing famine.
While Lethbridge hasn’t seen a large number of Sudanese refugees in a number of years, that could change.
“Lethbridge is a destination point for government-assisted refugees because we’ve got that experience with the community,” said Sarah Amies, program director at Lethbridge Family Services. “It wouldn’t be at all surprising for me to see more arrivals from that area coming in.”
Aimes says more Canadians need to be aware of the situation.
“The most vulnerable and the weakest are the ones who are suffering the most, and really when you think about it, that’s so darn unfair,” she said.
Manyuk believes unless the fighting in the region stops, the suffering will continue.
“I am calling on the people of southern Sudan to unite themselves and tell their leaders stop doing what you’re doing, because it seems to me that there’s a division among the Southern Sudanese,” he said. “This is the cause of the suffering of the people of southern Sudan.”
Luckily the situation something Manyuk’s children here in Canada will never have to face.
“Everything that they will do, they will have a better future than I do,” he said. “They were born here, they have the right to go to school at a younger age — they will not struggle like I did.”
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