The Book
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One Book, One Community Announces 2008 Book Selection
07-248
March 10, 2008
EAST LANSING, Mich. - One Book, One Community (OBOC) announces its 2008 book selection, “They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky,” by co-authors Benson Deng, Alephonsion Deng and Benjamin Ajak. The OBOC program, co-sponsored by the City of East Lansing and Michigan State University, encourages the city-university community to read the same book and come together to discuss it in a variety of settings. The book is an assigned reading for all incoming MSU freshmen.
Meet the Author
Meet one of the authors, Benjamin Ajak, along with their mentor, Judy A. Bernstein, as they kick-off the month-long OBOC program on Wednesday, Aug. 20 at East Lansing High School. They will also welcome freshmen at the MSU Academic Welcome at the Wharton Center for Performing Arts on Thursday, Aug. 21.
They will return to East Lansing on Thursday, Sept. 18 to participate in a community-wide book discussion and visit students at East Lansing High School. A number of other community and campus events will be announced.
Support the Program
Support the OBOC program by shopping at Barnes & Noble, 333 E. Grand River Ave., in East Lansing. From March 19-25, Barnes & Noble will donate a percentage of every sale to the OBOC program. Please mention that you would like your purchase to benefit the program.
About the Book
In 1987, 27,000 boys in Sudan were forced to flee when the bitter civil war invaded their villages forcing them to run, terrified, into the bush. Lost and unable to return home most walked in small bands or large groups, sometimes numbering in the many thousands, searching for refuge and clinging to hope of finding what remained of their families. Almost half of the boys died along the way.
“They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky” tells the remarkable true story of three of those boys: Benjamin Ajak and his cousins Benson and Alepho Deng. Many years after their ordeal, the three boys, now young men, told of their experiences in a series of compelling short essays written for their American mentor, Judy A. Bernstein. For the boys, it was a way to bridge the huge gulf between their unspeakable past and their strange new life in America.
The book takes the reader on an agonizing journey, through violence and deprivation, as each little boy bravely finds his way from one hopeless situation to another. Their story begins with their early memories as children living in close-knit extended families in Juol, a small village on the edge of the Kenyan jungle. At the center of their world was their Dinka tribal customs binding their families together and giving each boy a sense of personal identity and pride.
The first boy to be lost was Benson. He was seven years old when a fireball fell from the sky in the middle of the night. In the chaos that followed he was lost in the bush, wearing his only possession, a pair of red shorts his father had given him. He walked, barefoot, through the thick jungle, across the parched desert and through the mosquito infested Gilo River, to arrive at a squalid refugee camp in Panyido, Ethiopia. There he learned his alphabet by tracing his fingers in the sand.
After three years, the tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia were driven out by the Ethiopian army. With bullets flying over their heads they fled back across the treacherous Gilo River into Sudan. Always the war at his heals and starvation his constant companion Benson finally found refuge in Kenya.
Alepho was lost when he too was forced to run. He crisscrossed Sudan, walking a thousand miles, always following rumors of safety ahead and the chance he would find his family. After five years, he miraculously found his brother Benson and they made their way to a sprawling filthy refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya. There they lived for nine years on subsistence rations and makeshift shelters as they struggled to get an education.
At five, Benjamin also fled in terror. He walked with twenty thousand other boys fleeing the war. Eventually captured by the army, Benjamin was forced into harsh military training. He escaped but was recaptured and tortured. Five months later he escaped again and managed a death defying walk alone across the desert to Kenya where he lived in the Kakuma refugee camp for nine years with his cousins.
Each boy tells his story with a simple narrative, sad at times but never with self pity. The reader is struck by how stalwart they are in the face of unimaginable obstacles, constant violence, and the hunger, pain and disease they endured. Even though they were children when they fled the bombs, bullets and fire, they always carried with them a strong sense of Dinka pride and integrity.
For additional information about the One Book One Community program, contact Ginny Haas, Director of Community Relations, MSU at 355-5060 or Ami Van Antwerp, Communications Coordinator, City of East Lansing at 319-6927.
Please contact RCPD for the alternative format:
MSU Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities
120 Bessey Hall, MSU, East Lansing, MI 48824-1033
Phone: 517-353-9642
Email: rcpd@msu.edu
Web site: rcpd.msu.edu