 Jacob Majok, right, gets an Army cap from recruiter Sgt. 1st Class Peter Palumb Jr. before leaving for basic training. (Photo by Dick Blume) |
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Posted on 07/25/2007 10:52:45 AM PDT by Incorrigible
Jacob Majok, right, gets an Army cap from recruiter Sgt. 1st Class Peter Palumb Jr. before leaving for basic training. (Photo by Dick Blume) |
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SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Jacob Majok survived the Sudanese war that killed his parents.
Now he has made a decision that likely will put him back in a war zone: He enlisted in the U.S. Army.
He left Syracuse recently for Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., to begin basic training.
"I became an American citizen and I think it's my duty to defend America,'' said Majok, 25, one of the young Sudanese men referred to as the "Lost Boys'' who began resettling in the United States in 2000.
"This world is changing and it has changed,'' he said. "Our country has been at war over 23 years. If we decide to go to the army, it will be an opportunity to defend America and help the home country.''
He signed up June 28 after graduating cum laude from Le Moyne College with a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry.
Since 2000, more than 500 Sudanese refugees have resettled in Syracuse through refugee programs run by InterFaith Works and Catholic Charities.
Of those, 95 are the young men called the "Lost Boys.'' Majok is the first of them to join the Army, said Sgt. 1st Class Peter Palumb Jr., who recruits for the U.S. Army in Syracuse.
"He's such a wonderful kid, and it's nice to see somebody that comes in and wants to give back,'' Palumb said of Majok. "Our United States will be a much better place if we had a lot of Jacob Majoks here.''
Majok, who became a U.S. citizen in December, began thinking about the Army a year ago.
Besides wanting to defend America, Majok aspires to become a physician's assistant or a doctor. He hopes his experience in the military will help him achieve that goal.
"He told me he likes the idea of serving his country and using the education benefits to accomplish his career goals,'' Palumb said of his first meeting with Majok. "After that we had a couple of meetings, and after that he was raising his right hand to serve his country.''
Majok said the Iraq war is a justified war because it's a fight against terrorism.
Also, many of the weapons used to fight the war in Sudan came from Iraq, he said.
"My father and mother were killed by guns from Iraq,'' Majok said. "Iraq was seen as a threat to the United States, but it was a threat to the whole world. Saddam Hussein was a threat to other countries. All the allies of the Sudanese government were weakened after his death. Saddam has been a threat to peace in Sudan for more than a decade.''
Majok was 5 when he fled Sudan in 1987, leaving his parents behind. Government troops fighting the rebels burned villages, raped women and killed young men, Majok said.
Majok was among thousands of young boys who spent much of their adolescence on the run, fleeing war, famine, slavery and living in refugee camps in neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya.
On the way, the older boys took care of the young ones. Majok remembers Baranaba Bol, then 12, carrying two little boys on his shoulders, scrambling for food or carrying the pail of drinking water for the children. Bol is now an Episcopal priest in Australia, Majok said.
Ethiopia was Majok's first stop. There he attended a United Nations school and started a new life.
That lasted three years.
He was on the run again when war broke out in Ethiopia as rebels tried to overthrow President Mengistu Haile Mariam.
"It was a disaster for the refugees,'' Majok said. "The rebels chased the refugees out.''
Majok returned to Sudan in 1990, but fled a year later when the Sudanese government started bombing civilian areas.
He and other boys crossed the border into Ethiopia again.
"Many of us were killed,'' he said. "There were a lot of attacks on the way.''
The boys made their way to Kenya, where they spent 10 years in Kakuma refugee camp.
In Kakuma, Majok finished high school and started teaching at a United Nations school, earning extra money to supplement the rations of dried corn and beans he got from the U.N.
It was in the refugee camp that he learned that his parents had been killed in the war.
The first sign of hope that he could leave the camp came in 1994 when he was interviewed by U.S. State Department officials.
It wasn't until six years later that the first of the 3,800 "Lost Boys'' started to arrive in America.
Majok settled in Syracuse in August 2001.
In Syracuse, he worked as a certified nursing assistant and graduated from Onondaga Community College with an associate degree in math and science. He went to Le Moyne on a Jesuit scholarship.
Majok said he isn't worried about the prospect of going to war.
He's no longer a free person, he said, so he'll have to go where the Army sends him.
His Sudanese friends have mixed feelings.
His uncle in Sudan supports him, but his sister in Australia objects because "she thinks I may die in Iraq.''
(Maureen Sieh can be reached at msieh(at)syracuse.com)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
This is my kind of immigrant!
And I am sure that he will serve our country with HONOR and INTEGRITY.
God bless him.
Yeah - but now he is a member of the biggest and meanest gang on the block...
And the one with the biggest, best and most expensive toys >D.
This man not born here has more honor and integrity than most of the public.
With his track record he is going to excel!
I wish that more of our home grown kids had the same attitude! God bless him.
My fiancee is a full time student and there are a number of ‘lost boys’ in her school, mostly studying hard science and medicine.
She has immense respect for all she’s met - saying the ones she’s met in the US (as well as in South Africa where she went last year) are honorable, hard working, and sharp as a tack.
I’m usually not a huge fan of resettling refugees in the US, but the group appears to really buck the trend, from what I’ve seen.
More MSM propaganda as they try to muddy the waters between legal and illegal immigration. A feel good story about a legal immigrant is just another way to say let’s have amnesty for all those hard working illegal aliens.
If he graduated college, surely he'd be officer material.
Amen
This is the kind of immigrant American’s can be proud of. Even had he not joined the Army, his head is in the right place and so is his heart.
God bless him and protect him.
A citizen of the finest kind!
This kid has more guts and honor than a lot of native born Americans. He is a true American in the fullest sense of the meaning.
Take note Liberals!!
What a fine young man! It’s nice to read stories like this one. I wish him a successful career and a good life.
Amen.
I wonder if he likes to be referred to as an “African American”? I’m betting NOT
I have a friend who lives in Kenya, he’s married into one of the tribes there, the tall skinny ones that do the bouncing thing in red sarongs, he routinely sponsors these kids for immigration into Canada...
“This is my kind of immigrant!”
In the “moment of clarity” soon after 9-11, NBC had a follow-up on some
Lost Boys they’d profiled before 9-11.
One of them had been settled in the Kansas City area and his mentor was
a local banker.
The banker said that when 9-11 happened, he talked about it with his
young charge. The banker tried to puzzle out “why the terrorists
hated us”, but his Lost Boy bascially told him that this was just the
way Muslims are.
(I guess a lot of the suffering of The Lost Boys was from Muslim raider
that they tangled with doing their long odyssey)
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