Lopez Lomong walked five miles to watch the Summer Olympics on a black-and-white television in 2000. Eight years later, the Sudan-born athlete carried the American flag at this summer's Olympic Opening Ceremony in Beijing.
It was a 17-year endeavor for him to reach the games.
The Olympic athlete and Sudanese Lost Boy made a trip to Syracuse last week to meet with members of The John Dau Sudanese Foundation. Dau, a current Syracuse University policy studies student, founded the organization in an effort to bring awareness to Sudanese health care issues and garner support for the construction of health care clinics in Southern Sudan. The nonprofit works to improve doctoral expertise, health facilities and medical supplies in the area.
At age 6, Lomong was abducted from a Catholic Mass and assumed dead by his family. Taken into captivity, he managed to escape and fled to a refugee camp near Nairobi, Kenya. At the refugee camp is where he met Dau, another Lost Boy of Sudan. A decade later, Catholic Charities moved Lomong to New York, where Robert and Barbara Rogers of Onondaga County took him in.
Chris Royce, the fundraising chair for the JDSF, learned of Lomong's connection to Dau through his friend Mike Riehared, whose father owned a farm where Lomong worked when he was younger.
Seeing each other last week for the first time in years, Dau and Lomong exchanged ideas on how to improve Sudanese health care. Dau shared his vision for the JDSF with Lomong. The foundation has already built the Duk County Clinic near Dau's home village in May 2007, Royce said.
"Lopez is in a tremendous position to bring attention to resources for the cause," Royce said. "They would be a very good match because it wouldn't be feasible for Lopez to start his own foundation right now, considering he's getting paid by night to travel the world."
Lomong's story goes beyond the concept of the "American dream" - something he feels he's fulfilled. As one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, his connection with more than 27,000 others who were displaced like him or orphaned, prompted the 23-year-old track and field athlete to pledge his support for the John Dau Sudan Foundation.
Royce added that Lomong is just the starting point for a number of the JDSF projects that are in the works, including a major national recording artist potentially going on tour to raise money for the foundation.
Though Dau feels the foundation is off to a good start, he said in no sense has it accomplished what he and the other volunteers set out to do. The organization plans to fund the construction of more health care clinics in Southern Sudan.
"To be able to expand to other areas, we can use Lomong's help," Dau said. "For example, we can help his home village. They have nothing at all. They're a small tribe, but they don't even have a single clinic."
Now an Olympic athlete, Lomong said he feels it's his responsibility to spread awareness about the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2003) because an estimated 1.9 million civilians were killed.
Recounting his time at the refugee camp Kakuma in Kenya, Lomong said even finding food and water proved extremely difficult.
"In a refugee camp, you don't know where you'll be getting a meal or where you're going to find medical supplies for when you get sick," he said. "It is tough. It's tough for me to go into detail of what it was like."
Despite the hardship of reliving such pain, Lomong said that when he was in Sudan, he felt at home because he was with his family.
"I was with my parents; I was with my mom," he said. "And I was so happy, but at the same time, there was a war going on."
Now that the war has ended, he and Dau said they believe the most important part of Sudan that needs to be revitalized is the area of basic health care. The JDSF is building clinics in order to treat diseases such as malaria, rag worm and malnutrition, and to help take care of expectant mothers with prenatal and postnatal care.
"We are doing anything that we can afford to do," Dau said.
He stressed the importance of donors, both group and individual, in helping provide critical health care aid to the Sudanese, and said it is through "koiye miooc" - or "generous persons" - that the foundation finds its funding to assist a nation still recovering from a 21-year-long civil war.
After discussing the JDSF's goals and some of these potential projects in a phone conversation Tuesday, Lomong told Dau to keep in touch not only for the sake of the organization but also for the two of them to never lose touch again.
Dau replied, "Thank you, brother."
dsbortz@syr.edu
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