'Lost boys' can savor success with college graduation

Five hours after he donned his cap and gown - and long after most of his ODU classmates had casually shed theirs - William Mayom, oblivious to Saturday's heat, was still wearing his graduation gear.

Adjusting his mortarboard, Mayom, 27, posed for picture after picture with other young men with lilting accents.

Who were all these guys?

"They're Lost Boys, too," Mayom said, grabbing fellow graduate John Leuth, who also was wearing his commencement finery well into the evening hours.

Who could blame them for wanting to savor every second of their success? There was a time when even high school seemed beyond the reach of these tenacious graduates.

Mayom and Leuth are two of the Lost Boys of Sudan. Survivors of a bloody civil war that began in the 1980s and ravaged their African homeland. Those who escaped became part of a diaspora across several African countries.

It took years for the refugees - the lucky ones, that is - to locate their loved ones or learn of their fate.

The harrowing story of the Lost Boys has been told in documentaries and books. Somehow, it was the young boys who were most likely to survive the carnage. Fleet-footed, shoeless boys who literally ran from Sudan to Ethiopia and then to Kenya, where they waited in refugee camps for a chance to come to America.

Once here, most headed to school.

I first met William Mayom three years ago, when he'd been in the States for five years. At that time he was planning a trip to Kenya, to visit the refugee camp that housed his mother and a younger brother he had not seen in almost 19 years.

Last weekend, unlike most of the graduates in the Ted Constant Convocation Center, Mayom did not have a single relative in the audience. His father, one brother and four sisters were all murdered on the same day in 1991.

His mother and younger brother are still in Kenya. His older brother, another Lost Boy, landed in Michigan.

During his trip to Africa in 2006, Mayom married his childhood sweetheart, Mary. They have a little boy, Deng, whom Mayom has never met.

The graduate, now an American citizen, has been trying to bring his family to the States. Red tape slowed the process, but the Mayom family expects to be reunited next month.

"My wife, she called me six times today," Mayom said proudly, at an evening reception at ODU's Canterbury Center.

Addressing the roughly 40 friends and volunteers who had "adopted" him since his arrival in Norfolk, Mayom delivered a short, emotional speech.

He not only thanked his friends and supporters, but he looked at the buffet table and paused to thank those who had fixed food for his celebration.

"You are a great blessing to me," he said softly.

Heck, read what Mayom wrote in an e-mail he sent last month inviting me to his graduation:

I will be a second college graduate from my family since Creation. My brother just graduated last year from Michigan.

I started my primary school under the trees. As a child we shared pencils and books. Fifteen pupils shared a book, three people cut one pencil into three. We used stones as our chairs. When it rained or was windy, school was closed.

I never dreamed of being in a good school like ODU, but it has happened. I look back and see how far I have come. I broke a bond of illiteracy and have more to break. With the help of the mighty nation and the help of American people behind me, I will one day dance with the stars if it is God's will.

As I watched this confident college graduate and his fellow Lost Boys, it struck me.

The term no longer fits. These college graduates are men now.

Lost? Not anymore.

News researcher Maureen Watts contributed to this column.

Kerry Dougherty, (757) 446-2306, kerry.dougherty@cox.net