The original Lost Boys of Sudan were some 20,000 boys who fled their villages in South Sudan when government troops from the north systematically attacked their villages in the late 1980’s during the Second Sudanese Civil War. It is estimated as many a third of them died due to starvation and dehydration, or at the hands of wild animal or enemy soldiers. Their epic journey over thousands of kilometres and three countries “ended” in 1992 when approximately 12,000 of them became the initial inhabitants of the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. They were given the “Lost Boys” tag by the aid workers setting up the camp in reference to Peter Pan’s Lost Boys.
There are a number of very good documentaries, films and books that tell the feel-good stories of successful repatriation of Lost Boys. In 1999 the US began a program that took almost 4000 orphaned Lost Boys (a program that was sadly halted by the events of September 11, 2001). The South Sudanese independence in 2011 saw many more return to South Sudan. But what has been forgotten in all these stories is that there remain some 200 of the original Lost Boys (ongoing war and a renewal of conflict since 2011 has seen the revival of the term) still in Kakuma. By their own accounts these Lost Boys have applications for repatriation that have either been lost, or they are being told to “be patient”, some 21 years on. Some Lost Boys now with families and children of their own, children who have grown up knowing nothing other than the limbo of life in Kakuma.
In November of 2013 photographer Chris Peken travelled to Kakuma in search of these Lost Boys after hearing stories from the South Sudanese refugee population in Western Sydney. There he met with over forty of the original Lost Boys, and along with Ethiopian refugee journalist in exile Qaabata Boru, documented their stories and created these portraits. These are the original Lost Boys of Sudan. They are the faces of the men who still remain, 21 years later, in Kakuma Refugee Camp, desperate to be seen and heard.
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