Akol Mudat (front, in suit) with Roxboro Middle 6th graders in 2013.
Nov. 30, 2015 -- A child’s curiosity has the power to change the world.
That’s what happened in a case that started in the aisles of Whole Foods grocery store, setting off a chain of events that would eventually wind its way through the classrooms of Roxboro Middle School and end up in a village in South Sudan.
Years ago, district parent Rosemary Pierce’s children were curious about one of the employees at Whole Foods. His accent was heavy and his skin so dark it looked like midnight. After listening to her children’s repeated questions, she suggested they ask him directly, and a conversation, and a friendship, began. The Pierce family listened raptly to Akol Madut’s history as one of Sudan’s Lost Boys, the child soldiers of the 1980s, left parentless and homeless during their country’s brutal civil war. Madut, now 35, spent months wandering the African countryside in search of shelter, before eventually landing a role as a commander in the rebel army in charge of 6,000 young boys. He was 12.
After a dramatic escape coordinated by the International Red Cross and the U.S. Army, nearly 16,000 Lost Boys (and 300 Lost Girls) arrived in America fifteen years ago. Madut was the first of thirty-seven to settle in Cleveland.
Pierce realized that this inspiring story should be shared with a wider audience and arranged for him to visit Roxboro Elementary, where her children were then students. The following year, as her daughter moved to the middle school, International Baccalaureate coordinator Melissa Garcar suggested that the 6th grade English classes read a novel about the Lost Boys of Sudan’s Civil War in conjunction with a visit from Madut.
And thus, an ongoing interdisciplinary unit with the power to change a child’s perspective was born. Roxboro Middle School purchased class sets of A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park, a fictionalized account interweaving two very real tales of 11-year olds in Africa: Salva Dut, a refugee of the Sudanese conflict in 1985 who, like Madut, wanders the continent searching for his family and a safe place to stay, and Nya, a girl in 2008 who makes a two-hour journey to a pond for fresh water twice each day, preventing her from attending school.
The entire 6th grade at Roxboro Middle School read the novel this past October and the students’ reactions underscored the power of the story: Janya Franklin, 11, said the book made her “feel grateful because I don’t have to walk all those hours just to get water.” Her classmate Ryan Coleman, also 11, added, “The book made me sad because I wouldn't want to have to go through that. Everyone should be free to be who they want to be. And it wasn’t fair that only boys could go to school because girls have to fetch water.”
For one class assignment, students were asked to select and analyze several quotes from the story. Shamarie Jones’ choices came from simple but powerful statements of Salva’s: “Where is my family?” and “I have no one here.” Jones, 11, said the story made her feel “grateful for my own life because I have family and friends to help me.”
According to 6th grade Humanities teacher Amanda Sell, “Reading the book was a difficult and emotional experience for students as they learned about war, tragedy and death from a first person perspective.” When they completed the book, many were relieved that Salva had survived but “devastated that so many had died” and struck by the injustice suffered by girls who are unable to attend school because they spend up to eight hours a day trekking for water.
The real life Salva, who was adopted by a Philadelphia family in 1996, returned to his homeland in 2003 and started the Water for South Sudan project, a non-profit organization that builds wells in rural villages. Access to fresh water not only improves the health of entire villages but also frees girls to attend school, a fact highlighted in A Long Walk to Water when Salva helps build a well in Nya’s village.
“Hope for a better life springs from a well. Children are healthier and can go to school, expanding their dreams and the possibility to fulfill them,” according to the Water for South Sudan website. “Where safe water flows, life can blossom.”
After reading the book, Roxboro students wanted to do something to help and what more natural thing to do than walk themselves to raise money for access to fresh water?
The teachers set a modest goal of $500 for their first ever Walk-a-thon in support of Water for South Sudan, which took place on Tuesday, November 24. Of the 204 6th graders at the school, at least 150 made donations, qualifying them to participate in the morning walk around the school track. Students raised a grand total of $1,880, more than triple their initial goal.
Miles Anderson, who raised nearly $300 from 12 different donors, captured the feelings of many of his classmates on the eve of Thanksgiving weekend, when he said, “Even though I have everything I need, there are some people who don't. And I’m just happy that I’m helping them.”