Boy Who Wouldn't Die

 

David Nyuol Vincent was a little boy when he fled southern Sudan with his father as war raged in their country. He left behind his distraught mother and sisters, his village, and his childhood, and he would never return. For months David and his father walked across southern Sudan, barefoot, desperately searching for safety, food, and water. They survived the perilous Sahara Desert crossing into Ethiopia only to be separated and for David to be trained as a child soldier and then to survive the next 17 years of his life alone in refugee camps. Life in the camps was a relentless struggle against starvation, air bombings, and people determined to kill him and his people. In 2004 David was offered a Humanitarian Visa as one of the Lost Boys and was resettled to Australia. Traumatized by what he had seen and endured, he went about the slow and painful process of making a new life for himself—a life away from hunger, guns, and death, in which David is determined to improve the plight of his people both in Australia and back in the Sudan. Told with frankness and humor, this is the powerful account of a resilient young man who refused to die.