Tut Gai
11/22/1980
Essays Topic B
Under tree classroom
My parents were cattle headers and farmers neither of them ever attended school, but I learned that my father wanted to send me to school so I can become not the same person he is. But unfortunately, as the civil war in South Sudan goes on my village was attacked and I lost members of my family including my father who was killed. Suddenly I end up in a refugees Camp in Ethiopia together with a large numbers of lost kids known as 'Sudanese Lost Boys" where I first started school in under tree class room.
At age of sixth before I become a "Lost Boy" I remember one of my conversation with my father, he told me that he will sell all his cattle someday to pay for my schooling. He goes on and tells me some example of how life could be different if he were educated. First he said with education you can be a pilot, drive a car, Motor boats, talking in the radio, those sound awesome to me and become a plan to me. And then he concluded with "and there are some more good things" he pick only what he knows that I like to capture my attention.
As a "Lost Boy" or an orphan war child I started my school under the tree class room in refugees' camp in Ethiopia camp run by UNHCR in late 1980th. In the beginning we don't have exercise books, black boards, chalks. The first blackboard I ever seen was a skin of an animal, the teacher was writing on it with a piece of charcoal, while I and other pupils write with our fingers on the dusts. Few months later the "Red Cross" provided some blackboard text books and exercise books but the classes remain under the tree before installing plastic tents.
I came to United States in Jan, 2007 under refugee program sponsored by "World Relief" of Evangelical Church. A huge white snow was on the ground; my host family gave me winter clothes in the airport but it still too cold for me. In the city everything was different, how people talk, make things, and behave. A week later I started attending school in the real class room for the first time in my life different from the one under the tree. And my hope for education started to strengthen. I remember what my father told me about education and I believed that with education I will be someone someday as my father wanted me to.
