Lost Boys of Natinga: A School for Sudan's Young Refugees
Gr. 7^-10. Far from media images of Africa as safari adventure and famine, this photo-essay brings us close to the experience of refugee children by focusing on the boys in one school in the southern Sudan. Walgren, a Dallas photojournalist, spent three months at the school in 1994, and her color photos and vivid text make us see what daily life is like for these individual young people driven from home by civil war. Orphaned or separated from their families, they come to the school seeking food, clothing, shelter, and safety. Walgren tells how they got there, how they study without classrooms or enough books, often hungry, struggling to stay healthy and clean, sometimes without basic medical supplies or fresh water. The school is their shelter and hope, yet we feel their loss, not only of home and family but also of roots and culture as they read old American textbooks, go to church, and learn in English about a world far from where they are.Hazel Rochman