Blog Post 3 - Community

Emmanuel Jal has been living in some of the roughest times of the Sudanese history, causing him to lose members of family and friends. The hardest loss for him was the death of his mother. It explains in the book at how different his life is without her by his side. She was always very protective of him and the rest of the family, that being said with his mother dead he struggles to figure out who to look upon for advice. Jal is only 9 years old now and he is severely struggling to learn how to live and survive on his own in the Pinyudu Refugee Camp. At the Refugee Camp, Jal is harassed on a regular basis, not just in a physical sense from the SPLA soldiers, but also in a verbal sense from the other children. Jal has an immense disadvantage to the other boys mainly because he is so young, small, and weak. For example Jal was asked by a soldier to complete a set of pushups and was unable to do it so was beaten by an SPLA soldier. Jal was lucky that he had met such a good friend at the Refugee Camp. He grew close and closer with this friend named Malual. Like any children I can relate to, they like to cause trouble which is pretty normal for children around this age (Malual is a little bit older than Jal), except the punishment was much worse for these poor boys as they were beaten.  It is strange for me to think that after reading Jal say, “Love, friendship, pity all weakens you in war." (pg. 88) that he could have developed such a close friendship with Malual.

After Jal had proven himself worthy of being a war child by completing the AK47 task, he was sent out to the battlefield, something he had yearned to do. Once the fighting got to a stage where he just could not handle it anymore, he and some of the other kids decided to run away and escape the wrath of the SPLA. They were on their own and on the move for a long 3 months. Many of the kids died along the way. Once the kids had reached the town of Waat, they met up with a small group of people that separated themselves from the SPLA as well.  In Waat when Jal was just 11 he met a person named Emma McCune who would soon change his entire life. Emma snuck Jal into Kenya where he was able to achieve a dream of education. Emma McCune had made such a positive impact on Jal’s life that he has written songs about how he strives to “be like Emma McCune.”