At nearly seven feet tall and clad in a crisp blue uniform, Tisch Library guard Goch Anjok stands out amidst stacks of books and gaggles of studying students.
Kind and mild-mannered in nature, Anjok is a member of the Dinka tribe of Bor, Sudan, which is located in the southern part of the region. He is a product of the tumultuous Second Sudanese Civil War, which lasted from 1984 to 2005, killed millions of people and displaced even more.
Anjok was brought to the United States by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) program known as "Lost Boys of Sudan." Though as a Tufts employee he is now free from the danger he previously faced, Anjok has seen the true horrors of the crisis in Sudan. His story reflects the plight of many Southern Sudanese inhabitants witness to the atrocities of the conflict there.
Born in 1981, Anjok was five years old when the fighting came to his town of Paliau on the Nile River. He recounted how soldiers came in and attacked the village by burning houses, shooting and killing people, raping women and torturing whoever they could find.
Anjok was beaten with a stick in spite of his young age, and he eventually escaped with his father and three of his brothers by hiding in the bushes.
"The government, during the day, would go to the bush, so we hid there at night," he said. Eventually, they were caught and all tortured. Anjok's father was shot and killed in front of his very eyes.
"At the time I didn't know what death was," he said, explaining his fear and confusion at his father's murder. "I thought he was sleeping."
Anjok's three brothers were seven, nine, and 11 years old at the time. His two oldest brothers were taken away and his seven-year-old brother ran away after being tortured. Anjok described the day as the worst of his life.
When the troops left, people eventually gathered, Anjok said. They hid in the desert and began a two-month trek on foot to neighboring Ethiopia. More than 30,000 people walked with no food, water, medicine, or place to sleep.
"Every day you don't think you will see tomorrow and survive," Anjok said. "People were eaten by leopards, crocodiles, lions, and bitten by snakes. We walked mostly during the night because the day was too hot and dangerous. The government was hunting for us in helicopters."
Anjok said many people died of dehydration due to the lack of available water. When it was available, they drank from the river. Others starved to death. When they could, they hunted antelope to stay alive by circling and beating the animals to death.
But Anjok persevered, eventually arriving in Ethiopia. He stayed there in a refugee camp for four years, from 1987 to 1991, in Panyido, a city he described as disease-ridden.
It was somewhere between three weeks and a month before the United Nations arrived, Anjok said. He and the other refugees waited with no food, and the Ethiopian government did not help them. Even with the U.N. presence, many people perished due to malaria, diarrhea, polio, and chicken pox. Others, he said, died from simple homesickness and desperation. "They missed their home and family, their home cooking," he said.
By 1991, Anjok left Panyido and went back to Sudan, where he stayed in Pachalla. The Southern People's Liberation Army had captured the town from the government and protected the refugees. It was there that Anjok began to go to school for the first time, which he hated, he said, because he was so hungry.
A year later, he left Sudan, and headed for another refugee camp in Kenya with 16,000 other young boys and girls.
But life in Kenya wasn't safe, as people were still being killed there. Fed up with life, many refugees went to the U.N. compound and complained that they were not being protected and that they "wanted to die in Sudan," Anjok said.
After spending 14 years of his life in refugee camps, Anjok finally caught a break in 2001, when he was given the opportunity, with aid from the IRC, to go to the United States with 3,800 others.
With the help of the IRC, Anjok was able to transition to life in the United States. He finished 11th and 12th grades in Duxbury, Mass., passed his high school equivalency test, and spent two years as an accounting major in at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.
In spite of the horrors he has seen and lived through, Anjok is optimistic and has a good sense of humor. Always smiling, he is quick to throw a high-five and very willing to discuss his story. He currently lives in Somerville with others from the IRC program and works two jobs, one at Home Depot, where his height comes in handy, and one at Tufts as a security guard.
He is also currently working on a nursing degree so that, when he goes back to Sudan, he can be of help. Anjok stressed the importance of his ongoing education as a means for his future plans, as he hopes to become a CPA. He also plans to write a book on his experiences.
This summer, Anjok will travel back to Sudan to see his mother and his brothers and sisters. He has not seen his mother in 20 years.
