Last week Carlie and I went to Salt lake for a screening of a relatively new documentary called "God Grew Tired of Us."The film recalls the experience of young male refugees fleeing Sudan at the outset of civil war in 1987. From Sudan to Ethiopia they trekked on foot, many of them not even 8 years old. After the fall of the Ethiopian government, the "lost boys" again took to the wilderness, traversing over 1000 miles on foot this time to reach a refugee camp at the Kenyan border. Many died along the way from starvation, hostile attacks, and sickness. They waited for 10 years before foreign governments began to take any notice. Finally, the U.S. (among other nations) allowed for a small fraction of these homeless and mostly orphaned refugees to find asylum in the United States. The film further follows this journey, and portrays the immense change and sort of emotional upheaval that came along with these refugees to their new life in America.
At the close of the film, two dark black men with heavy accents gave audience to the crowd, most of whom were still internally silenced- a reverent sort, that- by the profundity and magnitude of the things we had just taken in. Through the lump in my throat, I looked on these two men with some level of wonder and great respect. As questions began to come from the audience, the men obliged. They began to recount their personal experiences from the last 20 years, experiences that closely mirrored those we had just witnessed from our comfortable seats. It was not enough to feel pain, certainly not enough to look on in any degree of pity. And then the man named Kone stood and stolidly announced that "everything that you have just seen is true. Only my story began, not when I was 15 but when I was 8. These things are real."
These things are real.
The phrase rang through my mind repeatedly as I watched and listened intently. I couldn't help a distinct dawning of the barest comprehension then, wandering in and out of the realization that this was no dramatically packaged film for our enjoyment, but the portrayal of current affairs even at this moment. These men are now unaware as to the whereabouts of their family members, they are currently refugees working to save and send every last penny to their loved ones still surviving in Kenya's Kakumara Camp in poverty and illness ridden circumstances. There was no neat beginning and, importantly, there has yet to be any semblance of an end to their suffering. The movie clearly did not end with the reel.
In my mind, this is a film that everyone must see. Not because after years of travail and death, all of a sudden it is fashionable to feign concern over the Sudan Darfur crisis, but because it speaks to humanity in a telling and profound way. It sends a message that goes much deeper than any politics and is vastly more probing than any news report will ever divulge.
It will only be played for a short period of time in certain nationwide theatres. Take some time, take your kids, and go see it. It deserves to be seen and felt and heard.