God Grew Tired of Us

“Our culture centers on cows, so much so that they sustain us from day to day and figure into our initiation into adulthood, our courtship, and the very continuation of our lives from one generation to the next.”

Here Dau explains the significance of cows in his culture. The Dinka are considered cattle herders, but their reverence for their cows extends beyond sustenance and livelihood. Cows stand at the center of everyday Dinka life; not only do young men sing love songs about their cows when they’re courting young women, but adult men often spend their days and nights caring for their cattle’s daily needs. The young men in the village live with the cows at cattle camps during the dry season, and during wet season the cows live beside their masters in adjoined huts. Much of Dinka folklore and many Dinka traditions are also centered on cattle, which instills the importance of cows in the Dinka from one generation to the next.

“My family worshipped the god of Ayuel and the spirit of Deng Pajarbe until I was about five years old. When we embraced Christianity, it was so good. I learned that the Lord doesn’t need anything; worshipping him is free. The spirit gods needed something every day.”

While Northern Sudan holds a Muslim majority, much of Southern Sudan is Christian. Dau’s Christian faith is a vital part of his life, and it keeps him going during his difficult journey to find refuge. Although he often questions the value of his life during the journey, at times wishing it would end rather than cause him suffering, he never loses faith in the knowledge that God kept him alive for a reason.

“Ridicule for behavior that threatens traditional ways of life provides a strong force to keep those ways intact.”

Dau explains that traditions are the glue that holds the Dinka way of life together. Whenever someone opposes a tradition, the other members of society shame that person to maintain their customs and values. He states this to demonstrate why, even during times of hunger, his father wouldn’t butcher one of their numerous cows for their family to eat. The Dinka planted and harvested food, and that process ensured their survival. If anyone tried to deviate from that pattern, it could mean abundance in the short term but starvation in the long term.

“This year, Duk Payuel had to extend its meager food supply nearly twice as far as the year before. Hundreds of refugees had swelled our village until we had to feed about 3,000 people. The newcomers had fled their homes, taking only what they could carry, and become exiles in their own country.”

This illustrates the moment that Sudan’s civil war began to impact Dau’s life in Duk Payuel. It also foreshadows Dau’s own imminent refuge experience. While Duk Payuel is a welcoming region that shows hospitality to the refugees, not every community is as welcoming.

“He gave it to the girls and me, leaving nothing for the adults. There was only one root, and Dinka custom said the adults could not eat until the children had satisfied themselves.”

Before this moment, Abraham had given Dau and the young girls in the group the only food he could find, leaving nothing for himself and the other adult. Dau says that this is Dinka custom, to feed the children before the adults, but it also illustrates one of the ways Dau survived: by the goodwill of others. For much of his journey, Dau is surrounded by others in his same situation, and they often try to show each other what little goodwill they have to help each other survive.

“They were also refugees heading toward Ethiopia. Most of the boys were naked, like me. I felt happy to have companionship my own age. Maybe I could make new friends. We decided to walk together for companionship and safety as we moved deeper into Nuer territory.”

Although various people come and go in Dau’s life during his journey, he is never completely alone. Immediately after leaving Duk Payuel, his main companion is Abraham, a much older neighbor. But in this moment, he unites with other Lost Boys who are his own age. This is a turning point for Dau. Whereas Abraham is like a father figure for him, these boys become friends and give him a sense of community despite their homelessness.

“God and I had many a conversation. I did most of the talking. I got mad at God for all of the injustices in my life. ‘In the church in my village, they say God is always with you,’ I told him. ‘If I am here, on the verge of dying, where are you?’”

Although the narrator remains strong in his Christian faith throughout his journey, he questions why God seems to be letting so many tragedies befall him and his friends. He knows that God is all powerful and able to stop his suffering, and he doesn’t understand why God is allowing bad things to happen. Dau starts to believe that God has grown tired of humanity and all its evils, and this questioning uncertainty is reflected in the memoir’s title.

“Cholera struck the camp that first winter. We had no latrines and no water to wash ourselves; everyone was very dirty. Flies hovered over every living thing. When we wanted drinking water, we got it from the stream next to camp. It was the same water in which we took our showers and relieved ourselves. We were boys. We did not know any better.”

For much of the journey to Ethiopia, the boys are left alone without adults to care for them. This remains the case when they finally reach the refugee camp in Ethiopia. Dau, like the other boys in the camp, doesn’t know the rules of basic hygiene or medicine, which is why diseases like cholera spread so easily throughout the camp. Although Dau is put in charge of 1,200 other young boys at the camp, one of his main duties becomes burial duty because he cannot stop the spread of sickness. This reveals the inadequacies of the camp. Without access to clean water, food, and education, the Lost Boys continue to suffer despite having reached the “safety” of camp.

“Some people can never allow others to have a bit of happiness, if they themselves are miserable. When the UN brought us canned chickens a few months later, the naysayers insisted that nobody could own so many chickens.”

For much of Dau’s journey, the UN helps keep the Lost Boys alive by providing food, water, and clothing. However, these necessities aren’t always given consistently, and even when they are, some of the boys distrust the UN. In the example given here, some of the boys struggle to interpret seeing large supplies of canned chicken and reason that the UN must be lying to them.

“Things began to get much better. I played hide-and-seek and a version of alueth in the stream. Sometimes my friends and I formed a circle in the water and tried to splash each other, like boys all over the world, or to jump around and whip each other with our legs.”

By this point the UN is supplying the boys with consistent food in the camp, and life becomes easier. This gives them a chance to reclaim some of the childhood that was stolen from them. This moment illustrates the common humanity that connects people despite their different circumstances.

“I wondered where we would go. Back to our villages, I hoped. I wanted to look for my family. But then I considered more carefully. Nothing had changed in the Upper Nile Province. The northern djellabas still controlled most of the villages, and there would be no life for me anywhere near such people, as long as my country was at war with itself.”

Dau contemplates what the future holds now that he and the other boys are homeless yet again. Before this moment, they had been forced to leave the refugee camp in Ethiopia. Unable to return home due to the continued violence there, and not knowing where to go next, Dau feels a sense of abandonment and confusion about his future.

“Like most survivors of that day, I still have bad dreams about the Gilo River. And I wonder still, what does war do to people to make them shoot children? Do those Ethiopian soldiers ever get nightmares?”

Dau first left Sudan because of the Muslim soldiers’ indiscriminate violence toward the Christians. Among the casualties were countless children, and here Dau questions how that’s possible. He’s making a larger commentary about how war forces people to shed their humanity to commit inhuman acts like killing children.

“I found myself using words like ‘killed’ and ‘died’ in conversations without giving them much thought. How much I had changed, I thought. In the Dinka tradition, children were shielded from death. In fact, the news of a loved one’s passing was kept from children as long as possible.”

Dau explains how the war began to leave deep psychological effects. Whereas death was a sacred and secret event that Dinka children were shielded from, it has now become a common experience. In Dau home village the reverence toward death and the burial ceremony symbolized the sacredness of human life. But since the war, death is so commonplace that there isn’t time or energy to provide a burial ceremony for a deceased friend or family member, and the mourning process has been reduced to small moments of silence rather than weeks of elaborate grieving.

“That was my first ride in a car or truck. For the first time, I moved faster than the thiang or the lion, and I glimpsed a vision of the modern world: fast, blurred, and chaotic.”

Dau explains his reaction after riding in a car for the first time in his life. Experiencing the speed of riding in a car made it difficult for him to interpret the world rushing past him. This foreshadows his experience in New York, a modernized world that is the antithesis of the life he knew in Duk Payuel. In the constant rush of New York Dau finds it difficult to comprehend the nuances of the city society.

“Sometimes we knelt and prayed, sometimes we felt the spirit moving us to prophesize, and sometimes we just held each other. We jumped and clapped hands. And we danced. Ours was a demonstrative, emotional synagogue. It was the sweetest thing when I felt the spirit of the Lord moving through me. It was like drinking cold water on a hot day.”

Dau explains the dynamics of their church experience in the refugee camp. Despite the tragic circumstances that brought the boys to the camp, they worship God with wholehearted joy and abandon. Dau compares the joy of this worship to cold water, which is a scarce and welcome treasure in the camp, reflecting how vital this experience is to his emotional and spiritual well-being.

“I started first grade when I was 18 years old.”

While living in Duk Payuel, Dau learned life skills, like what it means to be a man and how to take care of the cattle, from his father. However, he never attended elementary school. It isn’t until he reaches the refugee camp in Kakuma that he starts a formal education.

“It’s funny. Many outsiders looked at the refugees in Kakuma and took pity on us for how little we had. Others, including some of the Turkana, looked at us with jealousy for how much we had. The United Nations provided us with palm branches to thatch our huts and firewood to cook our dinner, as well as food rations.”

Dau contemplates the subjective nature of perspective. To many Americans, the refugees in Kakuma appear desperately impoverished and in need. But to the Turkana, a poor group of people living outside of Kakuma, the refugees seem to be living in luxury because they have food, clothing, and shelter from the UN—essentials that the Turkana often go without.

“I studied it all. In America, students ask the teachers, ‘Will this be on the test?’ and they try to find out what parts of the textbook they don’t have to read. Ha! What a piece of cake that is. That is not school. That is not the way to get anywhere in life. In Africa, the teachers told me, ‘It’s all on the test. You must study everything, cover to cover.’ To this day, when I study a book, I study it all.”

Dau examines the differences between an American and African education, thus revealing how many Americans take their education for granted. In America public school is free, but it’s so expensive in Africa, relative to an average person’s wages, that many children can’t afford to go. In America, where school is mandatory, many students just want to get by with a passing grade. But in Africa, where school is a luxury, many students savor the experience of learning, as Dau does.

“In the Dinka culture, if I had children then I had a wife, and if I had a wife then I had children. I did not know that the two did not necessarily go together in America.”

Dau experiences many cultural differences between the Dinka and Americans, one of which is family life. The Dinka uphold a patriarchal society in which men and women maintain traditional, gender-specific roles. Unlike in America, where women can choose to stay single or childless, Dinka women are expected to get married, bear children, and keep the home.

“After the song, the male elders told us more stories about America and how different it would be from anything we had ever seen. They told us not to fear, for we would succeed as long as we remembered who we were.”

This moment demonstrates how the boys and men in Kakuma had become like family, with the older men giving fatherly advice to the younger boys. The elders’ advice also foreshadows the boys’ experience in America. Once in America, Dau realizes that many of the youngest refugees adopted American culture and seemingly forsook their Dinka way of life.

“The lights along Interstate 81—how could anyone explain them? Why did Americans put up lights in the middle of nowhere, where nobody lived, when cars had their own headlights? It seemed so wasteful. Americans must be wealthy, since they could spend so much, so freely, to light the empty darkness?”

This is one of Dau’s first impressions of America. In his home country, electricity is a luxury that many people go without, so seeing streetlights adorning the interstates at night seems like an opulent display of wealth. Dau makes similar observations as he encounters America’s abundance of food, running water, and city skylines.

“A woman asked the class, ‘Where is God?’ That prompted a discussion among the people in the class about God’s relationship to the world. I told the woman to read the Book of Job. You see, I told her, Job never did anything wrong, and he loved God. Yet Job lost his family and property, and he almost died. Job realized that just loving God did not mean that God would do good things in return.”

Dau provides a defense of his faith in God. While many outside the faith wonder how God could let bad things happen, Dau, who endured an unbelievably tragic childhood, still has faith in God’s goodness. In this moment he explains that God doesn’t owe humans anything, and that we aren’t promised a good life just because we love him. Dau reveals that his faith isn’t based on circumstance; instead, it remains strong despite his circumstances.

“I think about such things and wonder: Which America, bright or dark, is the truer one? Will America be governed by its principles of loving and helping one another, or by its moments of suspicion and cynicism? I cannot say. All I know is, I have seen a great deal of the best, and some of the worst, of America.”

When Dau first came to America, the hospitality of so many kind Americans, especially those in his church, made him feel welcome in his new country. But he also experienced unkindness that was uniquely American. He recalls how he once bought a piece of candy and gave it to a child at the store, but the child’s mother gave him a dirty look and didn’t appreciate the gesture. In Dinka culture, candy is for children, and giving children gifts is a common practice. But Dau quickly learns that this is frowned upon in America.