For Elijah Gai, the enemy now is English.
In the past, he went days without food, was chased by murderous militias, wandered barefoot across Africa, survived disease and deprivation and, more recently, unraveled the mysteries of Denver’s public transportation system.
Now, he faces brutish irregular verbs and menacing direct objects. Until he beats them, he has no reason to take another stab at the high-school equivalency exam or daydream about college.
So at 8:30 a.m. on a Wednesday, he sits in a community-college classroom between a Russian woman and a Mexican man. And when English teacher Linda Yazdani asks him to compose a sentence containing a promise, he struggles, then says:
“I promise I will not come to your barbecue.”
When Yazdani feigns hurt feelings, Gai explains that he will be working.
Gai is 24. He works two jobs, goes to school, and, except for the early morning hours when he rides his bike home through deserted streets, he is reasonably safe. But he is still, and always will be, a Lost Boy.
There were an estimated 17,000 of them once, roaming Africa, fleeing Sudan’s civil war, squeezing into refugee camps. In 2001, the United States allowed about 3,600 of those who survived to immigrate. About 70 came to Denver.
Four years later, they cling to each other and support each other in a sort of makeshift, fraternal family. Along the way, luck and their own earnest charm have brought them help from unexpected sources. But their struggles are far from over.
A study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that even when young Sudanese refugees seem to be coping, about 20 percent suffer emotional problems.
Just making it this far demonstrates that Sudanese refugees “are survivors,” said Dr. Paul Geltman, a Boston University School of Medicine pediatrician, who authored the study on 304 Sudanese youth.
A year ago, Gai started at Denver Health’s Eastside clinic. And it wasn’t long before he went to his boss and said, “I have brothers, too, looking for jobs.”
Gai has no biological brothers. Of his parents’ 10 children, only he and a sister survive. His mother and sister are in a Kenyan refugee camp. Gai hasn’t seen his mother in 17 years. He sends her chunks of his earnings and calls whenever he can.
The “brothers” he was referring to are Peter Jok, 29, and David John, 24. Jok and John, like Gai, are ethnic Dinka – Lost Boys. And like Gai, they now work at Denver Health.
Similarly, after one Lost Boy got a foot in the door working at the airport Avis car-rental agency, he held that door open so five of his “brothers” could slip in as well.
That’s where they all met David Folsom.
Folsom, a Littleton businessman, travels often and noticed the polite young men at the Avis lot.
“I couldn’t resist wanting to know who they were,” Folsom said. “God drew me to them.”
He invited a few of them home to dinner, then started buying them groceries. Eventually, Folsom linked the young men with Colorado Christian University.
The university adopted them, and those six called their friends. Now there are 14 Lost Boys living in two apartments on the tiny Lakewood campus.
About half are pursuing degrees – such as one, a 24-year-old with a 3.6 grade point average who goes by the single name Wal and dreams of becoming a surgeon.
Half, such as Gai, are struggling with English, said Ron Rex, the university’s dean of admissions.
As refugees, they get financial help, and the college has discounted their tuition, Rex said. In addition, benefactors have chipped in, contributing everything from food to bicycles.
For people who spent years walking – or running – bikes, even used ones, are a luxury.
Gai was 7 when he started running.
As a child, he heard the rumors about how, in the city, non-Muslim baby boys were routinely killed.
It didn’t matter if the story was true; people in Gai’s village believed it. And it was clear the Muslim militias targeted young boys as well as grown men.
“So when the war started, shooting and shooting” – he snaps fingers as if accompanying a jumpy rhythm – “and burning down the village” he “just knew” to run.
He joined other boys, carrying nothing, going nowhere in particular. For months, the militias hunted them, forcing them off main roads into the bush.
Many didn’t make it out. Some, Gai said, “died because they were homesick.”
It was God who helped him survive, Gai is convinced. And he is pragmatic about it: “If I am God, it is up to me to choose whoever I have mercy for.”
He believes he owes a debt to God. Many of his “brothers” believe their debt is to the United States.
Among the things the camps did to prepare the Lost Boys for America was show them Jackie Chan and “Terminator” movies. They were told there was both crime and good living in the new country.
They still weren’t prepared. Wal, the would-be surgeon, jokes that Americans maltreat their cattle.
In Sudan, cattle are milked, traded for food and bartered for brides. They are coddled but rarely eaten. In America, Wal says, “the cows look so lonely.”
He has seen images of barbecues in which sides of beef turn slowly over a flame. “This make Dinka crazy,” he said.
Soon after Gai got to Colorado, he became very sick.
With no one to turn to for help, he got on a bus – his plan was to ride until he found a hospital.
“Luckily I get a good bus,” he said.
It stopped across the street from University of Colorado Hospital, where the staff put him “in a big machine that pulled me in.”
The machine found appendicitis, and a doctor told Gai he needed surgery.
“I said no. I don’t know them. I refused it all.”
He was sure they intended to kill him.
He lay there for hours until, ultimately, fatalism saved his life. “I think, if they are true, I die anyway. If they are going to kill me, I die anyway.”
Gai said his stomach still hurts often.
Doctors have tested his blood to find out why, he said, “but I am negative.”
Pain without cause is something Boston University’s Geltman found frequently in Sudanese refugees.
“One of the ways a lot of cultures around the world manifest emotional problems is physical pain,” he said.
Many Sudanese refugees have “real physical problems,” Geltman said. But, he added, “it also may well be that he’s depressed.”
Sitting outside the Eastside clinic having his picture taken, Gai was asked if he would send the photo to his mother and tell her he is a star in America.
“She doesn’t know ‘star,”‘ he said.
She doesn’t know, either, that her son’s fondest dream is to become an Episcopal minister.
He doesn’t tell her because much stands between him and that goal. But he keeps at it, rising early to catch a bus to school. At noon, he gets on another bus, then two more, and two hours later arrives at the clinic, where he works until midnight. Then he begins the two-hour trek home. And does it over again the next day.
From a remote village, to a crowded refugee camp to a classroom where, with a Russian woman, he rehearses in English a made-up job interview, his life has been a surprising, sometimes tortuous journey.
“It is change,” he says. “Life is change.”
Staff writer Karen Augé can be reached at 303-820-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com.
