Like many other altruistic graduates, Samuel Akau would like to work for a nongovernmental organization—the Norwegian Refugee Council, perhaps, or Lutheran World Federation—in the Sudan, Kenya or Uganda. Unlike most of those other graduates, Akau would be going home.
A member of the Dinka tribe, Akau is one of 26,000 “Lost Boys of Sudan” who fled war and famine in the southern region of the country. About 4,000 Lost Boys were brought to the United States in 2001 by the Department of State and various NGOs.
Akau decided at age 9 to leave his home and his family. “The area I come from, where the civil war broke out, was a major battle between the government and the rebel movement in the south,” he explains. “Life was very disrupted and schools were collapsing, and I had heard of a displaced refugee camp where there was relief food and school supplies. It wasn’t the best, but it was better than nothing.”
Akau ended up in a refugee camp in a remote area of Kenya some 10 hours by car from Nairobi; in the camp he eventually reunited with his brother Peter. Their younger brother, Kuot, was born after they left Sudan and attends high school in Eldoret, Kenya. Their parents and four other siblings have died.
Akau came to the United States at 19, on his first airplane ride. He says he feels lucky that he and five other boys from his village, including Peter, were able to settle together in the Bay Area. He and Peter enrolled at De Anza Community College, and after graduating with an associate degree in 2004, Akau transferred into Stanford. He almost didn’t apply. “I had the assumption that it was for people who have money, so I was hesitant,” he says. But a professor at De Anza settled his fears and began suggesting campus events for Akau to attend. He also wrote a letter of recommendation.
An English major who hopes to go on to law school and eventually work in education policy in Africa, Akau currently supports Kuot. “I try to save the financial aid they give me—[the dollars] they give me for books and other needs,” Akau says. “My brother is doing amazingly well, and maybe soon I can go back to look for a job and meet him.”
Akau has done pretty well himself, winning second place in this year’s Bocock-Guérard Fiction Prize sponsored by the English department. He served as general secretary for the Stanford African Students Association, and he also was a founding member of Students Taking Action Now: Darfur. “Everybody here is very brilliant and ambitious, and you learn outside of class as much as you learn inside,” Akau says. “There’s also a lot of funding for student groups, and if there’s something you really feel passionate about, or want to start up or be involved in, there’s money to fund it and the possibility to do it.”
