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David Jal Recollects Civil War Days In Sudan

David Jal was born and raised in Northeast Africa in the Dunyal Village in Southern Sudan with dreams of becoming a geography teacher.  As civil war intensified, he fled at the age of ten with his dream of teaching replaced by the desire of surviving.  He spent nearly ten years in refugee camps in East Africa.  Jal lived in the Itang Refugee Camp in Ethiopia from 1987 to 1992, and in the Walda, Ifo and Kakuma Refugee Camps in Kenya from 1992 to 1995.  In 1994, he was approved to be resettled in the United States and was able to come as a refugee in 1995.  He’s co-author of “David’s Journey” about his story as one of the Lost Boys of the Sudan.  Jal talks about the experience of being forced into recruitment as a child soldier following the screening of “Not My Life,” a documentary on human trafficking.  It’s showing at 6:30 pm Thursday in the Great Hall of the McCrory Gardens Education and Visitors Center in Brookings.