One of Sudan’s ‘lost boys’ finds home with Army after living for years as a refugee
By Drew Brooks
Staff writer
FORWARD OPERATING BASE PASAB, Afghanistan – War shattered Peter Kuch’s family and forced him to grow up in the appalling poverty of refugee camps.
But he is willing to face another war – this time as a soldier serving the country that saved him.
Kuch is a 33-year-old sergeant in the 82nd Airborne Division. He’s on his first deployment, serving with the 782nd Brigade Support Battalion at Forward Operating Base Pasab in Afghanistan.
He learned about war 25 years ago.
That was when the sound of guns shook him from sleep in the middle of the night. His village in southern Sudan was under attack.
Kuch and his parents ran away, but they were separated in the chaos. That was the last time he saw them.
Kuch became one of the thousands of orphaned children of the Sudanese civil war – soon to be known to the world as the Lost Boys of Sudan. He joined thousands of boys like himself who trekked through war, disease and hunger to get to refugee camps. Uncounted numbers did not survive.
When Kuch ran away from his village, he found himself with a few cousins his age. They joined up with a larger group of refugees who walked for 28 days to Ethiopia.
“We couldn’t go back home,” Kuch said. “Our villages were completely burned down.”
Ethiopia provided an escape from the immediate danger of the war, but it was no haven.
Kuch had lost his family. At night, he dreamed of the attack on his village and cried.
“I was scared,” he said.
And, he said, “it wasn’t only me.”
Thousands of Sudanese refugees were crowded along the Ethiopian border in squalid conditions. Many, like Kuch, had been orphaned by the fighting.
Then, war erupted in Ethiopia, and refugee camps were attacked.
Kuch and the other Lost Boys were back in Sudan. But their homes were gone.
The same armies that had destroyed villages four years earlier now attacked the columns of refugees.
“In the day, we hid,” Kuch said. “When night came, we walked. Six to eight months and we walked all that time.”
The survivors made it to Kenya. That’s where Kuch would spend the next 10 years of his life.
And that’s where his salvation began.
In Kenya, United Nations workers helped Kuch get into a boarding school where he learned English. He also met his future wife, Evelynne, in the camp.
Even though life was better, Kuch had little reason to hope for a brighter future.
“There was never enough food; poor medical treatment,” he said. “We never knew what would happen tomorrow.”
It was not until he learned that the United Nations was working with the United States to take 4,500 of the Lost Boys to America that Kuch began to dream that his life had possibilities.
He applied to be part of the program. He went through a series of interviews and background checks. He waited.
Then he learned that he had been chosen.
“I was lucky,” he said.
Kuch arrived in America in the summer of 2001.
Just weeks later, he watched as the horrors of the 9/11 attacks unfolded on television.
“My country was at war for decades,” Kuch said. “And now war had followed me. I was heartbroken. I was so mad.”
Kuch wanted to join the Army then, but he wasn’t eligible.
He could, however, begin to build a life in his adopted home.
He lived in upstate New York, where he saw snow for the first time. He was able to go to college, studying hard between two jobs.
In 2003, Kuch learned that his parents were alive and living with other family members in what is now South Sudan. He has never been able to go back to see them, but he has been sending money to support them for years.
Six years after arriving in America, Kuch was working for a market research company. He and a friend talked about joining the military.
“It was a joke at first,” Kuch said. “Then I thought ‘That’s not a bad idea.’ ”
Kuch said he saw joining the Army as a way to pay back the country that had both rescued him and helped bring stability to his homeland.
“Sudan’s was a war that I thought would never end,” he said. “Peace came to Sudan and South Sudan because of America. I might not make a difference, but I thought serving would be giving back on behalf of myself and thousands of Sudanese.”
Kuch joined the Army in 2008. A year later, in a ceremony at Fort Bragg, he became a U.S. citizen.
“It was a big day for me,” he said. “This is a great country.”
Kuch said the horrors of his years as a refugee don’t haunt him any more.
He and Evelynne have started their American family, welcoming a son a little over a year ago.
In June, he will have served in the Army for four years.
And the deployment to Kandahar province in Afghanistan has brought his experiences with war full circle.
“I have been through a lot,” Kuch said. “I was eager to go. This is the reason I joined the military.”
The former Lost Boy has found his place – paying his debt of service to the country that gave him a home.
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