His parents were farmers who tended livestock and cultivated crops to provide for their seven children. It would seem like an amazing coincidence that in the city of Darfur, with over 9 million inhabitants, almost everyone was born on the same day.” “If you ask most people in Sudan” Guy jokes, “they will tell you they were born on January 1. His advice to Google “Guy Josif Adam Darfur” if I encountered any biographical questions confirmed this suspicion.įor bureaucratic and official documentation, most in Sudan follow a similar procedure. Sipping a cup of steaming vanilla coffee, Guy began weaving from his painful childhood to the present day in a meticulous, almost rehearsed fluency that made me certain this was not his first interview. “The Fur tribe does not keep dates as Western cultures do,” he explained during our first meeting at the Kennedy School. Yet he does not know the exact date of his birth and believes he is 24 to 26 years old. According to his Sudanese passport, his journey “from nowhere to somewhere,” as he puts it, began on Jan. Born on New Year’s Dayįor Guy (who prefers to use his first name), a birthday celebration is a novel phenomenon. Many Sudanese have fled to neighboring countries - war-torn - to escape the violence and instability of their own.Īdam, who said he changed his name to Guy Josif Adam to honor the people who helped him, is currently studying international human rights law at Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education. Security Council estimates show that more than 2.7 million Darfuris have been displaced over the past 18 years. In order to survive the slaughter in Darfur, it was the promise of education - the bedrock of democracy and freedom - Abdelhamid Yousif Ismail Adam clung to throughout his turbulent youth. I wanted to write this not just to demonstrate the sheer diversity of Harvard’s student body, but also to bring to light violence that, despite no longer dominating news headlines, continues to rage on. The next day I met with Guy at Harvard Kennedy School, where I interviewed him for the first of three times. We talked and I was both shocked and mesmerized by his life story. AUTHOR’S NOTE: My first encounter with Guy, or Abdelhamid Yousif Ismail Adam, was at a function organized by the Harvard Hillel in mid-April.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |