Known as the Lost Boys of Sudan, there were thousands of them who fled genocide in the 1980s.
Among them was Nicodemus Lim.
He was born and raised in a small village in the African nation of Sudan. The village had no modern conveniences or electronics, schools, hospitals or even running water. Drinking water came from nearby streams.
He had 23 siblings owing to his father’s six wives. The family lived in mud and grass huts.
From an early age, Lim enjoyed hunting with his father, using dogs and spears, and fishing.
“Villagers were farmers,” Lim said. “They kept cattle and other livestock and raised grain.”
Since there were no schools, children’s days were full of chores. Boys tended the cattle outside the village, and girls worked at home in the village.
Everything changed in December,1987, when the Sudan government sent soldiers to raid primarily Christian villages in southern Sudan resulting in mass killing.
“I was tending cattle when I heard gunshots in the village,” said Lim, who was 9. “I didn’t know what was happening, but I saw people running, screaming and crying.
“We hid in the bush. We were mostly boys who were with the cattle.”
Led by some adults, they began walking and left their families in the village behind. Many family died. As they ed villages, more boys who had been tending cattle and some girls ed them, growing their number to many hundreds.
They walked for three months.
“It was hard,” Lim recalled. “I had no shoes, we crossed hot deserts with little water and no shade. There were dangerous animals and diseases.”
“We lived on wild fruit and leaves. I drank my own urine and ate red mud.”
“We were desperate. People died along the way.”
Lim made it to Ethiopia where he ed other refugees and lived in a camp for four years.
But in 1991 Ethiopian soldiers forced the refugees to leave.
They were chased to the Sudan border where they swam across the Gilo River. Soldiers fired at the refugees. An estimated 2,000 people died during that massacre.
“I could hear bullets go by. I saw people get hit and others drown or get eaten by crocodiles,” Lim recalled.
He made it to a border town in Sudan, but the Sudan government dropped bombs on the town and sent soldiers. The refugees left for Kenya, again by foot.
After a perilous two-month journey to Kenya, Lim reached a large refugee camp where he spent the next nine years. There, at 13, he first attended organized school where he learned, among other things, some English.
By 2001, the refugees’ plight had received western media attention prompting American officials to visit the camp. They selected some of the refugees, including Lim, to immigrate to America.
“All I knew about the U.S. was Rambo and a rabbit story,” Lim said.
He arrived in San Diego on March 13, 2001.
“I was taught basics — how to operate a light switch, use the bathroom and refrigerator, cross a street, use a bus,” he said.
But, most importantly, Lim learned about freedom and the ability to make choices and succeed.
He flourished through hard work and help from Catholic Charities and Lost Boys of Sudan, a San Diego nonprofit.
In 2002 Lim, then 24, enrolled in San Diego Job Corps and earned a GED high school equivalency. He also first learned about computers.
In 2007, he earned a bachelor’s of science in Information Systems from Point Loma Nazarene University.
After working at various data processing and computer technology jobs, Lim has worked for the city of San Diego since 2014, first as an information systems analyst and then personnel analyst.
While working for the city, he attended graduate school part time, earning a master’s in public istration in 2017.
Lim, now 45, and his wife, Rachel (who is also from Sudan), own a home in southeastern San Diego and have four children with another on the way.
They are all U.S. citizens.
No longer a “lost boy,” Lim is grateful for America.
“American freedom,” he said, “gave me a second chance at life.”
About this series
Goldsmith is a Union-Tribune contributing columnist.
We welcome reader suggestions of people who have done something extraordinary or otherwise educational, inspiring or interesting and who have not received much previous media. Please send suggestions to Jan Goldsmith at [email protected]
