Tuesday, June 28, 2011

HuffPost Greatest Person Of The Day: Dominic Diing, Former Lost Boy Of Sudan, Dedicates His Life To Helping His Homeland

HuffPost Greatest Person Of The Day: Dominic Diing, Former Lost Boy Of Sudan, Dedicates His Life To Helping His Homeland: As Dominic Diing recounted the story of his journey from Sudan to America, it was easy to get swept up in the cinematic scope of events leading up to his current position as a nonprofit leader and PhD candidate.

Dominic spoke, almost casually, of the hundreds of miles he walked at seven years old, from his war torn village in southern Sudan, to Ethiopia, all the while staving off hunger, illness and wild animal attacks.

'Many, many people died,' he said, including his brothers and uncles among the thousands of others who were displaced in the journey. 'Life, it was not very good.'

Dominic recounted the next few years at a refugee camp in Ethiopia, being trained by to kill by local militias. And then, when war began to rage in that region as well, his subsequent yearlong trek to Kakuma, Kenya, where a United Nations-sponsored camp provided 12-year-old Dominic and thousands of other displaced youth with food and education.