Re: YouTube video: Utah Boy Selling 'ICE COLD BEER' Prompts Calls to Police

[Byker]

wrote in message news:fvkkufpeu8muqojd1...@4ax.com...
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnKgvFpIbwM

What did you expect in teetotalling Mormon country? The last time I took a
road trip through Utah (1998) I noticed a few things about the motel:

-- The coffee in the lobby is decaf

-- The pop in soda machines is also caffeine-free

-- There are no ashtrays in the rooms

-- And instead of the Gideons' Bible in the drawer,
there is the Book of Mormon.

In 2001 I entitled this one "The Adventures of the Bongo Boys in
Mormonland":
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"'It's kind of like perfume under your arms, says Christine Shea, their
teacher. Uchala first sniffs a stick of women's deodorant, gingerly holding
it as if it were a museum artifact. Then, he takes a whiff of Old Spice
Mountain Rush Scent for men. 'Nice,' he says." Hell, B.O.'s nothing
compared to the stinks encountered in de mutha country. These bruthas are
going to be in for some interesting times. "Uchala takes a spoon and a fork
from one of the kitchen drawers. 'I can use these now,' he says proudly, one
in each hand. Traditionally, Sudanese use spoons or their hands to eat."
Traditionally, they also use their left hand instead of toilet paper.
You're dealing with people whose idea of an ultimate trip is a cow-piss
shower and goat-dung rubdown...

'Lost Boys', adjust to a bewildering new life in Utah

BY IRENE HSIAO
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Peter Lual Uchala stands in the health and beauty care aisle at Fred
Meyer with six other young men, staring in confusion at the array of
deodorants on the shelf before them.

At this moment these so-called "Lost Boys" of Sudan are in consumer
shock.

More than 100 choices. Dozens for women, dozens for men. Some just for
teens. Powder-fresh scents and mountain scents and those with no scent at
all.

Christine Shea, a teacher for the Salt Lake School District, mentors a group
of Sudanese "Lost Boys."

"It's kind of like perfume under your arms," says Christine Shea, their
teacher.

Uchala first sniffs a stick of women's deodorant, gingerly holding it as
if it were a museum artifact.

Then, he takes a whiff of Old Spice Mountain Rush Scent for men.

"Nice," he says.

Welcome to America, in all its commercial glory, where choosing a
deodorant is just one of myriad decisions Uchala and other Lost Boys must
make as they adopt a new lifestyle in a foreign land.

This group of lanky young men arrived here on June 12 with only the
clothes on their backs, traveling from a refugee camp in Kenya to Nairobi,
Brussels, New York, Denver and, finally, Utah. They joined about 90 such
youth from the war-torn African country who have trickled into Salt Lake
City since March.

They come via a conglomerate that includes the U.S. State Department,
the United Nations, Catholic Community Services, the International Rescue
Committee and other religious groups. Another 40 Lost Boys -- named after
the orphans in Peter Pan -- will arrive in coming months.

Over a span of approximately three days, these young men went from the
Kakuma Refugee Camp's mud huts with palm tree-thatched roofs and limited
electricity and running water to a 21st century urban center.

They are part of a larger diaspora triggered by the Sudanese civil war,
which in 1987 sent about 19,000 boys, ages 5 to 8, separated for one reason
or another from parents and family, on a thousand-mile trek for safety. The
Lost Boys moved like a swarm from Sudan to Ethiopia, back to Sudan and
finally to Kenya. About half died somewhere along the way.

Each has a story of hardship, if not horror -- of family members killed,
of lions and hyenas devouring stragglers, of deprivation in the African
desert.

Jermiah Athien Atem had turned 5 and, as is customary, had begun herding
cattle with his father. The two were roaming the countryside when the war
broke out. Atem's father was shot and killed as they attempted to return to
his mother and siblings.

"I fell around him and I cried," Atem, now 22, says. "I didn't know
where to go."
Someone grabbed him, he said, and hooked him up with the hordes looking
for refuge. He has no idea what became of his mother, four brothers and
three sisters.

Uchala learned just weeks ago through a Sudanese man now living in North
Dakota that his only brother, who left the country in 1982, is living in
Khartoum and that his father died in 1998.

On the surface, there is little evidence of what these young men have
endured. They laugh easily. They joke with each other. They share ideas,
debate and tell stories.

"We're closer to each other than brothers," says 21-year-old Augustine
Dut Kuol.

Yet it comes out in bits and pieces -- wary glances, moments of
reverie -- and a single, often repeated phrase: Those were hard times.

At Pinyido Camp in Ethiopia and later in the Kakuma Refugee Camp, they
lived on cornmeal, sorghum, mangoes and bananas and, occasionally, fish.
Every two weeks, people would fight to queue up for their food allotment.

"People would get injured because everyone wanted to get food," Uchala
says.

At the camps, they attended school and relief workers stressed the
importance of education.

The school was casual at first, with the students sitting on the ground
or in trees for their classes and sharing textbooks. More recently, benches
and tables arrived at the camp.

Most, like James Alic Garang, 21, took classes in 12 subjects such as
English, religion, math, art, business, various languages and science.

Garang, who aspires to be a lawyer, television journalist or
businessman, and the others speak English, tinged with a British accent, as
well as Kiswahili, Arabic and Dinka, their native dialect.

The Kenyan teachers also set up debate and drama clubs. Uchala, now 22,
a chatterbox in English and Dinka, naturally joined the debate club.

"I love to talk," he says, smiling.

Afternoons were spent playing sports or just talking.

The Lost Boys now in Utah came of age at Pinyido and Kakuma, spending
around 13 years at the camps. There they were introduced to Christianity,
each choosing a denomination around age 10 -- Catholic, Episcopal, Baptist
and so on. Each boy assumed a Biblical first name at baptism.

There is really no way to know their ages. As each prepared to leave
Kakuma, he was given a birth date: January 1 and then, after gauging his
physical development, a birth year.

Uchala's birthday is Jan. 1, 1979. So is Atem's. Garang and Kuol share
Jan. 1, 1980.

None left a fully formed life behind. No jobs, families or possessions.
So there is nothing to resurrect, only a life to be created.

Uchala and the other five young men were part of a group of 26 that came
to Utah in June. Home now is a sparsely furnished apartment on the city's
west side. The walls are bare, furnished with castoffs rounded up by Sharon
Young, director of migration and refugee resettlement for Catholic Community
Service in Utah.

The refrigerator is stocked with "what we know," Uchala says -- dozens
of loaves of bread and cans of corn and green beans.

Uchala takes a spoon and a fork from one of the kitchen drawers. "I can
use these now," he says proudly, one in each hand. Traditionally, Sudanese
use spoons or their hands to eat.

He and his roommates plan to pool their funds to buy a TV and a
"cleaning machine." It is clear from the sweeping motions of Uchala's hands
over the carpet he is describing a vacuum.

The boys spend each morning at school, receiving an introduction to
their new lives through a three-week course that Susan Roberts, director of
the Sudanese ministry at St. John's Lutheran Church, calls "How to Survive
in America."

They learn rudiments of an American lifestyle: how to use U.S. currency,
ride a bus, budget money, check out library books, decipher Utah laws,
operate a computer, place a stamp on an envelope, buy groceries. The course
is taught by Shea, who has a degree in cultural anthropology and is employed
by the Salt Lake City School District.

"They're very bright," she says. "If they work hard, these opportunities
are here for them."

But there are some things no classroom can prepare them for. When
fireworks exploded over Sugar House Park on the Fourth of July, Kuol was
momentarily scared, the sounds triggering memories of the war that ravaged
his homeland.

"It looked like the city was on fire," he says, able to chuckle about it
now. "I thought the fire would fall on me."

Once they complete the course, the young men will be placed in classes
at Horizonte Instruction and Training Center. Some may eventually go to
college. These Lost Boys, who tended cattle with their families so many
years ago, will be expected to get jobs and support themselves.

Depending on his circumstances, each may receive 30 days to eight months
worth of aid to cover rent, food and other expenses. Relief agencies
sometimes continue to check on them for up to 18 months.

Bryan Lindemood, pastor at St. John's Lutheran Church in Salt Lake City,
and Stephen Thep, the church's resource person for the Sudanese community,
remain cautious about the young men's spiritual welfare.

Thep is concerned the pervasive consumer culture of America will lure
the Lost Boys away from their hard-won Christianity.

But the fact is, these young men were exposed to some trappings of
American culture in the refugee camps, largely through a television set up
in one hut at the camp.

On the day he paid his first visit to a Utah grocery store, Benjamin
Akon, 20, wore a Michael Jordan jersey, jeans imprinted with a shadow image
of Jordan grasping a basketball and an Adidas jacket he'd acquired in Kakuma
Refugee Camp.

But there is still much to absorb.

As Akon and the others saunter around the grocery store like
schoolchildren at a museum, they appear awed at the abundance of products
filling the shelves. They are shocked to learn that unsold items, like jugs
of milk, might be dumped.

At the meat and fish counter, they see their first shrimp. In the
produce section they recognize mangoes and bananas, but the Kiwi fruit is a
mystery.

"Is that the shoe polish?" Uchala asks Shea.

Slowly, they are adjusting to life in Utah. Still, there are trying
times.

Atem begins talking about the nights of terror in the camps, the robbers
who came after what little the refugees had, killing them if they resisted.
Life was at the "zero level," he says.

And then he tells this story:

He and his friends like to gather at the basketball courts at the
apartment complex. But recently some people have been harassing them there
and it has confused them.

"What are we supposed to do for them?" Atem asks.

One of the antagonists bullied Atem, saying, "Why you looking at me with
the dark eyes?"

Pointing to his dark skin, Atem wonders if discrimination or something
more is behind the taunting.

"In every nation there is bad and good people," he says. "We take it
simply."

http://www.sltrib.com/07222001/utah/utah.htm