WASHINGTON, D.C.
Makwei Mabioor Deng looked out the shuttle-bus window on his way to class at George Washington University and wondered aloud whether there were crocodiles in the Potomac River. Three weeks earlier, he had never been on a plane, never heard of a microwave oven, never seen a library full of books and computers.
Now, having spent 16 years in a refugee camp after his Sudanese village was destroyed, he has fast-forwarded into a new life as a college student in the United States. He is studying economics and Arabic and hopes to go to law school. He also is puzzling through numbered streets and marveling over air conditioning, experiencing a culture shock like few college freshmen.
He is here because of the work of a handful of GWU students who helped develop the scholarship program that provides Deng a free education. The student activists protested violence in Sudan’s Darfur region and became concerned about the larger plight of that country, including the people who fled an earlier civil war in the south. They wanted to create long-term change by helping Sudanese students study here and then go home to improve their country.
Their idea is spreading as Darfur has captured the imagination of student activists across the country. The GWU students’ organization, which has chapters on 35 campuses and received an award last month from the Clinton Global Initiative, attracted such prominent supporters as former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright and inspired several schools to begin developing similar efforts. Tufts University in Massachusetts is interested in funding a similar scholarship if an appropriate applicant is found, and Mills College in California has committed to the program.
It is all beginning with Deng, a 22-year-old from southern Sudan. He has been given a rare opportunity, but there’s a condition. When Deng has finished his education, he will have to leave the United States behind: If he chooses not to go back to Sudan to work in public service promoting peace, he will have to find a way to repay the grant of more than $200,000.
He never had a moment of hesitation about coming. “This is something that is very great,” he said. “When I come back to Africa, I will have something that I can use to help myself, my people and my country.”
