The woman is sick with pneumonia and tuberculosis, her immune system devastated by AIDS. Thirty-three year-old Jacob Kolnyin is treating her at Kijabe Hospital, an hour’s drive north of Nairobi. She is his last patient of the day.

Jacob answers his cell; his accent rich, his voice quiet and friendly. One of 15 Sudanese doctors sent to Kenya by Christian NGO Samaritan’s Purse, it’s tough to believe he was once a child soldier. He is also a Canadian citizen. 

Sudan's Second Civil War (1983-2005)

When southern blacks refused to accept Arab and Muslim hegemony, Sudan defaulted back into war.
Armed with planes, tanks, and the ubiquitous AK-47, government troops marched into southern villages, methodically killing adults and enslaving young women.

LOST

In 1983 civil war broke out in Sudan, pitting the Arab government in Khartoum against a rebel force of southern blacks called the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M). Violence reached the southern town of Rumbek in 1984. Jacob remembers the chaos that ensued after two government trucks were blown up by an SPLA landmine:

“They [the government] went crazy shooting everywhere,” he says. At ten years old, Jacob fled his classroom for the bush. Outside town, beyond the gunfire, Jacob met up with hundreds of adrenaline-pumped boys. An entire school had decided to trek several hundred miles east into SPLA-friendly Ethiopia. And so Jacob, among the “Lost Boys of Sudan,” began his exodus. His family never got a goodbye.

The nightmare is well-documented.  Some of Jacob’s comrades were chased by lions; others were drowned at river crossings—or killed by crocodiles. “We were bombed by military jets, some died of disease…we went days without drinking water,” he remembers.“We were bombed by military jets, some died of disease…we went days without drinking water,” he remembers.

Jacob survived, persevering at last through a government attack on the Sudan-Ethiopian border. In Ethiopia the Lost Boys sought refuge at an SPLA military base. Jacob joined the rebel movement, and though he never fought on the front lines, he was given a gun and taught how to kill.

The Lost Boys of Sudan

Named after Peter Pan's crew of orphans, the plight of these children is well documented. Sara Corbett, writing for the New York Times Magazine in 2001 reported that:

74 per cent survived shelling or air bombardment
85 percent saw someone die from starvation
92 percent were shot at
97 percent witnessed a killing

CUBA

At 11 years old Jacob was posted at the Ethiopian camp where he and other Lost Boys first sought refuge. Unbeknownst to the young soldier, Fidel Castro had agreed to take in and educate 600 of the camp’s sharpest students.

On the day when officials were handing out plane tickets, Jacob happened to be with one of the chosen students who—inexplicably—refused to step forward at the calling of his name. Jacob recalls passing off his machine gun and stepping forward himself. No one seemed to care.  SPLA leader John Garang charged the lucky comrades with a mission: the move wasn’t permanent, he admonished. They must one day return and rebuild.

In Cuba Jacob picked up Spanish, completed high school and was later among 26 Sudanese students invited to study medicine. He graduated as a medical doctor, but with civil war still raging in Sudan and few opportunities for work in Cuba, Jacob felt trapped. He and his peers began to look elsewhere for help.