Escaping Oblivion

Nhial Deng couldn’t sleep. In late March the slender young man with deep-brown eyes lay under a low sheet-metal roof. He was thinking about a place he had never seen but often imagined. A famous bronze gate stood there, and soon he would know if he would one day walk through it. Long after midnight, Deng’s mind galloped far away from the Kakuma Refugee Camp, a vast stretch of mud-brick and concrete shelters in northwestern Kenya. The 22-year-old arrived there more than a decade ago, and each year felt heavier than the last. The camp was a cage. He wanted out. He wanted to go to college, too. Just 3 percent of college-age refugees in the world are enrolled in higher education. He wanted to study in the United States, believing it’s a gateway to another life. He was stateless, separated from his parents, with no savings. He was also a reader, storyteller, and community leader who held learning sacred. “Education is all I yearn for,” he wrote in his college application essay. “If I am not a student, I am oblivion.”  Complete Article HERE