When Aduei Riak stood in front of an overflowing 'Iolani classroom, she first posed the question to students, "What do you know about Sudan?"

Most answers were initially limited to single word or short sentence answers: hot, in Africa, near Darfur.

Forty-five minutes later, after Riak's speech, students would leave the room with a deeper appreciation for the plight of Sudanese refugees and the tragic, unspeakable genocide of 2.5 million people there. 

"I am here today because so many people invested in me," she says. Her visit to 'Iolani was made possible by the Berit Mexia Peace Institute and teacher Peter Greenhill.

When Riak was between three and six-years-old, she walked more than 1,000 miles over months and months to flee a civil war in her homeland of Sudan. The war began after the British government handed over control of its colony, Sudan, to Egypt. However, southern Sudan is an oil-rich region, and the French government wanted access to this oil. Greed, racism and politics entered the picture. A civil war erputed in 1983 which resulted in 2.5 million people being killed and 5 million people being displaced, Riak said.

In 1987, Raik and her family were forced to leave their home in southern Sudan and to walk to Ethopia, crossing desserts and rivers. Once, she went for five days without food. And once she felt like giving up, if not for the insistence of a stranger who told her to keep walking or he would kill her himself.

She eventually found her way to a refugee camp in Kenya.

"I've seen a lot of things that a person of my age should not have been exposed to," Riak was quoted in USA Today as saying. "The (memories) tend to be ver dark and fray. I don't like talking about them, because for me talking about them is living them again." 

Then in 1999, the U.S. State Department, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other advocates launched a program that resettled 4,000 refugee boys  in cities acorss the United States. Only 89 girls came as part of that program and Riak was one of them..

Speaking very little English, she arrived in Belmont, Massachusettts to live with a foster family when she was 16. She was helped by neighbors, friends, teachers and eventually graduated from Brandeis University. She returned to Sudan in 2006 to visit a refugee camp and saw her mother and father for the first time since she was a young girl.

She is now in law school and wants to later use her education and experience to help people. She also visits schools, like 'Iolani, to spread her story, and to increase awareness about  Sudan and her country's lost children.

For more information, check www.nesei.org.

(Source: USA Today's story by Charisse Jones)