What Is The What

The Lost Boys of Sudan have trouble being recognized as worthy of attention and help. When Deng and Achor Achor meet the police woman to report the robbery of their home, she shows little interest until they tell her they are from Sudan, after which she immediately comes alive: “Wait. Darfur, right? It is a fact that Darfur is now better known than the country in which that region sits” (238). She then asks if they were part of the genocide, to which Achor Achor’s response is to try to explain and clarify. Darfur is a popular topic in the west, and a place Americans may have heard of, but the officer quickly loses interest. As Deng points out: “We refugees can be celebrated one day, helped and lifted up, and then utterly ignored by all when we prove to be a nuisance. When we find trouble here, it is invariably our own fault” (239). This also points to the general ignorance and disinterest that Americans seem to have toward the tragedies occurring in Africa. Even something as terrible as genocide can be forgotten when it occurs on the other side of the world.