John Bul Dau likes to say he was given his six-foot-eight-inch frame, and his providence for a reason. “God does not create me as a very tall person for nothing. I have a role to play,” he has said. “I was born to do something.”
At 13, taller than many of his Sudanese peers, Dau remembers being chosen as one of the leaders of an estimated 20,000 boys on a harrowing exodus from the Second Sudanese Civil War. The march east took place in 1987, after northern Sudanese Muslims ordered all southern Sudanese Christian boys to be killed. During that period, he recalls eating dirt to survive and burying friends; he says he felt “God grew tired” of him and his young countrymen. Only years later would the world begin to pay attention to Dau and his brothers, calling them the “Lost Boys of Sudan.”
In 2001, Dau managed, with some luck and with the help of the United States, to leave a United Nations refugee camp alongside more than 3,000 other Lost Boys. Documentarians filmed his journey from the camp to Syracuse, New York, and it became a Sundance Film Festival contender in 2006. The title of the film, “God Grew Tired of Us,” borrows Dau’s line.
Fortune has likewise smiled on Dau in Park City, where he will speak this week for the third time at the Glenwild Club and Spa tonight and again at a book signing at the Spotted Frog Bookstore on Thursday.
With Park City residents Tom Crosswhite, Chris Ball, Ann Bagley and Forrest Lorick, Dau started the John Dau Sudan Foundation, to build medical clinics with the potential to treat typhoid, cataracts and old wounds from a 22-year civil war between North and South that ended in 2005. The first clinic opened this May in Southern Sudan.
“Park City is the backbone of the foundation,” Dau says. “People here are very generous. They want to do the right thing with their wealth. People in Park City treat the world like it’s their own.”
In addition to opening their pocketbooks, Park City residents have shared their expertise to Dau’s foundation. Dental surgeon Scott Kimche and University of Utah ophthalmologists Geoffrey Tabin, M.D., and Alan Crandall, M.D., plan to visit the clinic in the near future.
Paul Crowe has volunteered his 35-years of experience in healthcare and medical service management.
“When you see the movie, it’s compelling and you realize how fortunate we are here, in America and that it’s time to help someone,” he says. “And once I got to know [John Dau], his sincerity and his vision, it seemed like the right thing to do John’s heart is as big as his frame.”
Crowe says the biggest challenge has been the politics of getting the right technologies into the country, and experienced doctors to the clinic. “In the research we did, there wasn’t any infrastructure,” he explains. What had been there had been destroyed in the war.”
The John Dau Sudan Foundation is starting from scratch, in a country with no clean, running water, no electricity and no cars. Each clinic costs an estimated $250,000 to construct and $250,000 to maintain on an annual basis, with doctors from Kenya and the United States lending their support.
Crowe and the foundation are planning a trip to Sudan in December, with plans to build five more clinics.
Sudan is a lush land of “milk and honey,” with resources like gold and oil and fertile farming ground, according to Dau, resources that have yet to be exploited.
“It is my number one goal [to build medical clinics] because Southern Sudan needs education and food, but you can’t go to school if you’re not feeling well and you can’t run a business,” he explains.
Dau recognizes bitterness, a sentiment felt by many Southern Sudanese, was an option, but he chose otherwise. Today, he is in the process of earning a degree in public policy at the University of Syracuse, and lives with his mother, his sister, his wife and his daughter.
“This is my message: I went through all of those things and I don’t want revenge,” he explains. “I want to bring development to Sudan to help people get out of bitterness and get better Forgiveness is important.”
Already, clinicians at the Southern Sudan clinic report old enemies lining up side by side for treatment. And that vision alone gives Dau, founder of the clinic, reason to hope for a brighter future for his country.
John Bul Dau will join Dr. Geoffrey Tabin, Dr. Alan Crandall and local members of the John Dau Sudan Foundation tonight, Wednesday, Sept. 5 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Glenwild Club and Spa. Clips from films featuring Tabin and Crandall’s work in cataract surgery called “The Miracle Doctors” and the documentary “God Grew Tired of Us” will be featured. Tickets are $100. For more information, visit www.johndausudanfoundation.org.
A free book signing featuring Dau, author of the book “God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir,” will take place Thursday, Sept. 6 at the Spotted Frog Bookstore from 7 to 9 p.m. For details, visit www.spottedfrogbooks.com.