Sudan's 'Lost Girls' Find Safe Haven in Boulder

Rabbi Deborah Bronstein, who leads the congregation at Har HaShem, had never heard anything about the Lost Girls of the Sudan until 2004. As she prepared to deliver a Rosh Hashanah sermon, she received a letter about a German nun, Sister Luise Radlmeier, who was trying to help the Lost Girls of the Sudan resettle in the United States and Canada.

Many girls were raped, killed or sold into slavery following the raids in Sudan and so fewer girls than boys made it to the refugee camps. Once in the camps, girls were taken in by “foster” families but they were not safe. Girls were being raped and beaten and denied educations. Their “families” often kept them as unpaid servants or sold them as wives. But it was the boys who were tagged for resettlement because they were without family.

"I felt like humanity was not hearing these people who were crying out," says Bronstein, a petite and thoughtful woman who chooses her words carefully. "This is very offensive to Jews because nobody heard us cry out during the Holocaust."

At that Rosh Hashanah service, Bronstein (at left) spoke about creating a new year filled with good deeds that ended with a plea. She asked them to help her bring 10 of these girls to Boulder and give them a new life filled with opportunity.

Cecilia Achuka is another Sudanese refugee who now lives in Boulder. Both she and Grace are from a town called Lotukei and both fled in 1992. Cecilia believes that exhaustion or trauma, or some combination of the two, is the reason neither girl remembers how long they walked to Kenya or what happened along the way. "People told me that someone picked me up and ran with me. That is all I know," says Cecilia, now 22.

Grace and Cecilia were two of the roughly 3,000 Sudanese girls who arrived at the Kakuma refugee camp in 1992. Since then, most of them have vanished. The assumption is that they were sold by their foster families. Grace and Celia both ended up in the Kakuma refugee camp where they were "adopted." Both say they were kept, at least in part, to perform duties their families believed were too dangerous. "They wanted us to do things like go out to get firewood," says Grace. "It is dangerous to leave the camp because people get raped. They know this and they want us to do it."

Both Grace and Cecilia have fierce independent streaks, and, against the wishes of their foster families, they went to school. "I knew then I wanted to be something," says Grace, who now speaks perfect English with a graceful African lilt. It was because they were good students that they were contacted by Sister Luise, who put them in boarding school and helped find them homes outside Kenya.

At least 70 members of the Har HaShem congregation volunteered for Rabbi Bronstein’s Lost Girls project. They weren’t the only ones who wanted to help. When word got out about Har HaShem’s project, many religious leaders, like Rabbi Marc Soloway at Bonai Shalom, offered to lend a hand.

"I told him, ‘No way,'" recalls Bronstein, with a smile. "I told him to go get his own girls."

And when another synagogue and a Quaker church contacted Bronstein to offer help, she told them the same thing. “Go get your own.”

Bringing these girls to the United States was not easy. The synagogue spent about $700 a month while they were finalizing their documents to come to the United States. Once here, Har HaShem estimates it spent at least $8,000 per girl, although the amounts varied.

Working together, the synagogues and church coordinated the duties involved. Some people undertook the job of badgering the US Embassy in Kenya to process the applications. Others started collecting furniture and clothes. Others found affordable housing and lined up jobs.

"It felt like we were waiting forever," says Bronstein.

In fact, it took less than two years for the first girls to arrive.

As anxious as the Har HaShem congregation was, the girls in Kenya were more anxious. "I had no idea what would happen to me in Kenya after high school," says Grace. “I knew for sure I would not be going to a university.”

Since Grace arrived in 2006, a total of 21 more girls have come to live in Boulder, Colorado thanks to Har HaShem and the three other synagogues and churches who sponsored them. Prior to this project, less than 90 Sudanese Lost Girls came to the US, most of them sisters and cousins of the Lost Boys.

Grace (at right with Rabbi Bronstein) says now the initial culture shock of moving to the US was overwhelming. "Everything was so hard," she recalls. She could not understand unless people spoke very slowly. The first time Rabbi Bronstein came to the apartment, Grace did not open the door because she had never heard a doorbell before.

"My life is completely different now," says Grace. She now works at a senior center and is studying to be a nurse. Cecilia, too, struggled initially, but is now a sophomore at the University of Colorado studying international relations. "Most people we know will never have this chance," says Cecilia, who was sponsored by the Quakers. "These people changed my life."

Bronstein will not take credit for changing the lives of the 22 Sudanese girls who have come to the US as a result of the Har HaShem project. "I did not do this alone," she points out. Certainly, dozens of volunteers were involved as well as the other synagogues and churches who later joined the effort. And, frankly, none of this would have been possible without Sister Luise, who was on the ground in Kenya and whose work inspired Bronstein.

Grace, too, acknowledges that the whole community embraced her. Yet, she reserves special praise for Rabbi Bronstein, the woman who heard her cry. "She is more than a mother to me,” says Grace. “She is an amazing woman and because of her, I have a completely different life."