Press
The accidental storyteller
08/28/2007
For the soft-spoken, unassuming man he is, Akol Joseph Maker has invited a staggering amount of personal scrutiny lately.In July, Maker, 29, a refugee from southern Sudan, let a Fargo filmmaking crew in on some family routines he normally keeps private. They filmed him making goat soup and a polenta dish in his Fargo apartment – a traditionally female role in his home country, which he assumed here as caretaker of three younger siblings.
The shooting was inspired in turn by another revelatory act of Maker's. Last year, he finished a book, "From Africa to America," which tells in wrenching, vulnerable detail of his escape from his war-torn homeland.
In recent years, as cruelty and carnage in Sudan migrated from the south to Darfur, so-called Lost Boys across the country have taken a more active role in the telling of their stories. Maker, who works and goes to school full time, fidgets in the spotlight but feels a sense of urgency.
"In America, many people don't know what happens in other parts of the world," he says. "I tried to communicate that, be the voice of my country."
Getting the word out
In 2005, Maker brought an article he had written to Mary Pull at the North Dakota State University's Center for Writers. Pull, who had helped him with a school paper, read the story – and questioned its veracity. Thousands of boys trekking alone through Sudan in search of safety, falling prey to crocodiles and hunger and marauding militias – it surely must be an awful exaggeration.
A little research convinced Pull otherwise, and she helped Maker publish his tale in World, a Christian magazine.
When Maker arrived in Fargo in 2003 after spending 11 years in Kenya's Kakuma refugee camp, he didn't expect he'd have to do a lot of explaining about the hatred-ridden place he fled.
"When I was in Africa, I thought the whole world knew," he says. "But when I came here, I realized people didn't know where southern Sudan is on the map."
He focused on adapting to life in America as he juggled family, work and school. He was mostly reticent about his story. In the meantime, war broke out in Darfur, waged by the government that had fought his people in the south. Help was slow to arrive.
Shortly after his article ran, Maker returned to the Center for Writers and asked Pull to help him expand the piece into a book. The criminal justice major, who had started learning English in refugee camps, seemed totally undaunted by the task.
responsibilities to write a page or two at a time, and he still typed with one finger. "My book is not that big," he says with a laugh, "because typing with one finger is not that easy."
Pull edited the story as he wrote – an unwavering, simply told account of his travels across Africa and his slow adjustment to Fargo realities.
He kept going.
"He sees great injustice in Africa," Pull says. "He saw such brutality and such hatred that he can't just go about his life. He wants people to know what's going on, so it can be stopped."
From paper to screen
After Maker pitched his draft unsuccessfully to several publishers, he decided to self-publish it. While he awaited its release this winter, he met Deb Dawson, a Fargo writer who was instantly taken with his story: "I think Joseph is an articulate man who's come through trauma and hardship and has totally made lemonade out of lemons."
She introduced him to Concordia College professor and filmmaker Greg Carlson, who decided to tackle a documentary about Maker's life in Fargo, picking up where the book leaves off. He assembled a team that shot footage of the family dinner and interviews with Maker and his siblings.
"He was very nervous to go shopping, talk on camera and be photographed eating," Carlson says. "But I think he's seen other Lost Boys share their stories in ways that have made a real impact on their communities."
Indeed, just this summer, Maker was best man at the East Coast wedding of a Sudanese refugee named John Dau, the hero of Sundance Festival Jury Grand Prize winner "God Grew Tired of Us," a documentary produced by Brad Pitt and narrated by Nicole Kidman. After the movie's release, Dau formed the John Dau Sudan Foundation, which raises money for health care and education projects in southern Sudan.
The filmmakers hope to invite Dau and director Christopher Quinn for a special screening of "God Grew Tired of Us" at the Fargo Theatre this fall – and use the occasion to preview their own project. They also hope to raise funds for a trip to Sudan this winter, where Maker wants to revisit his home village and find out more about his parents' fate.
"I wasn't sure whether it would get this far,"Maker says of his bid to tell his story. "I doubt myself though I know I have a lot of energy. I surprised myself to come this far."
Article provided by The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead.
Author: Mila Koumpilova mkoumpilova@forumcomm.com
