POST
PRODUCTION
SCRIPT


FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
INTERNATIONAL EDITION
2010

Sudan School
22 mins 20 secs



©2010
ABC Ultimo Centre
700 Harris Street Ultimo
NSW 2007 Australia

GPO Box 9994
Sydney
NSW 2001 Australia
Phone: 61 2 8333 4383
Fax:     61 2 8333 4859

e-mail    
Publicity:
It was unimaginable. A horrifying onslaught of deadly violence, bloody mayhem and then an exodus of children. Many of them infants.


“We left as the sun reddened and dropped and we directed ourselves to the desert. We had been told by the villagers that we were close to Ethiopia, that all that was left was to cross the desert, that in a week’s time we would find the end of Sudan. The dying began on the fifth day.” ‘WHAT IS THE WHAT’


Thousands of children walking across a desert for well over a thousand kilometres. Many wouldn’t survive. Those who did became known as The Lost Boys. Valentino Deng was one of them and how he survived the dangers of the trek - human and wild – and the physical and psychological scars and bruises of his ordeal is nothing short of miraculous.


“I turned around and could see the soldiers, kneeling in the grass of the riverbank, shooting at us as we crossed. A scream came from very close. I turned to see a boy in the jaws of a crocodile. The river bloomed red and the boy’s face disappeared.” ‘WHAT IS THE WHAT’



What’s also extraordinary is how and in what form Deng’s story managed to reach a much wider world. The Lost Boy had managed to escape the trauma and entrenched divisions of his homeland for the United States. It was there he met author Dave Eggers who was being feted by readers and critics as a breakthrough new literary voice thanks to the spectacular success of his book ‘A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius’.


The pair collaborated for four years and the result was a fictionalised account called ‘What is The What’ in which Eggers draws directly from Deng’s thoughts , encounters and experiences but tells it within the framework of a novel. There was criticism but overwhelmingly there applause.


“The story of the lost boys and Valentino’s story in particular, just hadn’t been told. This is war that you know claimed over two million lives and we knew almost nothing about it.” DAVE EGGERS - AUTHOR


‘What is The What?’ became a publishing sensation. Deng suddenly found himself in the company of Presidents and Hollywood A-listers. Movie deals were in the wind. But what happened next … ?


Neither author not subject could have imagined it and not too many know. Until now.


Sunset /B&W photos
EXTRACT FROM BOOK: We left as the sun reddened and dropped and we directed ourselves to the desert. We had been told by the villagers that we were close to Ethiopia, that all that was left was to cross the desert, that in a week’s time we would find the end of Sudan. The dying began on the fifth day.
00:00
Valentino and Doug walk
and it took an extraordinary partnership to bring it to the world. Valentino Deng and his American friend Dave Eggers spent four years writing a book about Valentino’s childhood nightmare.
00:31
Dave Eggers/B&W photos Sudanese children
DAVE EGGERS: I think we have a fascination for children who’ve lost everything and have become separated from their parents, and we know that this happens during war, but this was something so unique where tens of thousands of children walking more or less alone across a desert eight hundred miles.
CAMPBELL: Together they’ve told a tale that captivated millions and even became the must read book for a president.
00:53
Valentino and Doug walk
Now they’ve begun a new journey, using a shared passion for education to help rebuild a shattered society.
01:21
Flowers
Music
01:30
Dave. Super:
DAVE EGGERS, Author “What is the What”
DAVE EGGERS:  Here in the US people take their education for granted and he can say well I walked 800 miles through war-ravaged Sudan just to sit on the grass and learn ABC’s in the dirt.
01:35

Valentino. Super:
VALENTINO DENG
VALENTINO DENG: Wow if humans can do this.... you know I’m happy and I laugh about it and I say I’m proud to be a part of this society as well.
01:52
School children parade

02:02

CAMPBELL: This is something you won’t often see in the West – crowds of kids excited about going to school.
02:13

Singing
02:19

CAMPBELL:  In southern Sudan, it’s now every child’s dream to get an education. Not so long ago, children weren’t marching to school, they were fleeing for their lives. Valentino is determined to give these children a chance his generation never had.
02:24
Valentino
VALENTINO DENG: I want something best for my country. I want something better for my people. I want something that will bring them peace.
02:43
Child with cattle
CAMPBELL: He was a young cattle herder, perhaps eight or nine years old, when the war swept into his village in the early 1980s.
02:55
Woman cooking
For decades there had been tension between these mainly Christian Africans of southern Sudan and the Muslim Arabs of the north. After the southerners rebelled, the north attacked their villages. First they used helicopter gun ships.
03:07

Book extract over gunship shots. Super:
“What is the What” by Dave Eggers
Music
03:25

EXTRACT FROM BOOK: Now there were five or more of these machines, great black crickets in every direction. Adults were running from the machines, falling, screaming.
03:29
Dust storm
CAMPBELL: Then came the men on horseback.
EXTRACT FROM BOOK: From our hiding place we watched the storm overtake the town. All was dust. I heard the crack of gunfire behind us. Horses burst through the grass to the right and left.
03:40
UN Archive photos
CAMPBELL: Thousands of children fled into the bush, including many children like Valentino who became separated from their families. The children banded together to try to escape the fighting.
03:58
Children walking
Music
04:10

VALENTINO DENG: We were walking to Ethiopia but we were not safe. There would be the Sudan armed forces who would spot any moving target in southern Sudan and drop bombs at them,
04:14
Valentino
so we would see dead bodies everywhere.
04:26
Children walking
Music
04:29
Valentino
VALENTINO DENG:  Everyone was looking for a safer place and whatever it took, you know, walking at day and night, we did it.
04:35

Music
04:45
B&W photos. Lost boys
CAMPBELL: Groups of orphans as young as three walked for months across the desert to reach Ethiopia.
04:49
UN Archive tape of camp. Super:
“What is the What” by Dave Eggers
BOOK EXTRACT Within days there were thousands of boys and soon after the boys arrived, there were adults and families and babies and the land was crowded with Sudanese. A city of refugees rose up within weeks. It is something to see, people simply sitting, surrounded by rebels and Ethiopian soldiers, waiting to be fed.
04:56
B&W photos. Lost boys
CAMPBELL: Then when Ethiopia expelled them, they had to march all over again to Kenya as the civil war raged around them.
05:17
Glinting river
EXTRACT FROM BOOK: I turned around and I could see the soldiers, kneeling in the grass of the riverbank, shooting at us as we crossed. A scream came from very close. I turned to see a boy in the jaws of a crocodile. The river bloomed red and the boy’s face disappeared.
05:28
Valentino
CAMPBELL: They actually were firing on you?
VALENTINO DENG: Yes.
CAMPBELL: As you were trying to cross the river to escape?
VALENTINO DENG: Yes.
CAMPBELL: And you saw people dying around you?
VALENTINO DENG: Of course.
CAMPBELL: And almost died yourself?
VALENTINO DENG: Yes. I even saw a woman who was killed, a young woman who was killed and her small daughter you know was struggling to breastfeed on her mother who’d just been killed.... and crying.
05:48
Archival footage. Boys’ camp
Music
06:10

CAMPBELL: For thirteen years the survivors grew up as unaccompanied minors in refugee camps where they became known as the Lost Boys.
06:14
Bird on fence/ Valentino and Dave in park
Music
06:23

CAMPBELL:  Eventually Valentino moved to the United States, determined to tell the world the story of what they’d been through.
06:29
Valentino and Dave walk
In 2003 he began collaborating with Dave Eggers, a best selling author whose own memoir had been short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize. Eggers agreed that the money from any book sales would go towards Sudan.
06:39

DAVE EGGERS: The story of the lost boys and Valentino’s story in particular, just hadn’t been told. This is a war that you know claimed over two million lives and we knew almost nothing about it.
06:54
Copy of “What is the What”
CAMPBELL: The result was “What is the What” a fictionalised account of Valentino’s life that became a publishing sensation.
DAVE EGGERS: We thought we would be telling a story
07:05

Dave. Super:
DAVE EGGERS, Author “What is the What”
about history  about something that had happened and, you know, there was peace in south Sudan and a peace agreement on its way and, you know, in the first half of the month that we were working together, that’s when Darfur blew up and we thought well this could never happen again, and it happened precisely the same way and so then the sense of urgency was sort of doubled because it seemed government was oppressing another region, another country and we thought if people really understand the underpinnings of the war,
07:15
Camp footage
both conflicts are so similar.
07:49

Music
07:50
Stills. Valentino with presidents and celebrities
CAMPBELL: The book was not only a best seller, it captivated America’s elite. Valentino Deng found himself feted by past and present US presidents and embraced by Hollywood activists like Angelina Jolie.
VALENTINO DENG I became popular in the US.
07:57
Valentino. Super:
VALENTINO DENG
Valentino Achak Deng Foundation
I appreciated it but I didn’t do it to be a celebrity. It was a call to action and that’s how I looked at it always.
08:15
Sudanese street/Campbell and Valentino in car
Music
08:25
Valentino at market
CAMPBELL: He’s now using the proceeds of the book to help his homeland rebuild. A peace deal in 2005, allowed
08:35

Valentino greets lost boys
him to join hundreds of other lost boys returning to southern Sudan, although the boys are now all grown men.
08:48

Music
08:55
Campbell and Valentino in street
CAMPBELL: They’ve come back to a land that was nearly raised to the ground in 20 years of fighting.
09:10
Driving
Music
09:15
Valentino in car
VALENTINO DENG: After the war, so much of the infrastructure, the little infrastructure that there was, was completely gone. The village has been burned and burned over for many years.
CAMPBELL: But since his first visit home
09:18
View of market from car
in 2003, the towns have started to rise from the ashes.
09:33

VALENTINO DENG: Yes it has changed much. Last year there was no road like this and
09:38
Valentino in car
you see people going to school, all schools were closed during the war. So a lot of change is taking place.
CAMPBELL: It’s all coming back to life.
VALENTINO DENG: Yep.
09:44
Photos. Valentino with parents
CAMPBELL: Valentino was able to reconnect with a family he hadn’t seen in 16 years. Against all odds his parents had survived.
VALENTINO DENG: They look emaciated, they look sick. They needed a lot.
09:54

Valentino
I knew I had a lot of offer them, but I was excited to come back and find them alive.
10:08
Driving to school
Music
10:15

CAMPBELL: Deng’s dream was to build a new high school in his village of Marial Bai, a school where the next generation could learn to help their new country.
10:25
Valentino gets out of car at school
Music
10:36

CAMPBELL:  He’s already gone most of the way to realising it.
VALENTINO DENG: We have come and luckily it didn’t rain. Everything would be wet right now.
CAMPBELL: This is amazing what you’ve done.
10:38
Boys in school ground
Music
10:49

CAMPBELL:  So you built all this in just a year?
VALENTINO DENG: Yes.
CAMPBELL: Everything we see here?
VALENTINO DENG: Yes, everything we see here
10:57
Valentino and Campbell in school ground
except that building. That was built in less than a year.
CAMPBELL: That is amazing.
11:02
Still. Building of school
CAMPBELL:  With the money from the book he bought a truck, transported building materials all the way from Uganda and hired the villagers to build it in record time. When Dave Eggers visited, he was stunned by how fast it had happened in such a remote and hard place.
11:07

DAVE EGGERS: His actions are speaking louder than anything else. There’s a lot of people that talk about rebuilding south Sudan and how to do it and there’s a lot of plans
11:27
Eggers
being drawn up, but in an incredibly short amount of time he just did it.
11:35
School. Boys singing

11:42

CAMPBELL: It’s the only proper high school in the region. There are now 260 students, including 22 women and girls.
11:52

The plan is to eventually have 800 students with as many girls as boys.
12:03
Heavy rain falling at school
Despite all they’ve been through, people here are quick to see blessings. Even torrential rain is welcomed as a gift from God and that makes this school day doubly blessed.
12:14
Abraham addresses boys
Valentino Deng has invited Abraham Nial, another lost boy who’s just been named the new bishop.
12:28

ABRAHAM NIAL: When we left home in the ‘80s, many of us died. Some were eaten by wild animals, some drowned in the rivers, but God keeps some of us alive to be witness of what took place in Sudan.
12:39

CAMPBELL: He and Valentino are pushing a message of non-violence.
ABRAHAM NIAL: We had a goal that if we can survive and go to school, we need to come back and change life in Sudan. Valentino has done it, that’s why you people are here.
12:54

We fought for more than 50 years, but nothing was accomplished through the gun. The things are going to change through education.
13:11
Valentino introduces teachers to Abraham
CAMPBELL: It’s no easy talk after two decades of war. Even the teachers here have little formal education, so Valentino has appealed for teachers from the other side of the world to help teach them. They’re among dozens who paid their own way to come as volunteers. Despite giving up his retirement for this, Don Hesse says he gets just as much out of the experience as those he’s helping.
DON HESSE: This is where I’d rather be than anywhere else,
13:23
Don. Super:
DON HESSE,
Volunteer teacher
except possibly the baseball stadium but some things you’ve got to give up and that’s what I gave up to come here. And I miss my children very much. But I could not be.... this is you know, if I could pick a place I would be, there is where I would be. It’s wonderful.
13:59
Hesse teaching boys
CAMPBELL: During breaks the students mob the volunteers, hungry for the learning the war denied them.
14:14

DON HESSE: It looks like it and… you are smart to think it is the past tense because there is e-d it must be the past, so that’s good! [Laughing] But unfortunately it’s not. It is an adjective. And you say ‘I am surprised  that you are such a good student’.
14:26
Michael with students
CAMPBELL: The presence of foreigners here is also an important symbol for the Sudanese who feel that for decades they’ve been forgotten by the outside world.
14:52

MICHAEL ROSE: The students here are incredibly eager, especially this being the first secondary school in the region. You know, there’s thousands and thousands of applicants to get into the school and who have taken the test and so they were the few that were chosen so
15:12
Michael. Super:
MICHAEL ROSE,
Volunteer teacher
they’re going to be some of the most highly educated people in southern Sudan and so I think they’re starting to realise that, you know, there’s a bigger purpose for them beyond you now just being a high school graduate. They are going to be the future of the new country.
15:24
Hesse teaching in classroom
CAMPBELL: In these classrooms, there’s no fidgeting at the back of the class, no yearning for the school bell. In Australia, the students would be in their early teens, here most are in their twenties, catching up on the lost years.
15:46
Hesse at blackboard
DON HESSE: Some of them have come out of five or six years in the army and are now settling down into high school.
16:00
Hesse
You get people who’ve had a very difficult past. You get some young boys and you see the joy in their face and the laughter and they’re lighting up. You get some of the older students and their seriousness is tinged by some amount of sadness.
16:10

Female students studying in dark
CAMPBELL: The problem in southern Sudan is not any lack of enthusiasm, it’s just lack of resources. Even at night, they huddle round the one light powered by the school’s generator and the most determined of all are the girls. In southern Sudan, only one girl in ten finishes primary school, one in a hundred get through high school.
16:28

DON HESSE: The worst thing you can say about these kids is that they’ll steal textbooks so they can stay up late at night and study under the light outside the shower
16:55
Don Hesse
and that’s the worst thing you can say about them, is they want to learn more.
17:03
People collecting food aid
Music
17:07

CAMPBELL: Every day more people are returning to southern Sudan, despite the poverty that awaits them.
17:14

Music
17:19

CAMPBELL:  In a fertile region, rich in oil, one in four people are still dependent on food aid, yet there’s a sense of hope here, even excitement of building a new country.
17:25

Music
17:36

CAMPBELL: Since the peace deal was signed six years ago, there have been no more attacks from the Islamist government in Khartoum. For the first time in decades, southern Sudan is feeling free.
17:41

Music
17:52
Students at school
CAMPBELL: But there’s a dark cloud hanging over all of this. In January, the south is due to hold a referendum on independence. It was guaranteed under the peace deal but the question is will Khartoum honour the agreement? Would it really let the south with all its oil fields go? Or are the people here just months from another war?
18:03
Michael with students looking at photos on phone

18:25

The possibility of more fighting worries Valentino Deng’s supporters. The school is just a short drive from the northern border, near what could be the front line.
DAVE EGGERS: Khartoum has never allowed anything like this to happen
18:29
Super: DAVE EGGERS,
Author “What is the What”
and  none of their behaviour would predict that they would allow this to happen peacefully, so there’s a lot of fear and a lot of people say how can you build a secondary school when there might be war a year from now, but again Valentino has to always err on the side of hope and moving forward. So that’s the greatest challenge is that will this school be used as a barracks a year from now.
18:45
Valentino
CAMPBELL: So are you optimistic or pessimistic?
VALENTINO DENG: I am optimistic.
CAMPBELL: After all the bad things you’ve seen and been through?
19:13

Valentino. Super:
VALENTINO DENG
Valentino Achak Deng Foundation
VALENTINO DENG:  Well the bad things I’ve seen have happened for a reason. There is war, there was chaos, there was the killing, there was all that had to happen because we had allowed our country to get at war with itself. What then would you expect? So all that had to happen, but now the Sudanese have come back again, sat at a round table and negotiated a comprehensive peace agreement that I trust they must implement to its fullest.
19:22

CAMPBELL: Mm. If fighting did come again, would you leave Sudan again?
VALENTINO DENG: I don’t know.
CAMPBELL: Something to think about?
VALENTINO DENG: I don’t think about it. You know, prevention is better than cure.
19:55
Photos. Valentino with wife and baby
Music
20:15

CAMPBELL: There’s a price he pays for his passion for the school. Once again he’s separated from his family. His wife and baby son living in Kenya until he can make a proper home for them in Sudan, the sort of home Valentino didn’t have.
20:18
Valentino
VALENTINO DENG: And we will keep him safe, we will protect him in the best way we can. We’ll make sure he doesn’t go through all this pain.
20:35

Photos. Valentino with wife and baby
Music
20:42

CAMPBELL: He sees them rarely, dividing his time between Marial Bai and the US where he continues to raise money for his foundation.
20:46
School students assembled. Student rings bell

20:55

Today, it’s time to farewell the students until he comes back next term.
21:01
Valentino addresses students
VALENTINO DENG: Another issue I would like to acknowledge here is that I’m really very proud of you and I want to thank you very much for our event.
DAVE EGGERS: He’s, you know, become one of my closest friends and he’s also just the best man I’ve ever known,
21:06
Dave Eggers
and what he’s been able to accomplish through his foundation, and continued to do, and just continues to do, sort of amaze me and everybody who knows him.
21:23
Students dance
Music
21:36

CAMPBELL: When you look around at what’s been achieved so far, after all you’ve been through, what are your feelings?
21:42
Valentino
VALENTINO DENG: I’m very happy. I’m very proud of it. I like seeing them cracking jokes and laughing and playing together with their sisters. It’s amazing.
21:47


And for me I think I’m doing exactly what I need to do with my life – to be here, to see some people smiling and to know that I’ve given them that smile. That’s what matters to me.
21:59
Students dance
Music
22:10
Credits:  
Reporter: Eric Campbell
Camera: Ron Ekkel
Editor: Garth Thomas
Producer: Marianne Leitch

photos: Wendy Stone/Corbis.

22:20

Further Information
Valentino Achak Deng Foundation
In 1998 author Dave Eggers launched 826 Valencia a writing and tutoring lab for young people in the United States, encouraging creative writing skills and an extended education. Read more  about Dave Eggers.
He is also involved in a project called Voice of Witness  which aims to help victims of human rights abuses around the world by using oral history to tell their stories.