Why it's so cool to grow up in Doro, South Sudan

I thought I would give the boys a fun creative writing assignment today by having them write an essay about why Doro is a fun place to grow up. I thought it would be a good activity to think about all the wonderful things about the past year and a half that we got to live there. Isaac and Evan jumped right in. Joshua didn't find it quite as easy and burst into tears. Suddenly I realized what I thought was a good idea maybe was not so great after all. He said he was upset because he doesn't like writing and he didn't want to have to write something long. I'm wondering if maybe it wasn't the best day to give the assignment since we've just said goodbye to Eli for a week as he flies into South Sudan on a small assessment team. But I thought each of their little essays were unique and wanted to share them.

Here is Isaac's:

Life in Doro for a boy

Some people think South Sudan is a horrible place, not to mention a refugee camp! But those people have the wrong idea! If you live at the edge of the camp like me it's really great. Every morning I wake up to the good smell of breakfast cooking or occasionally Sudanese zalabia (fried doughnuts). After that, we jump into school for like 4 hours and by the time we're done it's lunchtime so we hop on our bikes and ride over to lunch club for some okra or kudra soup. Then we come back to our concrete home to have rest time. At 2:30 we have a choice of about a million things to spend our afternoon. We could go get stuff at the market or go play at the crashed Russian cargo plane. We could go find a tree in fruit or go catch grasshoppers for our 11 cats to eat or we could play soccer with our refugee friends or build a grass hut. If there was rain we would have mud ball wars. There are a lot more things like fishing or swimming at the river but I'm tired of writing so why don't you come and see them yourself.

     

By Evan:

Doro Memories

Doro is a fun place because there is only half a day of school. And once school is done we play with all our friends and go to the river, swim, fish and play with our friends. We also climb so many trees and get the fruits to eat. There are also crashed airplanes that we love to play in. When it is rainy season we play mud fights, catch grasshoppers, or we just sit around under trees talking in the shade. If we get bored there are two little girls named Annabelle and Mikat that we also swing and play with. That is our life in Doro.

By Joshua:

Fun in Doro

Doro was fun because you could do anything. Like fish or play with your friends. It was so fun. But then dudes with guns came and scared everyone. They kept shooting all the houses but we got in a plane and left.