What was your worst childhood experience, and how did you overcome it? Tweet

What was your worst childhood experience, and how did you overcome it?

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During the early 1990s in the Sudan, children, some as young as 4 years of age, were caught in the middle of a bloody civil war, in which Christians and animists, adults and children booth, were ruthlessly slaughtered by the Sudanese government. 

Literally running for their lives, groups of boys, who became known as the "Lost Boys of the Sudan", crossed hundreds of miles of hostile East African desert, a deadly hot and dry land more than twice the size of the state of Texas. Many starved to dead or died from disease, bad water, or tainted or poisonous food. Often, at night, a howling pack of hyenas would stalk a group of boys. On some occasions, as many as five boys in a group would be lost to these predators. The terrified survivors could do nothing but climb a tree and watch until the hyenas had finished turning their human prey into small piles of cleaned bones.

In a testimony of human resilence, thousands of the Lost Boys made their way to refugee camps in Kenya, were the relief agencies helped them emigrate to European and North American countries. Some were adopted into families; others lived in group homes. Most adapted well to their new homes. Today, the Lost Boys are young adults who are going to college, starting careers, establishing families of their own, and doing all the others things that young adults in their adopted societies do.

How do you think you would have fared if your early life had included something like the experiences of the Lost Boys?

Read in: The World of Psychology p. 299 - 300