I made some new and very special friends last week. Samuel, John, Peter and Joseph. No, I wasn't doing a passion play. Samuel, John, Peter and Joseph are four young men from Sudan who have been in this country less than a month.

They are members of a contingent known as "The Lost Boys", refugees of their country's long running holy war between Muslim fundamentalists, and Christian rebels knows as the Sudan People's Liberation Army. (SPLA)

In 1987, some 17,000 male orphans and refugees, commonly between the ages of 6 and 8 years, were banded together and literally herded across hundreds of miles of rugged terrain into Ethiopia who said they would take the boys and give them shelter. The Ethiopians, however, turned management of the camps over to the SPLA who saw them as induction pools for their army. Many of the boys did enlist in the SPLA as the only apparent option to living in the camps.

In 1991 the Ethiopians closed the camps and the boys were sent out of the country again. Thousand died making the return march. Some were taken and enslaved by hostile tribes along the way. others were bombed by the northern Sudan forces and many more succumbed to starvation. Unbelievably, many who were weakened by their ordeal were actually eaten by wild animals of their friends.

By May of 1992, their numbers having shrunk to barely more than 10,000, the boys made their way to Kakuma in northern Kenya. Schools of a sort were estblished for them, but they did not offer the skills they needed for survival there nor were they familiar with the Dinka or Nuer social order. By the time these young men were in their late teens and early 20's they had neither the dowry funds to make them marriageable in that community nor the spiritual inclination to submit to the facial scarification that adult males must endure in order to be considered citizens in good standing.

Their experience and constant migrations had prepared them for nothing in that society. All they knew was flight.

One might think that such an upbringing would lead to bitter, combative and aggressive personalities. Nothing could be further from the truth. The four young men I met were polite, gentlemanly, well-dressed and the most delightful young people I've spent time with in many years. The only noticeable signs of their experiences were that each was remarkably thin. Not surprising considering their circumstances.

As I shook hands with John, the slightest of the group, I patted my belly and told him that he and I had much in common. The sounds of laughter coming from all 4 was a geniuine pleasure ot hear. I got the feeling they hadn't had many opportunities to do that in their young lives.

I listened and laughed with them as they described their first experiences with airplanes, freeways and trash compactors. Their enthusiasm for their new lives rubbed off on me. I don't think I'll be able to look a trash compactor in the face again after the other three did renditions of Samuel's reaction to a trash compactor the first time he saw one work. That we had machines to package garbagbe was the oddest thing he had encountered so far. Come to think of it, that might be near the top of my list too.

Each is delighted with their new lives. The assistance they've gotten from Refugees International, the organization who introduced me to the boys, has literally given them a new lease on life. Refugees International works in concert with many of the faith based organizations that will hopefully benefit from President Bush's funding program for such groups. If the others are doing half the good in the world that I saw, it will be an investment well made.