Malong Malual left for Sudan the night of Oct. 31. He'll spend a week in Khartoum, and then go to his village for the first time is almost 20 years. We anticipate a joyous village-wide reunion. In addition to that, he has a lot of work to do. He'll meet with local elders and local and regional government officials. He'll look at prospective sites for Alal Community Clinic. He'll communicate with us whenever he can, by cell phone or internet.

We'll post his reports as we receive them. We're excited for him personally, and for this new venture for Village Help for South Sudan.

We taped the interview portion of the first of what we plan to be a series of shows with Arlington Community Media on South Sudan. Our first show focused on Malong Malual, AHS '04, and Alal Community Project. He leaves for Sudan at the end of this week! We also talked about the history of Sudan, the conditions there, our personal involvement with Village Help for South Sudan, what we've accomplished already, and what Malong will accomplish on our trip.

Bol Thiik Riiny, project manager of Theou Village Project (and he'll have his own episode, too), was one of our cameramen.

Arlington Community Media is not only making their production and distribution facilities available to us, they're providing training that we can take back to the nascent television industry in South Sudan.

Jeff Munroe, ACMI studio manager, talks about the photos and graphics that will be added during editing to the live interviews.


Part of our cast and crew.


ACMI makes its shows available to all the world via its web site. Jeff gave us lots of good advice for reaching both the local and the world-wide audience. He also assured us that everything could be edited!

We'll let you know when the program airs, and when it's available to watch on-line. The potential of our working together is enormous. We're so glad to have this new venue in which to raise awareness about bringing education and opportunity to South Sudan.

Jeff Munroe and Malong Malual first met years ago, when Jeff was teaching a media class at Arlington High and Malong was the student in the back. A lot has happened since then. Jeff is now program manager of Arlington Community Media, a non-profit that provides community-access programming to cable and FIOS providers in Arlington, to other towns, and to the world through streaming Internet. And Malong will soon be on his way to Sudan as the project manager of Alal Community Project. We are so glad that they, and all of us, will be collaborating on a series of broadcasts on the work of Village Help for South Sudan.

Our first pre-production meeting focused on what our opening show will cover: the history of South Sudan, the current conditions, what Malong will accomplish during his trip, and our organization. This will air before Malong leaves for Sudan. When he returns, look for a follow-up show.

We're very excited about collaborating with a local resource (and one with a state-of-the-art studio) to tell our story. You can be sure you will hear when the show is ready to air.

The annual Town Day in Arlington, MA, has something for everybody -- more than 200 booths lining the center of town, a beautiful fall afternoon to get your or your kid's face painted, get a free pencil, try food from everywhere (commercial fried dough, a high-school band chocolate bar, a Sons of Italy sausage, and a church-group lemonade for this blogger) and (the purpose behind all the face paint and pencils and sausage) a chance to connect with the people, businesses, and organizations that make Arlington such a lively place.

We had a wonderful time staffing our first-ever booth at Town Day. Many Arlingtonians remember when the Lost Boys of Sudan came to Arlington in 2001, and everyone brightened when they heard, "Malong's a graduate of Arlington High. He's going back to his village in October to begin the process of building a clinic."


We had a donation jar that was gratifyingly full at the end of the day. Equally important, we made many valuable connections and re-connections. The town of Arlington was tremendously supportive when the Lost Boys arrived. We know it will be just as supportive now, as Malong does his part to bring healing to his homeland.

The unlucky ones died without treatment. Those who get help always travelled to Kenya or Uganda or Khartoum where they receive only health services. They face lack of houses to stay in during months of treatment. From my experiences, renting an apartment in Khartoum or Nairobi or Kampala is very expensive, especially, for the poor people like those of Alal Community. Even though the minimum of rent is about $150 per a month, someone who has no money can not afford it. Nowadays, patients from the Alal Community who went to the big cities are either have no places to stay or live in new apartments that have no walls, windows and doors. They live in such places, facing insecurity and hunger.

Alal Community (Twic County) is the land of over 200,000 people in Northern Warrap State. Previously, these nomadic people were relying on their farming and cows, and their living standard was well and happy. But that happiness turned to nightmare and grief when the civil war of Sudan broke out in the 1980s. For, their territory was used as a combat or war zone for over years, their houses were burned down, their local pools for clean water were left contaminated, and all properties including cows were taken away by the enemy. Thus, Alal Community was left with nothing but a core. Nowadays, many of its natives are living in a terrible condition in the area, and the lucky ones are lingering in diasporas in Australia, Canada, Europe and the USA.

Alal Community is between the Kiir River to the north (Alal Bunch in Abyei) and the Lol River to the South (Twich County), but also extended to far East (Alal Makuach) and West (Alal Machar-Akoon). (This map shows the Kiir River in northern Warrap State but not the Lol. It also spells Warrap as Warab.)

It is one of the devastated areas in Warrap State because of the civil war that went on for over two decades in the Sudan. it lost everything and never recovered and rebuilt in all ways. Moreover, the people of Alal Community have nowhere to go for medical treatment rather than taking their patients to Northern Sudan or Kenya or Uganda.

Although the world aid organizations reached out and aided in the greater Southern Sudan since the peace was signed between the government of Sudan and the Southern Sudan freedom fighters -- Sudan People’s Liberation Movement --three years ago, Alal Community still has no improvement and development.

When I went to the Sudan in the end of 2007, one thing I had learned was that the people of Alal Community needed my help. There were lots of sick people who desperately wanted assistance but my only answer to them was tears in my eyes and long prayers to God who created all people on Earth. One of the local elders told me that they only get treatments in Northern Sudan or Uganda or Kenya but sometimes they stay without getting treatment, and that is why many of them are sick or dead.

In the end of my trip, I forced myself to go while leaving everyone with their eyes on my back. I wanted to help but had nothing in my pocket to give.

Alal Community Project's mission is to encourage people of goodwill in the USA and beyond to financially support the people of Alal Community to establish a clinic that can save lives of children and women of Alal Community and its neighbors. The clinic will be the only backbone that can provide health services for both the returnees who come from Kenya, Uganda, and North Sudan to resettle in Twich Mayardit, Abyei, or even Warrap State as a whole. We will also arrange transport to those hospitals with a greater capacity than our clinic will have. In the future, the Alal Community project is also aiming to develop and improve schools for children and establish clean water through out the territories that lack water pump within and beyond the borders of Alal area.

With your kindness and generosity, the people of Alal Community will firmly recover by having an access to health services that will rescue many people who are suffering from malaria, cholera, meningitis, and other critical diseases in South Sudan; school supplies that will encourage hundreds of kids to attend schools; and clean water that will save the entire Alal Community and its neighbors from drinking contaminated water from the local pools.

Malong Malual was born in the Alal community, in Warrap State. When he was a boy, he was abducted by northern Sudanese. Malong worked as a child slave for about a year before he escaped. It was too dangerous to go back home, so he fled to Khartoum, where he was educated for a time in the Comboni Missionary schools. He then made his way back south to Twic County. There he learned that the murahaleen — called janjaweed by Darfurians — were still targeting his village. The safest place for him to go was Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya.

As one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan,” he was settled in 2001 at Imatong House, a group home provided by St. Paul Lutheran Church, Arlington, MA, through the Unaccompanied Minors Refugee Program of Lutheran Social Services of New England.

Malong graduated from Arlington High School in 2004 and from Concordia College in Bronxville, NY, in 2008. In December 2007 he traveled to Sudan to care for his ailing mother. His mother was carried to the nearest road, and then, because there was no medical care closer, by car to Khartoum. Malong returned to raise awareness about conditions in Alal.

Welcome to the Alal Community Project Blog. Here our Program Manager Malong Malual and the directors of Village Help for South Sudan will keep you up-to-date on the mission and progress of the Alal Community Project.