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.