Bol Thiik Riiny was born in Theou village. In 1989, with several thousand other boys and girls, he fled the civil war in Southern Sudan. He spent four years in a refugee camp in Ethiopia and nine years in Kakuma Refugee camp in Kenya. As one of the "Lost Boys of Sudan," he came to American through the Unaccompanied Minors Program of Lutheran Social Services of New England.

Bol was settled with a family in Winchester, MA. He graduated from Winchester High School in 2004 and from Concordia College in Bronxville, NY, in 2008. In 2008 he traveled back to his village. He found a school under the trees. The closest school building is a two-hour walk away.

In Theou, children are writing their letters in the dust. The teachers are teenagers whose parents can afford to send them to boarding school. On their school holidays, these students are returning to their villages to teach what they know.

Bol returned to America determined to give back to his homeland.