Oregon Public Broadcasting

It’s been a harrowing journey for two “Lost Boys of Sudan” who came to Washington state nearly four years ago. Friday they will be among 44 Washington foster youth to receive scholarships to attend college.

It’s a rare success story -- especially when you consider most foster kids never even graduate from high school. Correspondent Austin Jenkins has this profile.

Jibril Gude and Marko Kila along with a friend are playing a game kind of like cards

“Lost Boys” Jibril Gude and Marko Kila at their home in Centralia,  Washington

It’s the same game they played as children living in thatched huts in a rural village in Southern Sudan. Today, these young men play the game around a coffee table in their sparsely furnished rental house in Centralia,  Washington.

For all their laughter – and they laugh a lot – their story is one of heartache and loss and survival.

In 1999, the boys were about eleven years old. Early one morning government forces attacked their village. Jibril Gude recalls what happened.

Jibril Gude: “Shooting people and killing people so that’ why we ran away.”

Austin Jenkins: “There were gun shots?”

Jibril Gude and Marco Kila: “Oh yes.”

Austin Jenkins: “And there was no time to reunite with your parents?”

Marco Kila: “No time.”

Ausstin Jenkins: “You just had to run.”

Marco Kila: “No time.”

The boys eventually made it to a refugee camp in neighboring Ethiopia. They spent five years there. Then they got their ticket to America.

Virtually overnight they went from sleeping on grass mats to a new life with a foster family in Southwest Washington.

The boys didn’t speak a word of English. It was the middle of winter in the Northwest. At first Jibril thought coming to America was a big mistake.

Jibril Gude: “Why am I in America because everything is like crazy. Foods are not okay. Weather is a challenge. And it was snowing.”

But soon the boys were enrolled in school, learning English, playing soccer. Now at age 21 they are about to graduate high school. And Jibril and Marco are among 44 recipients of the Governor’s Scholarship for Foster Youth to help them go to college.  

Ann Ramsay-Jenkins: “It’s like Christmas.”

Ann Ramsay-Jenkins is vice chair of the College Success Foundation – the organization that awards the Governor’s Scholarships to foster youth.

Ann Ramsay-Jenkins: “My greatest hope is that of course that they do well and they continue with their education and graduate with their hope a better future.”

But if these 44 scholarship recipients represent foster care success stories, the flip side is bleak. According to the College Success Foundation, only thirty percent of Washington foster youth graduate from high school. And nationally a mere three percent of foster kids go on to college.

Jim Theofelis is with the Mockingbird Society, a foster youth advocacy group. He says these staggering statistics are a direct result of the chaos in so many foster kids’ lives.

Jim Theofelis: “There is no question that the thirty percent graduation rate is in my mind a dismal failure and that we absolutely have to find ways to get that number up.”

Even for foster kids who go onto college, the odds are not good. Nationally most drop out before getting their degree.

Of the 220 Washington Governor’s Scholarship recipients since 2001 – only 21 have graduated college. Those numbers are improving.

Lost Boys Marko and Jibril vow they won’t drop out. Marko explains they have no future if they return to Sudan – although they do want to visit. Plus their family members back home are counting on them to eventually send money back.

Marko Kila: “If you drop out from school you’re not going to do anything. And people back there they think that you are here and you better do something good for them also and for yourself.”

Both of these young men have big plans. Marko wants to become an immigration officer. Jibril plans to become a physical therapist.

They will start their college career at Centralia  Community College. But both hope to transition to a four-year university down the road. A future not even contemplated in the violence and chaos of their childhood.