Donate NowJen Marlowe, for the Pulitzer Center
Koor got a message last week.
It was from his father.
Koor had sent someone on a motorbike to go to all the towns and villages where he had heard his parents may be, trying to track them down. They were located in Kwajok, the regional capital of Northern Bahar el Ghazal. They sent a message back to Koor, asking him to come immediately.
It wasn't so simple. Arranging a car from Akon can take some time, and the work our group was doing would take another week to complete. (Garang and Bol spending time with their families, distributing mosquito nets to AKon and the outlying areas, teaching at the AKon primary school, assessing the greatest needs of their villages).
Koor wrote a letter back the night he got the message, holding the flashlight between his teeth, expressing, I would imagine, his joy at having heard from them, and communicating when he thought he could come. I only saw the opening of the letter as he wrote.
"Dear Mother and Father". I can only imagine how powerful it was for Koor to write those words.
Last night, Koor's father sent a toyota pck-up truck to take us the three hours to Kwajok. We're supposed to leave this afternoon, but it looks like rain, which makes the "roads" here impassable.
We'll make it, I have no doubt. Koor and his father will make sure of that.