What is the What

Do you know what the What is?

I’m still not quite sure, but Dave Eggers book, ‘What is the What’ is one of the most illuminating accounts of one boys life I have ever read. Achek Valentino Deng is a Sudanese ‘Lost boy’ who spends most of his childhood running from conflict, and all of his adolescence in refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. Eggers based the book from Achek’s unimaginable true story that represents the constant battle of so many boys whose childhood was robbed in the face of civil war and whose resettlement in America only presented a whole new set of challenges.

If you haven’t already, read it.

For Achek and so many others, education becomes the one salvation from the toils of the camp and the nightmares of the past. He is schooled in camp and his success and enthusiasm gives him further opportunities, such as joining a theatre troupe. To me, this is one example of a fun, informative and informal teaching model. You take a group of interested youth leaders, outgoing and/or willing to be empowered. You then take relevant issues that are greatly affecting the community; such as, arranged marriage, HIV/AIDS, traditional medicine, rape, poaching –
Then, you write a potent theatre piece about one of these topics. The youth present it to their community, reaching everyone from youth, to elders, and the illiterate.
I am an advocate of theatre for social change. It was this theatre troupe that first took Achek Deng and his compatriots outside of the Kakuma refugee camp walls to Nairobi for a drama competition. It was the first time they had left the barren land of their camp since their arrival more than seven years before. It changed them forever to have the opportunity to share, to be listened to. These are the sorts of programs that really give voice to the disadvantaged. Storytelling, one of our oldest traditions, must continue to be drawn on as a tool for educating.

I am grateful to Achek Vaentino Deng for telling his story, for making his existence and the plight of his people known. And I am beholden by Dave Eggers capacity to write.