"Africans believe in something that is difficult to render in English. We call it ubuntu, botho," Archbishop Desmond Tutu has observed. " It means the essence of being human. You know when it is there, and when it is absent. It speaks about humanness, gentleness, hospitality, putting yourself out on behalf of others, being vulnerable. It embraces compassion and toughness. It recognizes that my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together." This extraordinary documentary directed by Christopher Quinn and Tommy Walker renders us all a moral service by putting this spiritual quality before our eyes in the person of John Bul Dau, one of the 25,000 "Lost Boys," ages 3 to 13 who fled the Sudan and wound up in a United Nations refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya. When we first meet him there, he is a tall and articulate African who is delighted to have been chosen by the International Rescue Committee to re-settle in the United States in 2001. The filmmakers follow him over a four-year period along with Daniel Abol Pach, who started a social community called the Parliament with hundreds of other survivors in Kenya, and Panther Blor, a young man with a deep love for his homeland.
These young men, who have known nothing but deprivation, suffering and loss, are mystified by the plane that lifts off the ground and takes them into the sky. They are even more shocked by the profusion of products in American grocery stores and all the things they must learn to take care of themselves in an apartment filled with modern conveniences.
There is an African saying that "Where there is more than enough, more than enough is wasted." Instead of being swept away by the great American consumer culture, John Bul Dau misses his friends in the refugee camp and sets out on a mission to find his parents and family. He lands a job working a full shift at a factory and works at McDonalds at night. John realizes that in America people spend so much time working that they have only a little time for family and friends. When he receives a letter informing him that his family is alive and living in Uganda, he begins sending money to them. It is very moving to see the way this ambitious and hard-working young man expends himself so freely and naturally for family and friends in Africa.
Another African proverb says, "The heart is like deep waters." John is a living example of what that means. It is easy to see why God Grew Tired of Us won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
Special DVD features include audio commentary with the director Christopher Quinn and the three Lost Boys, and featurettes: Finding the Lost Boys and Take Action.
