Edward Abot remembers the sweet words his mother would murmur when she warmed his goat's milk every night.

James Kuoi remembers the hockey-like game his father taught him under the hot African sun.

Sweet memories. But fragile ones. They're competing in minds already crowded with searing recollections far more powerful – and far more devastating.

Edward Abot is one of an estimated 25,000 boys orphaned by war in Sudan.

"The worst memory came when I stayed for days without eating anything," Kuoi recalls. "And there was a ground and air attack by Sudan government … and I had nothing. I ran away with underwear, with no clothes … I still dream as if I am running away from this place."

"This place" was Sudan – in the southern region, scarred by one of Africa's longest running civil wars.

Kuoi and Abot are refugees of that war. Known as the Lost Boys of Sudan because they, like more than 25,000 other boys, were orphaned, discarded and – for more than a decade – forgotten about by the world.

"I [felt] subhuman. I'm not being taken as a human being," Kuoi says. "I was [treated] as subhuman. With no food, only depending on leaves and trees and roots – if there was human rights, I may not have stayed [in that existence] for those years."

War leaves thousands of orphans

Kuoi and Abot, long, lean and dark, are sitting in a CBC studio. Their command of the English language is good, their dialect a hybrid of British grammar and Dinka, their mother tongue. They describe their life journey, mired in loneliness, disease and death.

Their story begins in 1983, when war broke out (again) between the northern and southern regions of Sudan. Villages were raided. Millions of people were killed, tens of thousands of children left behind.

Most of the girls were sent to orphanages or refugee camps, or even married off. The boys were left to their own devices.

"I am lost. One day I'll be found," says James Kuoi.

And so thousands of boys – some as young as three years old – wandered on foot for years, over thousands of kilometres of hot African terrain, seeking food, shelter, safety and supervision.

They never found it. Humanitarian aid agencies were caught in their own bureaucratic crossfire between the ruling Sudanese government and the Sudanese People's Liberation Army.

"The government say those are child soldiers, and the SPLA say, 'No, they are not child soldiers, they are refugees,'" Kuoi says. "You see, no one is helping us … they depend on what Sudan government say, and Sudan government want to just let us die."

And die they did. Daily. Either by starvation, soldiers, disease or wildlife such as cobras, hyenas, even small mite-like bugs that burrowed under their skin and into their bones.

"Chigger, they call it chigger in English," says Reuben Garang, another Lost Boy. "They entered people's feet and then a lot of the people died of it. It was very hard, your body remain with a lot of holes…"

New life overseas

Eventually, human rights agencies did intervene. By 1992, Sudan's Lost Boys found safety and shelter in Kenyan refugee camps.

And then in 2000, another decision forever changed the course of their lives. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees arranged to send thousands of Lost Boys overseas to start a new life.

"All Lost Boys everywhere value education," says Reuben Garang.

UN lawyers interviewed the boys and asked them what they wanted. For many, the answer was the same: "The most important thing in my life is to educate," Kuoi says. "To be a better person. He said, 'OK you want to educate? I will take you to other place called Winnipeg.'"

Garang also explains: "All Lost Boys everywhere value education. Simply because they live alone, they don't have parents, they, they don't have relatives, so what they have in their minds is that if they have an education, then sometime in the future you know, they will be people."

More than 600 Lost Boys have arrived in Canada in the last two years. Of those, 200 arrived in Winnipeg.

Obstacles in Canada

The Lost Boys' pilgrimage to safety was at last over. But their search for a future once again lingers in limbo.

Each of them – like other refugees – is supported by social assistance for up to a year while they get themselves settled. For most, it means learning English and going to school, often for the first time in their lives.

But a year isn't enough for many so starved of schooling. In a year, most have barely finished learning the English language, let alone achieve a diploma that could lead to a degree.

As a result, many Lost Boys either quit school to make money – usually in minimum wage labour jobs – or risk getting cut off by social assistance, which demands the students apply for dozens of jobs each month, in order to receive their cheques.

Marko, 18, attends high school in Winnipeg.

"To combine welfare with school, that is difficult now," says Marko, an 18-year-old Lost Boy attending an inner-city high school. "[But] when you quit school and go to [work], there is no future on your side."

Aurelio Dante agrees. The settlement counsellor is with Welcome Place, a non-profit agency that helps refugees new to Winnipeg. Each week, Dante hears stories like Marko's.

"As they've lost out in education in Africa and that they are now in Canada, they should have the chance to go to school and try to build up their career and be effective contributors to this society," Dante says.

"I think they are being told, 'No, you don't have to go to school, you have to go to work.' Now going to work with virtually little education, how productive is that to society?"

It's an irony not lost on Lloyd Axworthy, president of the University of Winnipeg and mastermind of its Global College. The former foreign affairs minister has now vowed to find ways to help the Lost Boys get some sort of education.

It's positive news for this group of Lost Boys seeking a future to replace memories of their past.

"Some people call me Lost Boy, Lost Boy, so sometime I may be annoyed of this name," Kuoi admits. "I said, 'OK, one day I will be found. No problem. I am lost. One day I'll be found."