By Rachel Flaherty

 MELBOURNE - Akoch Manheim did not want to kill people and he did not want to be killed.  Although just eight-years-old, he saw a chance to escape from the murderous war around his village in southern Sudan and he took it.

That was in 1990.  Today, Manheim is completing the first year of a degree in International studies at RMIT University while working as Director of the Sudanese Lost Boys Association of Australia (SLBAA) based in Melbourne.

The term “lost boys” refers to more than 27,000 children, mostly boys who were displaced and/or orphaned during the second Sudanese civil war of 1983-2005.   Many, like Manheim, have found their way to Australia along with the some 22,000 Sudanese refugees who have been allowed to enter this country on humanitarian grounds.

Now 26, the tall and slender Manheim arrived for an interview eager to tell his story.

He was born in the village of Tonj, which had a population of about 1,000 and lived in a home made of straw and mud in the forest area of southern Sudan.  His family are of the Dinka tribe, traditionally cattle farmers and renowned for their hunting skills.

Manheim recalls the men of his village hunting gazelles, buffalo and even elephants, using only hand-crafted wooden spears tipped with a sharp, iron head.

He sadly remembers when, as a child walking in a group with friends, one of them was taken by a lion.  “There was nothing anyone could do,” he recalls, “the lion is very strong.”

Manheim explains how, aged eight, he first fled his home to avoid being taken away by armed gangs to be trained as a child soldier - and forced to kill his own people.  He managed to return to his family five years later, but had to flee again to avoid abduction.

He then made his way to Kenya and spent five years in a UN refugee camp before getting through the process to emigrate to Australia and finally arrived in Brisbane in 2003. Eighteen months later, he decided to move to Melbourne to be closer with friends in the Sudanese community and start up the SLBAA.

Like Manheim, most SLBAA members have never had a real childhood, losing family and friends in the civil war and being forced to survive in refugee camps in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Egypt.

The goal of the organisation is to bring together the Sudanese and Australian communities and promote awareness and understanding of both cultures.

“We say thank God that Australia is helping us,’ Manheim says.

The The SLBAA organisation, of more than 1,500 members in Melbourne, recently celebrated an “Appreciation Day” as gesture of gratitude to the Australian community.

“It is a day when the Sudanese people thank Australians for the opportunities and support given them,” says Mannheim. “It is also a day when the people of both communities can get to know each other better.”

 When Manheim completes his degree, he plans to join the diplomatic service in Australia or Sudan and already is gaining experience by working in the office of the Federal Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner.

Manheim is working on creating a way that allows the skills and qualifications of African people to be assessed and officially recognised in Australia making getting jobs easier for them.

In the meantime his mission remains to help make the lives of Sudanese, both here in Australia and in Sudan, better and brighter.