Three years later, an American man helped him move to the United States. He prayed to God to save his life, and thought that if he prayed maybe God would deliver him.īut in 1996, 10 years after he first was forced to leave his family and friends behind, 17-year-old Bok managed to escape the home of his masters and flee to Cairo, Egypt, where he found refuge in a church. “In my heart, I said I would rather die than be a slave.”Īfter the second failed attempt to flee, his master held him at gunpoint. They were threatened with forced amputations or torture if they even attempted to escape. I said, ‘I’m not an animal.’”īok and fellow black slaves in the area were terrified of escaping. His master told him it was because he was an animal, Bok said. Once he asked his master why they treated him so poorly and called him “abd,” which means a black slave in Arabic. Over the years, Bok learned to speak and understand Arabic. “I would say I never lost hope because I’m a believer.” Every day, he hoped that someone would come to rescue him. “I may not have anyone to talk to me and to love me but I know God does,” he said.īok said he dreamed of being free and growing up to be like the man his father was. He never saw his parents or sisters again, and learned years later that they were burned alive in the raid on his Southern Sudan village.Īlthough his masters were cruel and spat on and beat Bok daily, he never lost hope. That terrible night in 1986, Bok’s captors took him into Northern Sudan and forced him to be a child slave for an Arab family. “I knew that I couldn’t fight back, because if I do, I would get killed,” Bok said at a recent appearance at the Ethel Walker School in Simsbury. Francis Bok, at the Ethel Walker School in Connecticut (Rachel Glogowski/YJI)īok was only seven when his mother sent him to the local market to sell peanuts and eggs for the family and Northern Sudanese men raided the village, viciously slaughtering the men and capturing the women and children.īok, who could only speak his native tribal language as a child, said he couldn’t understand why they hated him.
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