Children of Lile Village, South Sudan

It is all about helping the children in South Sudan. I took this photo in 2007 of some children in Lile Village, South Sudan. The photo helps me to think about what we can do to help them realize the dreams of their parents for their children. Akol is standing behind the children with a black case under his arm.

Akol came straight from Kakuma Refugee Camp in Northern Kenya to Salt Lake City, Utah, USA in 2001. We have been good friends since shortly after he arrived. Akol, Mabior and Matoc traveled with me from Salt Lake City and introduced me to their home villages in South Sudan in 2007. Southern Sudan Humanitarian supports a primary school of 800 students in Akol’s home area in the village of Nyamlel. Akol appreciates you sponsoring me on my walk.

When I told Akol about my Thousand Mile Walk to raise funds for the school, he related it to his walking from Malual Loc, his home village near Nyamlel, to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. He was about 5 years old at the time. It took him six months. He went more than a week at a time without food and more than a day at a time without water. The media used the term “Lost Boys of Sudan” to refer to the unaccompanied minor boys who fled to refugee camps. Akol was one of them. The media often refer to it as the Lost Boys walking one thousand miles from their home villages to Kakuma Refugee Camp. I am thinking of their thousand mile walk on my thousand mile walk. I expect to eat regularly, not have people shooting at me, and don’t expect to have lions eating me.

I walked 23 miles on Monday, going from Tabiona to Duchesne, Utah.

Made new friends in Tabiona, Utah

Today was a rest day. Like my trainer at the gym taught me, rest days are important to getting stronger. I camped at the only park in Tabiona, Utah last night and got a good night’s rest. A guy that was out walking for his exercise around the park stopped to talk to me. He gave me a $20 cash donation for the children in South Sudan. It was about 39 degrees Fahrenheit for a low last night, but my sleeping bag kept me warm.

I went to the local Mormon ward for their worship services. My spirits were lifted at the worship services. The people were friendly. A wonderful family asked me to come to their home. They fed me lunch and dinner and gave me have a bed for the night.

I just had a good lunch at the Sage Brush Cafe in Tabiona, Utah. My excellent servers were Shaelee and Hanna. Char is the head cook. It is the only cafe in town, but they don’t act like it.

I walked 12 miles today to get to Tabiona, my intended destination. There is some beautiful farmland along the narrow valley of the Duchesne River. Rugged country with a majestic beauty on the south slope of the Uinta Mountains of Northern Utah.

It is a bit of a revelation on cell phone networks in rural areas. Some of the town has 3G network and the rest has 1x network for my Verizonwireless phone. Not very good when you are trying to access the Internet. When the people at the Sage Brush Cafe said they had wifi, I said, “You have got a new good customer.”

Please sponsor me on my “Thousand Mile Walk” to help the refugees.

Video showing Tabiona

My grandson Trey along road in Uinta Mountains, Utah

I am camping for the night about 30 feet from the Duchesne River. The quickly flowing river is making that wonderful sound of a rushing stream. I am about 14 miles from my destination tomorrow of Tabiona, Utah.

I have had a great time having my 13 year-old grandson, Trey, along the last three days. It is more fun walking with company, particularly with family, than by yourself. Trey is big for his age and a strong hiker. He is using the outing to meet some requirements for the Backpacking and Hiking Merit Badges for Boy Scouts.

We hiked over the summit at Wolf Creek Pass today, elevation 9485 feet. That is about 5000 feet above the elevation of my starting point in Salt Lake City. It is bit of work pushing the 100 pound cart and myself up miles of 8 percent grades.

We happened upon an interesting camping site yesterday afternoon. The sign on the main road said, “Memorial Monument.” Since, we were in a National Forest and the area has no restrictions on where you can camp, we turned down the short road to a vacant parking lot. We found a flat peice of grassy ground that looked perfect for pitching our tent.

After we picked the spot for our tent, we went over and read the inscription on the granite monument. The monument had been erected by the Janpanese Association of Utah to memorialize Masashi Goto who had crashed near here on July 4, 1929. It appears that he was on something like an around the world flight and died in the crash.

The word “refugee” is usually used meaning a person fleeing large scale violence, leaving their home and fleeing to another country. If a person flees their home to a temperary location inside their own country, they are called an “internally displaced person.” In both cases, the persecution is often based on race, religion or ethnicity.

There are certainly many people around the world suffering as refugees. I feel that it is a blessing to me to know the people of South Sudan who have suffered as refugees. South Sudan is probably on the list of the top ten poorest and most undeveloped countries in the world for people who make those lists after studying such things. The efforts of Southern Sudan Humanitarian to care for orphans and provide for elementary education in the villages is a basic and essential effort in developing a country suffering from poverty and the effects of war. Please sponsor me on my “Thousand Mile Walk” to help. A penny a mile, a dime a mile, or well, whatever you can give will be appreciated.

Video at the Masashi Goto Monument

Farmland near Woodland, Utah

I walked 15 miles the first day, 20 miles the second day and 16 miles today. I have had the opportunity to talk to about seven people about my walk and explain how it is a fund raising effort to benefit Southern Sudan Humanitarian to help the children in our schools in the villages of South Sudan. I wrote down the uri for this blog for them.

People have been very nice to me. Well, mostly, I am by myself except for the cars whizzing by. But, when I do have the opportunity to talk to people, they are very nice. Of course, I am appreciative that no one has ran over me yet.

I am camping tonight near the thriving metropolis of Woodland, Utah. One of the locals told me that cell phone coverage stops about one mile down the road as I go into the Uinta Mountains on Utah State Road 35 to Wolf Creek Pass. I expect that I will be out of cell coverage for about three days.

Camped under this park pavilion

Woodland, Utah is a picturesque little town on the edge of the Uintah Mountains. I camped on the concrete pad of a park pavilion of the local church. My grandson joined me for the night and the next two days. It got down to about 35 degrees at night. No store or restaurant in the little town, so bring your own food.

Claron at This Is The Place Monument

I started my walk this morning, Monday, June 17, 2013. I started the walk at the This Is the Place Monument on the east edge of Salt Lake City, Utah. The site commemorates the July 24, 1847 entry of Brigham Young with the first company of Mormon Pioneers into the valley of the Great Salt Lake. I walked 15 miles.

I had a beautiful spot for my first campsite on the thousand mile walk. The grass was more than waist high and thick. I manhandled my cart through a ditch to get off the frontage road of the freeway. I was the only camper to have used the spot maybe this year. There was a trail runner out for a training run through the mountains who was surprised to come across me. He gave me several granola bars that he wasn’t going to need that day. If I looked away from the road and ignored the freeway noise, it seemed like a pristine spot.

It was not an official campsite, but what is commonly referred to as a rough camp. No culinary water, toilets or picnic table, but just the natural beauty of being in the mountains in early summer. It made me a little nervous not knowing who owned the property. I had not gotten anyone’s permission to camp here. I cheated on this campsite in that I had driven my car up a few days before to scout out a camping spot. This is only camping spot on the walk with which I had that luxury.

Lambs Canyon. The grass was taller than my cart at the campsite.

View looking down Parleys Canyon from my Lambs Canyon campsite.

Go here to sposor me on my walk Donate

The June 17 start date was because I was in charge of the family reunion which had the date set of June 15. I had a lot of help. My grandparents, married in 1917, have about 500 descendents now. We had more than 125 attend the reunion. I am packed and ready to go tomorrow. My wife and I spent 5 hours today, as we normally do on Sunday, helping the African refugees in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. The people who came to the United States have challenges, but are grateful for the opportunities here. Back home in Africa, the challenges are big, but of a simpler sort, like finding clean water, food to eat, not dying in child birth and getting a primary school education.

I hope you will join me in helping the refugees that are returning to South Sudan to build a new nation and a new life for themselves. Donate to help the efforts of Southern Sudan Humanitarian to help the orphans, and other children in the villages of South Sudan.

I changed the look and colors of the blog by using the Classic Light Theme. Running commands like git submodule add git://github.com/octothemes/classic-light.git .themes/light in the terminal. See the Octopress instructions for more details.

The start of the thousand mile walk is coming up in three days. This is my first post on my Octopress powered blog. There is a lot to do to get ready for the trip, but I am taking the time to get a blog set up for all of those who want to follow me.