I am writing this in an attempt to catch my breath, because tomorrow will be my last day to draw it. Curiosity probes me to ask you, the reader of my story, if you have ever paused to think of your accomplishments in life. Have you ever thought of them as if you could die at any moment? How do these things define you? How will you be remembered? I think there’s no way of reflecting on this with an absolute contentment. Even now, despite my youth, I am a great number of things. I am a humanitarian, student, and a teacher. I am a mercenary, mediator, and a warrior. I follow and I lead. My life was not always this way, but the deserts of Africa have a way of changing people.
My name is Marcus York. Since I’m from New York, the name never really worked for me and that could have contributed to my detachment from the city of my birth. Some would say I had a troubled youth. I delved into hallucinogens, but I truly believe that I was still a pretty good kid. Even at seventeen and eighteen I was doing community service for no reason other than the simple fact that it made me feel good. After I was released from a brief stint in prison and sentenced to community service it didn’t really faze me. At twenty-two I was picking up trash to help the environment and amend my wrongs, and picking up the wreckage of demolished houses for the only business that would hire a high-school educated former car thief.
In all honesty, I actually did suck it up and continued that way for a couple years. Once I had finished my required community service I was able to go to night-school and being the bored, single, young man that I was, finished an Associate’s degree in a year and a half. By this time I was newly twenty-four and working over fifty hours a week to pass the time in my unburdened schedule. My family did not really have anything to do with me, nor do I suspect that they wanted to, except for my two doped-up cousins who live in L.A. I visited them a few times, but their state of living was even more depressing than my own so that was sort of my last resort for human interaction. Usually I just stayed in New York, and the excess money I produced would often go to charities that needed it more than a demolitions laborer with too much time on his hands.
With no university plans in mind and a bleak dating life, I decided to throw a middle finger to my birthplace and go somewhere where I could perhaps be more appreciated. I was accused of “running away” but that’s truly not the case. I was unhappy there and it did not really feel like anything would change that except for me. I just took matters into my own hands and if my family members had a problem with that then fuck them because they never really did much for me anyway. So I left. I knew Africa has seemingly always had a perpetual list of problems, so I searched for the ones that would tug my heart in their direction. Chad’s situation seemed pretty messed up, as did the Central African Republic, and there are not many people who are bigger proponents than me against the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Darfur hit home the hardest though, and in these journalistic moments the area of Western Sudan is reinforced even more as my home than I ever thought possible. My parole had been discharged for a while so as soon as I could I applied for a passport and waited eagerly for the good news.
Sudan has known war for decades. Years of ceaseless and senseless violence have plagued this nation without mercy. Most of this is sparked from the Sudanese government, though I have given them nothing less in return. The people of Darfur, however, are naturally more peaceful. These Africans are unlike their Arabian neighbors immediately to the east.
I came to them with my Yankees hat on, a white t-shirt and jeans to at least keep a bit of me warm at the end of Africa’s winter, however sympathetic that winter is to a New Yorker. I am different now, perhaps would even be considered barbaric by some, although I’m certainly more learned now than I was all those months ago. Despite the fact that I have done more in my twenty-four years than many have done in their lives, I’m not ready for mine to stop. As Sudanese tank tracks surely rumble their way to my village, I find myself more terrified than I have ever been.
My name is Marcus York. Since I’m from New York, the name never really worked for me and that could have contributed to my detachment from the city of my birth. Some would say I had a troubled youth. I delved into hallucinogens, but I truly believe that I was still a pretty good kid. Even at seventeen and eighteen I was doing community service for no reason other than the simple fact that it made me feel good. After I was released from a brief stint in prison and sentenced to community service it didn’t really faze me. At twenty-two I was picking up trash to help the environment and amend my wrongs, and picking up the wreckage of demolished houses for the only business that would hire a high-school educated former car thief.
In all honesty, I actually did suck it up and continued that way for a couple years. Once I had finished my required community service I was able to go to night-school and being the bored, single, young man that I was, finished an Associate’s degree in a year and a half. By this time I was newly twenty-four and working over fifty hours a week to pass the time in my unburdened schedule. My family did not really have anything to do with me, nor do I suspect that they wanted to, except for my two doped-up cousins who live in L.A. I visited them a few times, but their state of living was even more depressing than my own so that was sort of my last resort for human interaction. Usually I just stayed in New York, and the excess money I produced would often go to charities that needed it more than a demolitions laborer with too much time on his hands.
With no university plans in mind and a bleak dating life, I decided to throw a middle finger to my birthplace and go somewhere where I could perhaps be more appreciated. I was accused of “running away” but that’s truly not the case. I was unhappy there and it did not really feel like anything would change that except for me. I just took matters into my own hands and if my family members had a problem with that then fuck them because they never really did much for me anyway. So I left. I knew Africa has seemingly always had a perpetual list of problems, so I searched for the ones that would tug my heart in their direction. Chad’s situation seemed pretty messed up, as did the Central African Republic, and there are not many people who are bigger proponents than me against the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Darfur hit home the hardest though, and in these journalistic moments the area of Western Sudan is reinforced even more as my home than I ever thought possible. My parole had been discharged for a while so as soon as I could I applied for a passport and waited eagerly for the good news.
Sudan has known war for decades. Years of ceaseless and senseless violence have plagued this nation without mercy. Most of this is sparked from the Sudanese government, though I have given them nothing less in return. The people of Darfur, however, are naturally more peaceful. These Africans are unlike their Arabian neighbors immediately to the east.
I came to them with my Yankees hat on, a white t-shirt and jeans to at least keep a bit of me warm at the end of Africa’s winter, however sympathetic that winter is to a New Yorker. I am different now, perhaps would even be considered barbaric by some, although I’m certainly more learned now than I was all those months ago. Despite the fact that I have done more in my twenty-four years than many have done in their lives, I’m not ready for mine to stop. As Sudanese tank tracks surely rumble their way to my village, I find myself more terrified than I have ever been.
