After a Long March, a Sudanese Refugee Crosses His Finish Line
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Version 0 of 1. In December 2013, I wrote an article for The Times Magazine about Jacob Deng Mach, one of the so-called Lost Boys of Sudan who had been resettled in Georgia after a childhood of war-induced wandering. The article covered the most recent incarnation of Mach’s relentless pursuit of the American dream — a star-crossed bid to become an Atlanta police officer. After more than a year of punishing training at the city’s police academy, the saga of Recruit Mach did not end quite as expected. Mach started the grueling 22-week training session three times, but couldn’t pass the required emergency driving test and failed out of the academy. In consolation, the department gave him a civilian position as a code-enforcement officer, inspecting derelict properties. Happily, I can now report, that was not the final chapter. On Valentine’s Day, nearly five years after becoming a recruit for the first time, Mach joined the other members of his academy class for a graduation ceremony at Atlanta’s City Hall. After working two years in code enforcement, Mach reapplied to the academy and was admitted. Again he failed a driving-related test and had to be held back to repeat the training from the start. But on his fifth and last possible attempt, he made it through, surely leaving him Atlanta’s best-trained rookie cop ever. He started at age 32 in Class 227 and graduated at 37 in Class 246. He also likely set a departmental mark for the cultural distance traveled by a recruit. In accepting his diploma, and exchanging a crisp salute with Chief Erika Shields, Mach fulfilled his longtime goal of becoming, as far as can be determined, the first Lost Boy to wear the uniform of an American police officer. There were 24 other new officers in Mach’s class. But Chief Shields, a department veteran, could not resist framing her graduation address around him. “Most of you will not know,” she told the new officers, “that I have been waiting for this particular graduation for over two years. I knew this day would come, and it is here.” She recounted how Mach joined thousands of displaced Sudanese children who escaped civil war in the 1980s by fleeing into the bush. He hiked hundreds of miles, barefoot and parentless, first to a desolate refugee camp in Ethiopia, then to another in Kenya. Many of his fellow trekkers died of starvation or disease, or in attacks by wild animals or government soldiers. In 2001, the United States accepted Mach among 4,000 Sudanese refugees, Shields said. He was deposited in an apartment outside Atlanta, with one change of clothes and a three-month guarantee of government support. He arrived with an almost-impenetrable accent and no experience with flush toilets, microwave ovens or smoke alarms. But he recognized opportunity, Shields said. She spoke of how Mach worked multiple low-paying jobs, earned a bachelor’s degree, built his own house with Habitat for Humanity and then won a coveted spot at the academy. “Thank you,” Shields said to him, “for never giving up on yourself, your family or your native Sudan. But more than anything, thank you for allowing the Atlanta Police Department the opportunity to claim you as their son.” With the nation torn by a series of high-profile police shootings, Mach said, it had become a particularly perilous and demoralizing time to become a cop. But he said he was resolved to serve. “The way I look at life is that God has a plan, and you can die anywhere, even in a church or your own office,” he said. “Yes, it is a risky and dangerous time to become a police officer, but that doesn’t prevent us from doing what we are supposed to do. There is a need to protect the community, and somebody has to do it.” |