I once was lost but now I'm found; the Lost Boys of Sudan wandered Africa for years. But Nhial Guot, who has found a temporary refuge in the United States, is no longer a boy nor lost--he knows just where his heart lies and where he wants to go.

The trip from a refugee camp in Kenya to Tacoma, Washington is unimaginably far--much farther than the 36 hours it ok Nhial Guot to fly from Africa to the Pacific Northwest.

I met Guot on a fall afternoon while a steady rain was plastering leaves to the sidewalk outside his front door. An 18-year-old whose face radiates intelligence and enthusiasm, Guot had been back from church for an hour but had not bothered to take off his jacket and bright orange tie.

In a corner of his small, sparsely furnished bedroom was a desk piled with schoolbooks. Guot had been digging through a chapter on atoms for his next chemistry class. Except for the neatly made bed and clothes that had been hung up, this was the habitat of a typical teenager. Loud, dissonant music came from a tape player, and a Michael Jordan poster hung over the desk.

It all appears so familiar, so normal, but Guot can be forgiven if, to him, his surroundings still seem strange. He can be forgiven if his mind still returns frequently to Kakuma, to Paliau, to his missing family, and to the excruciatingly difficult journey that has brought him this far.

Guot is one of the Lost Boys of Sudan.

It should be said that Guot hates to be called a boy. He is a Dinka, a member of southern Sudan's largest tribe, and when a Dinka reaches his 18th birthday, he be comes a man. That's how Guot sees himself, and to be called a Lost Boy is an insult.

Nevertheless, Guot was part of that long, ragtag column of children, mostly boys, who trekked a thousand miles before the survivors finally found sanctuary. It was 1987, and Sudan, Africa's largest and most ethnically diverse nation, was racked by a civil war that pitted the Muslim north against the black, partially Christian south. The Lost Boys were among the youngest and earliest victims of the cruel conflict that has gone on for 18 years and already has killed an estimated 2 million people and turned an additional 4 million into refugees.

Guot, whose name means heaven in Dinka, was born in Paliau, a village of 300 people located in Sudan's southeast corner not far from the White Nile. Guot's father was an itinerant judge and a Christian preacher. Besides Guot, there were four other children in the family.

Cattle are at the heart of Dinka existence. The animals, with their long, graceful horns, provide their owners with much of their diet, fuel for their fires, a measure of their wealth and place in the community, and their sense of well-being.

The Dinka regard their cattle as individuals. Every animal has a name. Thus it was no accident that Guot, while munching a hamburger in a Tacoma fast-food restaurant, could recall instantly the name of the cow that had knocked him down 14 years earlier and left a scar on his right cheek.

"It was Yar," he says.

That same year Guot and his family were swept up in the maelstrom of the civil war. Government troops attacked Paliau one summer morning while Guot and his friends were away watching cattle. Although he was only 4, he can still remember the gunfire and the smoke. The children had no choice but to run for their lives. Guot had become a Lost Boy.

Day by day the ragged line of boys grew until eventually there were 10,000 of them moving eastward toward Ethiopia. Many had no clothing or shoes as they crossed the southern edge of the Sahara. They were attacked by lions and marauding bandits. They died of thirst and hunger.

The first part of their harrowing journey finally ended in Canyudu, a refugee camp run by the United Nations in Ethiopia. Life was spartan in the camp. There was not much beyond a little shelter from the sun, one meal a day, and a blanket to ward off the chills of malaria. While in Ethiopia two things happened to Guot that changed the course of his life: He was baptized, and his formal education began, even though there were no books and the classroom was just a shady spot under a tree.

The Lost Boys were cast adrift again in 1992 when a new regime in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, decided it no longer wanted to harbor Sudanese refugees. Harried by soldiers, the boys fled back into Sudan. When they reached the swift Gilo River, many drowned or were killed by crocodiles.

The survivors--their number now reduced by half--continued to walk until they reached Kakuma, an immense refugee camp of 70,000 people in northern Kenya just below the Sudanese border, where refugees from eight countries had found shelter. At this point, Guot had been a Lost Boy for five years.

Life at Kakuma was full of deprivation and violence but it was where Guot's real education began. Dinkas have a thirst for learning, and he was such a diligent student that when he later enrolled at Tacoma's Henry Foss High School he was able to step right into the 11th grade and handle a schedule that includes geometry, biology, literature, computer training, and world geography. Mark Twain and the former Soviet republics have become part of his daily fare.

His journey to Tacoma began in 1999 when the U.S. State Department decided to repatriate 3,600 of the Lost Boys. A year later the United States Catholic Conference, working through Catholic Community Services of Western Washington, found a good-hearted woman named Diana Owens, who will be Guot's foster mother until he finishes high school. After that he will be on his own.

When he arrived at Seattle-Tacoma Airport in December 2000 with eight other Lost Boys, Guot had almost nothing with him except a few pieces of inadequate clothing and copies of the Old and New Testaments and a Dinka hymnal, all worn by constant reading.

Imagine never having used a toothbrush, opened a door, climbed stairs, ridden in a car, eaten food with a fork and spoon, or flushed a toilet, and you will understand how challenging it was for these young Sudanese when they were thrust suddenly into a large American city. When Guot stayed overnight in a New York hotel on his way west, it was the first time he had ever slept alone.

Guot's adjustment to his new life has gone remarkably well considering that the Lost Boys, in the view of one authority who has worked extensively with refugees, were the most thoroughly traumatized group of people he had ever encountered.

The past still catches up to Guot from time to time. Dinka society is male-dominated, and he still chafes when Diana Owens asks him to do something. He has been self-sufficient too long to adapt easily to a situation where he is dependent upon someone else.

It did not take Guot long to find a job after school. Three days a week he puts on a more conservative tie and shows up to stock the shelves of a supermarket pharmacy. Part of his earnings goes to pay phone bills, run up by his long conversations with old friends scattered around the United States.

"It does my ears good to hear Dinka," he says.

After a year in Tacoma, Guot's African roots have held firm. He is grateful for the generosity he has encountered in this country, but he is not a Dinka waiting to become an American citizen. He is a Dinka who will go home as soon as he has been educated. His goal is to become a doctor--even though this means it will be a long time before he sees the plains of central Africa again.

PAUL CONKLIN is a photographer living in Port Townsend, Washington.