This is the second part of the interview with John Bul Dau. (Part One here.) Dau wrote God Grew Tired of Us, the story of his experience as one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. John works with Direct Change, an organization created to help fund projects in Africa. Direct Change provides online fundraising tools to volunteer supporters and has recently expanded to raise money for groups working in Ethiopia including AHope and AAI's Nazret program.

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Owlhaven: I read in your book about the clinic you are building in Sudan. How is the work going on that? Is it serving people yet?

John Bul Dau: Yes, it is open now! The Lord has helped me a lot! The building has seven rooms and we’ve hired a doctor and several nurses. It opened 5 days ago and in the first five days it has already served 300 people! Already some of the medicine is running out.

Owlhaven: What is the main focus of the care in the clinic? Will they be giving people access to anti-retroviral drugs?

John Bul Dau: Yes, eventually we’d like to have anti-retroviral drugs. But they’re very expensive. And really, HIV is not the main problem in southern Sudan right now. The first time I heard of HIV was in 1998. The Dinka culture is very conservative. You don’t have relations with a woman before you are married, and so I think that because of that HIV is not such a problem there as it is in other parts of Africa. When it started to come, it came from Kenya and Uganda and other places. he main problems we see are malaria, measles, worms, TB. Stuff that has been eradicated in other parts of the world.

Owlhaven: So the main focus of your clinic will be immunizations? Medicine for parasites? That kind of thing?

John Bul Dau: Absolutely. And education. People are still drinking water that cows have walked through, and then they get sick. When I looked at what I could do in Sudan, I decided health was the most important thing. You can’t go to school if you’re sick. You can’t harvest a crop if you’re sick. So the clinic was first.

Owlhaven: That must be hard: seeing so much need and trying to decide where the money should go.

John Bul Dau: Yes, it is. Later I would like to do more. I want to start a water project. But I need a funder first.

Owlhaven: What do you most want people to know about Sudan?

John Bul Dau: I want people to know that Sudan has always been a peaceful country. We have our cows. We celebrate weddings and raise our children. We watch over children and take care of them. Always in Sudan children are given things first. When someone is killing a goat or a cow for a wedding celebration, always they give the children some meat first. It is honorable in Sudan to take care of children and to protect women. Only after war came did things change in southern Sudan.

Owlhaven:Tell me about Direct Change.

John Bul Dau: People can go to the web site and click on Projects and donate to the clinic in Sudan. They can also donate to other projects that Direct Change is involved in, including some in Ethiopia.

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The award-winning documentary God Grew Tired of Us is scheduled to come out on DVD in August, 2007 and will be available at Amazon.com. You can read more about John Dau and his work in Sudan at Direct Change.