Escaped Sudanese slave Francis Bok talked about his 10 years of fear and humiliation at the hands of an Arab family during a lecture Sept. 20 in the Koury Center, and his efforts to educate the world about modern slavery. Details...
Bok is the author of “Escape from Slavery: The True Story of my Ten Years in Captivity-and my Journey to Freedom in America.” The book served as Elon’s 2005-2006 common reading. Bok was 7 years old when he was captured and enslaved during an Arab militia raid on the Sudanese village of Mymlal in 1986. He received daily beatings and was forced to eat rotten food and sleep with cattle. The matriarch of the family who enslaved Bok would encourage her children to beat him.
“They never cared, they never took me to the doctor and I got very sick several times,” said Bok. “God was the only one there with me.”
One day, Bok summoned the courage to ask his captors why they made him sleep with animals and why nobody loved him. “(They) told me that they did these things because I was an animal. At that moment, I said to myself I am not an animal. I am a human being,” Bok said.
Bok escaped slavery at age 17 and eventually settled in the United States. He arrived in Fargo, N.D., on his first day in the U.S., and was given an apartment. “I stood in the bedroom and took a deep breath,” Bok said. “I realized that now, nobody is going to make a decision for me, except me.” In that moment, Bok said he thought about all the people who were still oppressed by slavery. “I decided that one day, I would help all the people of Sudan.”
He testified about his experience before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 2000, the first escaped slave to do so. He is an associate at the American Anti-Slavery Group in Boston, has chaired a panel on slavery at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and spoken at numerous colleges and universities.
Bok’s lecture was sponsored by the Liberal Arts Forum.