Collection is open for research.
Gift of The Immigrant Story, June 2021 (RL2021-057).
Peter Magai Bul was born in Wangulei, Sudan, a village of the Dinka people, around 1982. In 1988, his village was attacked and he fled to Ethiopia with a group of other children from his village, known as the Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan. He spent several years in a refugee camp in Dima, being trained as a child soldier by the Ethiopian Army. He fled during the Ethiopian Civil War, and in 1992, he arrived at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. In 2001, he was granted a visa to the United States and he settled in Chicago, Illinois. He attended Truman College, and earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Northeastern Illinois University. He became a public speaker, activist, and community organizer, and became a U.S. citizen in 2007.
Oral history interview with Peter Magai Bul, by Nancy E. Dollahite and Sankar Raman, SR 12300, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
This oral history interview with Peter Magai Bul was conducted by Nancy E. Dollahite and Sankar Raman on November 26, 2018. The interview was recorded for The Immigrant Story, an organization that documents and archives the stories of immigrants and refugees in the United States. Tim O'Brien was also present.
In this interview, Bul discusses his early life in Sudan as a member of the Dinka tribe. He speaks about tending cattle, about his childhood activities, and about Dinka culture. He talks about the Second Sudanese Civil War and the attack on Wangulei village in 1988. He describes fleeing by foot to Ethiopia; talks about life as one of many displaced children, known as the Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan, in a refugee camp in Dima; and speaks about training as a child soldier. He then describes fleeing to Kenya during the Ethiopian Civil War. He talks about life in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, including attending school for the first time; discusses the process of earning refugee status to the United States in 2001; and describes his journey to Chicago, Illinois. He talks about adjusting to life in Chicago, about attending Truman College and Northeastern Illinois University, and about helping to build a school in Wangulei. He closes the interview by discussing his plans for the future.
Joint copyright for this interview is held by the Oregon Historical Society and The Immigrant Story. Use is allowed according to the following statement: In Copyright – Educational Use Permitted,
An article about Peter Magai Bul, "Choosing Survival, Again and Again" by Nancy E. Dollahite, was based on this interview and published on The Immigrant Story website at