Housed in cinderblock huts at the UN compound, the filmmakers had few restrictions as they took their cameras into the crowds of refugees. Their particular focus was on the “Dinka” boys (the largest tribe in the southern Sudan) who would soon depart for the States under an International Rescue Committee program to resettle them in America. Quinn and Walker began honing in on those who had been selected to depart the following week.
“We immediately gravitated toward Daniel because he had started something called Parliament and what he was doing was amazing,” says Quinn.
Daniel Abol Pach, who, like most of the boys, had already been living in the Kenya camp for ten years, had emerged as a popular figure in the camp by gathering hundreds of fellow survivors under the shade of the trees and entertaining them.
“There would be times when these boys and young men didn’t eat for 4 or 6 days – they would run out of food and when that happened, everything in the camp slowed down,” explains Quinn. “They would call those ‘the black days.’ But Daniel would gather hundreds of them under the trees and he would be entertaining people, keeping their spirits up."
