Dut << doot >>, Salva (1974-…), is a South Sudanese activist and founder of Water for South Sudan, a non-profit organization that builds wells in the country. Dut was the subject of the Korean American author Linda Sue Park’s novel A Long Walk to Water (2010).
Dut was born on Dec. 1, 1974, in Loun-Ariik, a rural village in what is now South Sudan. He and his family were part of the cattle-herding Dinka people. Dut’s family raised cows and sheep. While Dut was in school in 1985, the Sudanese civil war between southerners and government forces reached his village. The turmoil occurred after President Gaafar Nimeiri established Islamic law throughout the country and ended the southern regional government, amid severe nationwide economic problems. Military officers overthrew Nimeiri in 1985 and established a military government. Dut ran away to hide from the rebel forces and gunfire. He eventually found his uncle in a group of refugees and joined them on a journey to Ethiopia. Along the journey, Dut saw his uncle killed by northern soldiers.
Dut continued walking with a group of Dinka villagers for two months before reaching Ethiopia, not knowing if his parents survived. He stayed in the orphan section of the Itang refugee camp in western Ethiopia until violence broke out six years after his arrival. To escape the violence, Dut led a group of nearly 1,500 boys, often called the “lost boys,” to the Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya. During the journey, hundreds of the boys died of dehydration, illness, starvation, and violence.
After 11 years away from home, Dut had not heard from his family. He stayed at the Kakuma refugee camp until 1996, when he received a scholarship to live with an American family in Rochester, New York, as a political refugee. At the age of 22, he moved to the United States. Around 2001, Dut heard that his father was alive but suffering from a disease caused by a water-borne parasite. Dut traveled to Sudan to see his father, who eventually recovered from the illness. On this trip, Dut saw how the lack of clean water affected many people in South Sudan.
Dut founded Water for South Sudan in 2003. The charity installs and repairs wells and provides hygiene training. The organization began drilling for a well in Dut’s childhood village of Loun-Ariik in 2005. The foundation has now built hundreds of wells, serving hundreds of thousands of people.
