God Grew Tired of Us- Life Lessons

"God Grew Tired of Us",
the memoir of one of the Lost Boys of the Sudan by John Bul Dau was a great read. I read it last year, one of many memoirs of Africans I read. This book was rich in alot of ways. I actually require my highschoolers to read it and developed a short lesson plan to go along with it. We also got the documentary.

My friend Jenny, another adoptive mom of African kids (many!) wrote about it after she read it, and copied some of the parts that jumped out at her. I took the liberty of copying and pasting them here, becasue they were also parts that grabbed me.

He had this to say about America in the book:

"Without even pausing to think, I can tell you America's greatest stregnth is its enormous spirit, manifest in its generosity. Americans deserve huge credit for giving to those in need. They open their checkbooks and make donations to people in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, and in devastated New Orleans and they seldom know personally who benefits from their altruism. Nowhere else in the world do people give so much, so freely, with no expectations in return.

"But John Bul Dau goes on to suggest ways we could improve as a nation:

"Young families claim they want to live alone to assert their independence, but at what a cost! They lose the advice and support of grandparents, and they are not there to return the care their grandparents are due. I think America has lost much of the benefits of the tribe by putting its elderly in rest homes. And by clustering children in day-care centers---so many young calves mooing together in one pen! By separating the generations of a family, the circle of life gets broken."