James Mayik, from Lost Boy of Sudan to Portland teacher and leader

Portland State University alumnus James Mayik, a doctoral candidate in the College of Education, is a thought leader on education in refugee camps, an area of firsthand experience. In these times of global refugee crises, his expertise is much needed.

Orphaned as a child during the second Sudanese Civil War, he witnessed decades of conflict in his home country of Sudan during a war that endured from 1983 to 2005. His path to Portland and graduation from PSU is a fascinating journey, one that became even more extraordinary when he was invited to return to South Sudan as a government advisor on a USAID funded development assistant project on education in January 2010.

“I was a Lost Boy,” says Mayik, “I lived in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya for 10 years before coming to the U.S. Before coming to Kenya, I lived in Pugnido refugee camp in Ethiopia for three years. My father was killed when I was two, and while I was in the camp, I learned that my mother and sister had also died in 1995 and 2001, respectively.”

The Lost Boys of Sudan included 20,000 children orphaned or separated from their families during systemic ethnic cleansing which emanated from war. The Sudanese Civil War drove many people out of their homes, and young children were torn from families and villages, especially, he notes, during the bout between 1987 and 1990. Given that the war was predominantly fought in southern Sudan, the Lost Boys were exclusively from this region. Most just six or seven years old, they fled to Ethiopia to escape death or induction into the Sudan government army. They walked in groups from rural villages to refugee camps in the neighboring countries of Ethiopia and Kenya, a journey that could take years by foot. It is estimated half died along the way due to starvation, dehydration, disease, wild animals, or attacks by enemy soldiers.

For 10 years, Mayik lived in the refugee camp in Kenya, run by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. This experience informs his belief that refugee camps should not be considered temporary holdings. Indeed, some adults have spent their entire lives in refugee camps, which struggle to provide education for the thousands of children born in the camps each year. Teacher education should be available inside the camps, he notes. Mayik also believes that teachers who are refugees themselves should be prepared in accordance with the standards of countries hosting refugees, deployed, salaried, pensioned, and protected under the local labor union.  

In 2001, the U.S. government offered to resettle 3,600 of the Lost Boys in the U.S. By this time, Mayik was a young adult, and eager to work. He was resettled in Jacksonville, Florida, but the city’s public transportation was limited. “I heard about Portland,” says Mayik, “and Trimet [mass transit] runs from 4 a.m. in the morning until 2 a.m. at night, so I could get to and from work and put myself through college in order to acquire an education.” He made the cross-country move to Oregon, and found employment working as a hotel cleaner, and then in hospitality catering for the Hilton Hotel in downtown Portland. Soon he was working nights at the Hilton, where he worked for five years as a banquet houseman while attending Portland State.

As a student in the Portland Teachers Program (PTP), he earned a bachelor’s degree at PSU as an undergraduate, followed by a master’s degree at PSU’s College of Education. PTP’s aim was to prepare more black teachers for Portland and Beaverton School Districts, in order to create better outcomes for students of color. After graduation in 2009, Mayik was recruited as a substitute teacher, but before taking assignments, destiny was about to pull him back to Africa.

In 2005 Sudan ended more than 20 years of civil war in a comprehensive peace agreement which gave southern Sudan an option to vote either for independence or unity after six years of interim period. On July 9, 2011, the Republic of South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in an internationally supervised referendum. The U.S. government, working with the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, invited Mayik to return to South Sudan as an education advisor to the new government. He was embedded in the Unity State Ministry of Education in 2010 to provide capacity building for the ministry staff there. Then he moved to Juba in 2011 to provide technical support to the government referendum task-force. He oversaw field-based implementation of the South Sudan Teacher Education Project in the Greater Upper Nile States from 2012 to 2014, working for the Education Development Center (EDC) as a State Program Manager. When the program ended, he was offered the post of senior training coordinator for Nile Petroleum Cooperation (NILEPET).

Returning to Portland in 2016, he was hired by Gresham School District, and then Portland Public Schools (PPS), which in 2023, chose him for its Aspiring Leadership Program. This year, the PPS science teacher will also complete his Doctor of Education degree (EdD) at PSU. James Mayik now lives happily in the Portland area with his wife and three young children. Given the political turmoil and wars in South Sudan after independence, he has created and incorporated in Oregon a public charity called South Sudan Youth Education Program (SSYEP). SSYEP identifies talented and gifted South Sudanese refugee youths living across Kenya and sponsors them in various Kenyan boarding schools. Please visit SSYEP’s website at ssyep.org