New Haven Independent

Amol rubbed his eyes one recent afternoon, struggling to focus on a food menu after an early-morning shift restocking shelves at Target. Running on three or four hours of sleep was nothing new to him: That’s how he got through Gateway Community College, working the night shift from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m., then attending three or four classes during the day.

Amol moved into New Haven with a group of 25 Sudanese refugees called the Lost Boys, young orphans forced to walk hundreds of miles to safety after being forced out of their villages in the 1980s. In May, Amol and fellow Lost Boy Barnabas Atem reached a milestone for the group by graduating from Gateway.

After five years in New Haven, Amol will be the first to leave a group of tight-knit Sudanese friends and venture on to a four-year college. Amol is counting down the last few days until his warehouse job ends and he starts a new life as a junior at the University of Connecticut.

“It will be a big change; it will be hard,” he said, biting into a slice of apple pie last week at a Whalley Avenue fast food joint. For the first time, he won’t be surrounded with friends who speak his language. But he’s excited for the challenge: He just bought new cleats, which he hopes to take to the soccer fields between the classes he’ll be taking for a biology degree. After that: “Medical school — that’s my long goal.”

To Amol’s relief, the tuition burden will be lifted by a few grants: He earned a merit-based $5,000 scholarship from the Stephen Phillips Memorial Scholarship Fund in Salem, Mass.; $1,000 from the New Haven Rotary Club and $1,000 from the First Congregational Church of Christ in Madison, which adopted the boys upon their arrival and has helped them each step of the way.

As for Amol’s fellow graduate Barnabas Atem? He’ll be spending one more year at Gateway before applying to universities.