South Sudanese Models Citizens

How three New York City beauties are helping the world’s youngest nation

EILON PAZ

Models (from left) Eligha Ojok, Mari Malek and Grace Bol escaped Sudan and now work at New York restaurant Indochine.

By MITCH SWENSON

Her mother had fled. Her uncle would be arrested the next day. Eligha Ojok was not yet 12 years old, but she knew that Khartoum was not safe. Her cousin kept watch for police at the door. Ojok grabbed the hands of her two younger brothers and stepped into the blazing Sudan sun. Today, she worries that that was the last time she will ever see her homeland.

“I thought they were dead,” she says matter-of-factly of her family and friends. “It was years later that we found out only my uncle was alive in Juba. He had escaped from the jail and is still partially paralyzed from the torture. He will never be the same, but we just thank God he didn’t die.”

Ojok’s friends Grace Bol and Mari Malek tell similar tales. Each fled their native homeland of Sudan as refugees during the height of the civil war, and, after a painstaking journey through the heartland of Africa, eventually found sanctuary in the United States — Ojok in Pittsburgh, Bol in Kansas City and Malek in Newark

Read more:  http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/sudan_model_citizens_ApyFim3