For the first time in half a decade, and with an entirely newly elected executive board, the Anyuak Youth Association (AYA) recently held its annual youth conference. Known as the Anyuak Youth Conference, the two-day event took place on July 27 in the Twin Cities, and on July 28 in Rochester, seeking to educate the rising generation of young adults in the community while unifying the diaspora during testing times overseas.
“[Young people] benefit from seeing people that look like them rise up and have certain attributes that they carry and that they built up throughout time,” said Ariet Ochalla, a poet who traveled from San Diego, California to perform at the conference. “These kids, they need to see that. They need to see a different example than what they hear or what they see near them.
The Anywaa people, whose population is estimated to be between 200,000 and 300,000, reside in both Ethiopia and South Sudan along the shared border on the lower Nile River. For decades, they have been targeted by violence perpetrated the neighboring Nuer people, and the Ethiopian government. On Dec. 13, 2003, a raid aided by Ethiopian military massacred approximately 424 citizens. Since then, the Nuer have sustained the conflict, sending thousands of Anywaa to seek refuge in nearby Kenya.
But being in Kenyan hasn’t necessarily kept Anywaa people safe. According to Genocide Watch, hundreds of Nuer at Kakuma and Kalubayei refugee camps in Kenya launched surprise knife and machete attacks in the middle of the night of June 20 with knife attacks, killing two and injuring 22 Anywaa as they slept.
According to Anywaa Community in Minnesota, Anywaa fleeing war began settling in Minnesota and its neighboring states as early as the 1990s, making cities like Minneapolis, Rochester and St. Cloud home to roughly 20,000 refugees, and Minnesota the biggest Anywaa diaspora outside of the homelands.
The first day also featured a discussion on mental health centered around gang violence prevention, substance abuse and suicide prevention.
“There’s a stigma behind mental health in our community,” said AYA Vice President Peter Obang. “[For] parents and children, it’s just frowned upon to be able to talk about [it], so we want to have people who are experienced in this field to be able to talk about it.”
Founded in 2015 and based in Minnesota, AYA is one of few that spotlights the challenges of Anyuak adolescence, as the young people in the community deal with trauma.
AYA is a member of the Anyuak Community Association in North America (ACANA), but is supported by other Anywaa-focused organizations like Gambella First. AYA’s current board was selected in December 2023 and hosted a few events leading up to the youth conference to fundraise and raise awareness.
Following passionate and competitive playoff basketball games between four teams at the Anyuak Culture Day held by ACANA three weeks prior, Team Eman and Team Medi — named after each’s respective coach — faced off in downtown Minneapolis on the first day of the conference, with Team Medi ultimately winning 42 to 39.
The first day of the conference was hosted by the American Swedish Institute and geared towards educational and collaborative activities and discussions. Older mentors in a range of professions, from pharmaceutical studies and HR representation to business owning and the teaching field, set up tables stationed outside the main hall, presenting about their individual paths and answering the questions of the curious youth.
On the first day, attendees listened to a speech about the importance of education, heard a poem by Ochalla, viewed a recap film of the cultural day and discussed amongst themselves the future of the evolving Anywaa culture and how to best preserve it amidst conflict.
The second day, which was at Essex Park in Rochester, took a much more active approach. Children ran around the expansive lush green field, playing the sports of their choice and swinging on the playground. A larger turnout, music and dancing set a different tone for the more relaxed day. Classic barbeque foods like hotdogs and burgers were served while people of all ages met up with relatives and friends. An intense soccer match and water balloon fight were the highlights of the final day of the conference.
“It showed the youth community that there’s still hope,” said Michael Nyimera Vincent Ajal. “The last youth conferences [was in] 2019 and a lot has happened in those five years, the community is not as strong as it used to be. [With] the stuff going on back at home, this weekend showed our youth that, you know, there’s still hope, and we’re able to do things. As long as we move as one, as a community, we’re able to make a change, and we’re able to make we’re able to make a big impact on our people back home, and the younger generations and even our parents too.”
With summer ending, AYA is planning on having their next big event in the autumn.
“In the future, our parents [are] eventually going to die, and these events are not [gonna be] held no more, and the community’s just going to be lost, so to say,” said Ajal. “That’s not what we need, especially at the time we’re at for the community. So, it’s very important to attend these events, keeping our community as unified, as much as we can, to thrive.
This story has been corrected to reflect the team that won the basketball game.
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About Kwot Anwey
Kwot Anwey is a reporting intern with Mshale and majors in journalism at Boston University.
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