‘Don’t Look Again’: Refugee, plant employee writes of survival

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — As Achut Deng lay in her condominium bed room within the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, sickened alongside tons of of her co-workers at a South Dakota meatpacking plant, she anxious she was going to die.

It wasn’t the primary time she felt the approaching risk of loss of life.

Her childhood, shattered by struggle in South Sudan, had been full of it. However as she centered on constructing a brand new life for her household – full of lengthy hours on the Smithfield Meals pork processing plant – she saved these traumatic recollections to herself.

Within the spring of 2020, nonetheless, she spoke out to inform of the concern gripping the Sioux Falls workforce, including to stress that prodded the plant to implement new security protocols that helped shield Deng and her colleagues.

Now, Deng is telling her complete story – from fleeing massacres to the trauma she skilled as a refugee in the US – via a memoir that she hopes will carry consciousness of each the hardships, in addition to the therapeutic, for refugees.

Deng’s guide for younger adults, co-authored with Keely Hutton, attracts its title from the phrases Deng’s grandmother uttered as they fled when their village got here underneath assault: “Don’t Look Again.”

For many years, she adopted that recommendation to outlive. The guide particulars her grandmother’s sacrifice to actually defend Deng from bullets throughout a 1991 bloodbath, to a refugee journey the place a lethal river, a snake chew and malaria all almost killed her. And even after arriving within the U.S., Deng writes, she suffered sexual abuse from a male guardian in addition to accompanying suicidal ideas.

“I’m uninterested in being robust. I’m executed being embarrassed. I’m executed being ashamed of what I’ve been via,” Deng, now 37, informed The Related Press in an interview at her dwelling in Sioux Falls.

For years, she quietly saved her story buried beneath her work on the plant, a aspect hustle of catering sambusa and caring for her three sons.

“There’s a motive why I created this busy schedule – as a result of I don’t wish to have time to myself in order that I can consider the previous,” she mentioned.

The exhausting work allowed Deng to realize the life she dreamed of when she got here to the U.S. as an adolescent. She saved for a down fee on a house, paid for household holidays and even sponsored her dad and mom’ immigration to America.

When COVID-19 infections unfold amongst Deng’s colleagues, nonetheless, her desires got here underneath assault as soon as once more. Sickened by the virus, she anxious her sons would discover her physique and be left with solely the tales others informed about her. Deng was nonetheless haunted by discovering that her personal grandmother had been struck and killed by the bullets that may have hit Deng throughout that 1991 bloodbath.

“I discovered myself on the very lowest level once more,” Deng recounted.

Previously, she had quietly centered on survival. This time, she spoke out. Deng appeared twice on the New York Occasions’ “The Each day” podcast.

She described in compelling element the struggling and concern amongst her colleagues – lots of them immigrants – because the pork processing plant turned one of many nation’s worst hotspots for infections within the spring of 2020. 4 of her colleagues died after being contaminated.

Many staff on the time anxious concerning the penalties of talking with reporters, however Deng says she was solely describing her personal expertise and that she doesn’t blame Smithfield for the coronavirus. She says the plant requires exhausting work, however Smithfield additionally supplies the wages, advantages and a schedule that enable a single mom to offer for her household.

When a publicist at Macmillan Publishing heard Deng on the podcast, it sparked talks that led to the memoir. Deng wrote the guide with Hutton, her co-author, in between working 12-hour shifts at Smithfield and ferrying her sons to highschool. She usually slept simply 4 hours between her in a single day job as a supervisor and video calls with Hutton.

Delving into the trauma of her previous was troublesome, Deng mentioned, and required remedy classes.

Then, each Sunday, when Deng had a day without work, she would sit together with her sons round their eating desk and browse the draft of the most recent chapter.

“We cry collectively; we speak about it; then we put it behind; then we begin the brand new week,” Deng mentioned.

She hopes that readers will come to know refugees have their lives upended and are traumatized by forces past their management, however present unbelievable resilience by selecting to return to the U.S. She described the guide’s cowl, illustrated with the face of a lady overlaid by an evening sky, as capturing her emotions at publication.

“She’s wounded however fearless,” Deng mentioned. “You may see the ache in her eye. However she’s not afraid.”