This is the story of two immensely talented sons of Africa who each migrated to America and thrived. One you’ve heard of: Elon Musk. The other, Valentino Achak Deng, was a “lost boy” from Sudan who survived massacres, lions and crocodiles and moved to Atlanta as a refugee.
Musk and Deng have since gone in opposite directions.
Born in South Africa, Musk has proved himself one of the great tech entrepreneurs in history, with remarkable achievements in rockets, electric vehicles, brain implants and satellite internet. Yet Musk has warned that “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” and by demolishing the United States Agency for International Development he is now destroying the lives of many impoverished children on the continent where he grew up.
Valentino, an old friend of mine, is the opposite, for his traumas have left him exuding empathy. I admire Musk’s genius, but I wish it were leavened by Valentino’s selflessness.
So I came here to the remote town of Aweil in South Sudan to see what can be learned from Valentino. Maybe, just maybe, Musk will read this and appreciate that the measure of a man is less his net worth than his net humanity.
Valentino’s odyssey began when he was 7 and a Sudanese militia raided his village, forcing him to flee for his life. Losing all contact with his family, surviving by eating leaves and animal carcasses, he spent five years dodging bullets and land mines. Eventually, he reached a Kenyan refugee camp, where he says he made a pact with God: If you let me get to America, I will use those connections to help my country.
In 2001, he arrived in Atlanta. The writer Dave Eggers wrote a best-selling book about Valentino, “What Is the What,” and Valentino and Eggers used the royalties to start a school in what in 2011 became the country of South Sudan.
Then everything went wrong. Civil war erupted. A rebel army drew near the school, and Valentino worried that his students might be kidnapped. When President Barack Obama honored Valentino at the White House, powerful people in South Sudan grew jealous, leading goons to attack him and loot his school. He received death threats and his car was shot at, but he refused to run: What Valentino shares with Musk is tenacity.
Valentino moved his school to a safer location in the larger city of Aweil, and now his Cornerstones Vision Academy has 2,200 students from around the country, chosen by competitive examination. He is proud that girls outnumber boys there.
Many schools around the country stopped functioning during the civil war. Public school teachers haven’t been paid their salaries for the last year, so they aren’t inclined to teach. Twice as many “schools” operate outside under trees as in permanent buildings. More than 70 percent of South Sudanese children do not attend school.
All this has made Valentino all the more determined to persist, for he argues that education is the best way to overcome the tribalism, corruption and AK-47 culture that have so damaged his nation.
“I cannot let these families down,” he told me, and he wants to put his own good fortune to a higher purpose. “I came out of a grave to make a difference.”
Cornerstones Academy is the opposite of posh. Classes sometimes have more than 100 students, and some classrooms have dirt floors. Students lack desks and sufficient books. There is no regular electricity or running water. A donor from Seattle, supporting the school through Valentino’s VAD Foundation, is paying for a well that will soon provide pure water for the first time.
The academy offers computer classes, but it cannot afford internet for the students. (Valentino dreams of the Starlink internet access pioneered by Musk.) A teacher goes online through a mobile network and projects his computer screen onto the wall as students watch. “We show the students what they can do in the future,” Valentino said.
And these students! They are inspiring.
Daniella Adut Deng, 20, is an orphan who was raised by an aunt who forced her to drop out of school in the fourth grade. Daniella secretly tried to keep up her skills by looking at other children’s books, and after two years she was able to return to school — though she says her aunt beat her with a stick for insisting on returning to class.
The aunt loaded Daniella with chores — cooking, shopping and laundry — and has tried to marry her off since she was 14. Daniella got in the habit of doing her homework between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m., when the hut was quiet and her aunt could not object.
Daniella walks 80 minutes each way to school, with no breakfast or lunch, sometimes aching from malaria or a beating, because she dreams of going to college this fall and becoming a doctor. “She’s exceptionally clever,” Valentino told me, and she has ranked near the top of her class of 500.
“Nothing can stop me from going to university,” she told me, but when I asked she acknowledged that she had no idea how she could raise the $5,000 a year this would cost.
As for Valentino, he misses America; he dreams of Buffalo wings and chicken chimichangas. He keeps an American flag in his office and flies it in the schoolyard on special days to remind students that their education is possible only because of American donors (including Times readers — I’ve written about the school a couple of times over the years; for those who want to support it, visit his foundation’s website). Valentino also hopes to attract American volunteer teachers.
Valentino had malaria when I visited, but he gritted his teeth and picked me up from my guesthouse in his battered and dying pickup truck. A son of Africa who found success in America, Valentino recognizes that he won the lottery of life and is determined to help those who didn’t.
Elon Musk, take note.
I’m delighted to announce that Sofia Barnett, a senior at Brown University, is the winner of my 2025 win-a-trip contest. Sofia, an accomplished student journalist from Texas, will accompany me on a reporting trip later this year. The runner-up is Anvee Bhutani of the Columbia Journalism School. Thanks to all who applied.
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