ARLINGTON — For Karlin and Wadi Lissa, Saturday is Independence Day, too.
The Arlington couple and their four children plan to travel to a regional gathering at a Tukwila church where hundreds of Sudanese expatriates plan to celebrate South Sudan’s formal declaration of independence from the north.
The Lissas, who also hold U.S. citizenship, voted in a referendum in January calling for secession.
Though they have been away from their native country for more than 12 years, the Lissas remember the violence that has long raged in Sudan.
The secession referendum was part of the 2005 peace agreement aimed at ending a long civil war. The people of the south are primarily Christian or tribal animists while the well-established north is mostly Islamic.
It won’t be easy to build the new country, the Lissas say, because the new Republic of South Sudan is poor, has little infrastructure and is one of the most uneducated regions of the world.
“Still we have hope,” Karlin Lissa said on Friday. “And finally we have our own place to call home. There are celebrations tomorrow all over the world, because so many of us left.”
Lissa wants to make sure her children experience the celebration of independence.
“It is such a historical time. South Sudan is the world’s newest country,” she said. “When things settle down, we will go to visit our mothers.”
Karlin works at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett and Wadi works at a Woodinville biotech company. The Lissas are active in their Arlington church and with a group of Sudanese-Americans who are raising money to build schools in their homeland.
Former “Lost Boy” Mawut Mayen, 26, a Boeing industrial engineer who lives in Edmonds, also plans to celebrate today, MSNBC reported Friday.
About 20 years ago, Mayen and some 20,000 other Sudanese children — mostly orphaned boys — escaped to refugee camps and then were adopted by people around the world.
“My people have lived with war all their lives,” Mayen told MSNBC. “Let South Sudan be free. It’s time to end the suffering.”
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com.
To donate to help the people of South Sudan, go to www.worldconcern.org/feedsudan. World Concern is a nonprofit Shoreline-based Christian humanitarian organization.
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