Joy Boro
Despite the poor quality of the line to Khartoum, Joy Boro comes across as a confident, assured 20 year-old. She needs to be. Things in Sudan are difficult at the time of this conversation in late summer 2008. After three years of peace the threat of civil war looms again. Rebels from the Darfur region are encroaching on the capital and Joy’s medical studies have been punctuated by curfews, gunfire and the hasty evacuation of hospitals.
Both Joy’s parents are Sudanese. They returned to Khartoum after more than twenty years in the UK and both have strong links with the Sudanese establishment. But they are minority Christians in this Islamic state, whose stability has been further undermined since its president was indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
Joy’s passion is politics and law but her only choice here would have been to study the system of Sharia law, and so she has settled for medicine instead. Now her studies in Sudan may be coming to an end. United Nations personnel have already been ordered to leave and she and her family may also have to leave ‘within a month.’
‘I’ve taken to wearing a large crucifix,’ she says. Not to flaunt her Christianity, she explains, but so she can at least be recognised as a person of faith in this almost aggressively religious society. ‘I’m challenged nearly every day, at the moment. I’m asked why I’m a Christian, and why Christians aren’t as religious asMuslims. I’m glad I have my experience of Ampleforth. I can talk about my faith with conviction and tell them all about the monastic life at the school I went to.’
Joy joined Ampleforth in the sixth form as an Ogden Trust scholar, studying chemistry and biology. She first heard about the school while singing in a madrigal group, and met Ampleforth boys at a choir competition run by BBC Radio 4. Although coming to Ampleforth was a huge change from her previous school, she took to it at once. ‘The people were very loving and friendly, always ready to give advice. And living with friends, going to mass together, experiencing the whole monastic side of school life, brought me closer to people.
‘I learnt a huge amount not only about myself but about the world,’ she continues. ‘I got involved in the overseas friendship and aid programme, FACE-FAW. Helping to raise money for African countries really opened my eyes. It gave me a sense that life didn’t begin and end in Yorkshire, or even England.’
Now Joy is calling on all those inner resources, not just to weather the daily challenges of life in Khartoum, but the uncertainty over her and her family’s future. If she returns to the UK and decides to continue with medicine, she’ll have to start again from scratch. But the self-belief is there in her voice, even on this faint long distance connection, and one senses that however things turn out, Joy will make the best of them.