Sudan's lost boys have found a home in America.

Santino (right) left the refugee camp in Kenya with high hopes

Orphaned youngsters, they fled their villages in Sudan in the 1980s, afraid they would be slaughtered as many of their families were by government troops.

The lost boys - so called because they had to fend for themselves without parents or elders - set out on an extraordinary journey across Africa that took them to Ethiopia, back to Sudan and to refugee camps in Kenya.

Three years ago, the United States government agreed to allow 3,600 of them to begin new lives in America.

"I don't worry now that if I sleep that people are going to shoot me," says 19-year-old Abraham Maker, who arrived in the US in 2001 along with thousands of others.

One night soldiers representing the mostly Muslim northern government came to Abraham's village in Sudan's Christian south.

They shot and killed the men and older boys and took the young girls and women away with them.

The young boys who survived banded together and fled, beginning a year-long journey across Africa.

Thousands were either shot by pursuing soldiers, drowned, died of hunger, or were eaten by wild animals.

Education

"I do not worry now about war," says Abraham, who was adopted by an American family and now lives in a suburb in Connecticut near New York, where he plays soccer and is a runner for his high school athletics team.

Santino has struggled to get an education

Abraham has been luckier than other lost boys, many of whom have had difficulty adjusting to life in America.

All hoped they would get a high school and university education in the US and one day return to Sudan.

But getting an education has turned out to be the lost boys biggest problem. Because neither the boys nor the re-settlement agencies knew their correct ages, caseworkers simply guessed.

The lucky ones were those judged to be below the age of 18.

They were allowed to complete their secondary educations at high school and go onto junior colleges free of charge.

The unlucky ones, those judged to be above 18, were too old for high school and so had to go to work. As they had no qualifications they were forced to take menial, low-paying jobs.

Work

This is what happened to Santino Majok Chuor who arrived in Houston, Texas aged 21 in 2001.

"I did not manage to go to school," he says sadly, "because I could not find the time."

Too old to attend high school, he works loading trucks for minimum wage.

Santino tried working in the day and studying at night but found it impossible.

With much of his salary sent each month to his disabled brother and his brother's three children in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya and other family and friends demanding money, Santino can barely afford the apartment he shares with another lost boy in a tough section of Houston.

He does not waste his money on movies or going to clubs, he says. For fun he watches educational programmes on television.

The majority of the lost boys did not survive the epic journey

"There's no way out," Santino says, "unless you get education."

"America wasn't paradise and it wasn't as easy as they told you in the camps," says Samuel, who has done the rounds of menial jobs: he's been a security guard and is now a bagger, someone who puts shoppers' groceries in their bags at supermarkets.

He won't be a bagger much longer. Samuel completed his high school diploma, went on to junior college and did well enough to be accepted at one of America's most prestigious universities, Stanford, in California in September.

"It was easier for me," says Samuel. "I didn't have a wife in the camp or people wanting money. I could study.

Back in Africa they do not know how hard it can be here for us."