Emmanuel Jal stood tall on stage Monday evening, stomping, rhyming and retelling his story of violence and struggle.
"We were forced to sin," he rapped. "Sometimes you gotta lose to win - never give up, never give in."
Jal, a Sudanese hip-hop artist, spoke to a crowd of about 1,000 at the Reitz Union Grand Ballroom at an event sponsored by Accent Speakers Bureau and the Dean of Students Office.
Jal told the crowd how he volunteered with the Sudanese People's Liberation Army to avenge his family and kill as many Muslims and Arabs as possible.
The music he used to hear was gunfire, he said.
"That's the truth," Jal told the audience. "That's how I felt. But I don't feel that way anymore."
After the Second Sudanese Civil War, he was one of 400 "lost boys" who journeyed back to Sudan on foot from refuge in Ethiopa. They only traveled at night because there was bombing during the day. When they walked, they huddled in rows of 10 so wild animals would not eat them, he said.
The boys would jump in rivers to hide from shelling and helicopter gunfire, for which they had no defense.
He was given rations from the United States and told himself that one day he would make it there.
Jal ate snakes, vultures, rats and frogs; anything, because there was nothing else to eat.
"When you are sitting next to somebody, and he smells like food, you think about eating him," he said.
Jal's voice shook the room with a poem for Emma McCune, a British aid worker who rescued Jal and smuggled him into Kenya, where he went to school and found his way into hip-hop.
"Emmanuel's experience is so moving that you have to spread the word," Accent Chairman Andrew Guglielmo said.
Jal is the second of four speakers for the Featured Speaker Series, which is geared toward first-year students learning about subjects that they will encounter during college.
"We try to bring a couple speakers who help students think globally," said Leslie Hahn, the assistant director of new student programs for the Dean of Students Office. "This is a story that all of us are moved by."
Guglielmo said Accent paid $13,000 for Jal to speak. The Dean of Students Office provided the venue and marketing.
"It's like I'm living a dream," Jal said in his song, "Forced to Sin."
"The first time I'm feeling like a human being."
