Content Warning: This section discusses violence, rape, loss, and suffering.

They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky details Benson, Alepho, and Benjamin’s traumatic experiences during the Second Sudanese Civil War. Even before they were displaced from their homes at young ages, the war was a constant, looming presence in the background of their lives. They grew up hearing about the Murahilin attacks and knowing that it was possible to lose family and home at any moment. When the war finally touched them, the impact was sudden and complete.

After attacks on their villages, all three boys were forced to flee the only homes they had ever known. They then had to keep moving for years since the ongoing civil war in their own country and neighboring ones rendered many places unsafe shortly after they arrived there. First the war in Ethiopia, and later the famine in Kenya, both exacerbated the refugees’ troubles, as they were ousted from the former and mistreated in the latter. The constant movement was not just inconvenient but also physically dangerous and taxing owing to the treacherous desert terrain and threat of wildlife. The political and geographical contexts around the boys thus complicated the impact of the civil war they were caught in.