At 8 years old, he fled his bloody homeland with tens of thousands of other boys. At 22, he arrived in Pittsburgh, unfamiliar with American customs.

Eight years passed and, last Sunday, Akim Bunny graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a master's degree in public administration.

Once called "The Lost Boys," the refugees of the civil war in Sudan are all men now. Mr. Bunny -- whose name has a different pronunciation in his homeland, closer to "BONE-yuh" -- is now the father of an 8-month-old girl, Yom. In 2005, he married a Sudanese woman, Asunta, whom he'd met as a teenager at the refugee camp in Kenya.

I met him the other day in Hillman Library, and his ready laugh belied the horrors of his boyhood. His father was killed in 1987 when government troops from the Arab north of his country attacked the black Christian and animist south. He became a man without knowing what became of his mother, not finding out until three years ago, from a distant cousin of his father, that she had survived and was living in Sudan.

He sent her money but has yet to see her. His studies, his marriage, and his baby demanded his time, but he hopes to see her someday soon.

You may know the outline of his story if you saw the documentaries, "The Lost Boys" and "God Grew Tired of Us," a few years ago. Mr. Bunny was in the latter film. Three dozen young Sudanese men came to Pittsburgh in 2001, some of the 3,800 who emigrated to U.S. destinations from Omaha to Syracuse.

The men with the cameras, following him and his friends from northern Africa to this strange land called Pennsylvania, didn't seem such a big deal at the time. He took it as lightly as one might a home movie, having no idea the images would be so widely seen.

Mr. Bunny settled in Castle Shannon, came to love lasagna and pizza, but hamburgers not so much. He'll tell you he has put on weight, but he is slim by American standards.

He's about 100 pages into writing his memoir now. His country lost 2 million people to famine and war, but he says that sharing his troubles with so many others made the loss somehow less burdensome.

"God gives you a mind. There is nothing you can do but make your mind work for you."

Having to pay back the U.S. government for his $853 air fare, he took a night job processing checks Downtown for Mellon Financial Services and had his debt paid off in about four months. Later he supervised other immigrants at an aluminium recycling plant on Neville Island, but always he studied.

He'd attended high school in the refugee camp, but he earned first his general equivalency diploma, then an associate's degree from the Community College of Allegheny County in 2004, and then a business degree from Point Park University in 2006. That same year, he became a U.S. citizen.

The corruption in his homeland, the political decisions that led to carnage, stood in stark contrast to what he found here. The volunteers of Catholic Charities "changed my life and that of other Sudanese," and he has become a vocal believer in both volunteerism and private enterprise. When he learned that private interests, not the government, built the skyscrapers, he took from that this lesson:

"The people are not relying on the government. The government is relying on the people."

He chose public administration because he saw how democracies, properly run, could do great things. The economy isn't good right now and he has no immediate job prospects but, he says, "I am always hopeful. I never lost hope about anything."

Voting in the presidential election last year -- "I could vote for anyone I want and nobody would put me in jail" -- was a treasured task. Though initially a Republican, he switched parties to vote for Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary, and not because of his African roots or that election buzzword, "change."

Change? Mr. Bunny was looking instead for what is constant. He saw coverage of a speech Mr. Obama gave in Madison, Wis., in which he spoke of all the people walking into American embassies across the world, hoping to get here. That resonated with Mr. Bunny. He felt Mr. Obama understood the immigrants' suffering and their hope.

"They know when they come here," he said, "they can change their life."

He did.