John Dau, center, was 17 when he learned the alphabet and how to count, using his finger as a pencil in the sand under a tree at a refugee camp in Kenya. By that age, Dau — one of the Lost Boys of Sudan — had survived civil war, disease, famine and more violence than most people could imagine. “It was terrible because I didn’t have a family then,” he said, referring to his life in Ethiopia. Dau lived in two refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. At 26, he was resettled in the United States as part of the Lost Boys program.