In 2023, Diing Diing’s life would change forever. The current senior at Auburn Riverside High School has gone through an incomprehensible life change and now has found a new joy, basketball.
Diing’s family is originally from South Sudan, and before he was born, his mother fled to a refugee camp in Kenya. It was a 657-mile journey to avoid the calamities of the second Sudanese Civil War.
“They came to Kakuma, that’s where they started to live. That is where they started their new lives. While people are fighting over there, killing each other. People are still fighting and people are still running, for the good life,” Diing said.
Diing was born at the Kenyan refugee camp in Kakuma, one of the largest refugee camps in the world. Calling life hard at the camp is an understatement, especially compared to life here in the United States.
“The life was terrible,” Diing said.
In order to eat, for example, Diing and his family would receive food for a month from the aid workers. Once that food was gone, they would have to wait until the next time food arrives at the camp. This put a lot of pressure on Diing and his family to ration their food appropriately for the month.
Even medical care was hard to come by as Diing and his family would stand in long lines and sometimes go days without receiving the care they needed, he noted in an essay sent to The Reporter.
The Kakuma camp currently hosts 305,421 people mostly from Sudan and Somalia. Diing is one of four children in his family, and his whole family got on a plane in 2023 to come to America. His family originally lived in Maryland for six months before making the final leg of his trip to Auburn, where his family moved in with his uncle.
“When I came here, everything changed. My mom got to work, my sister got to work. I get to live. Life is good,” Diing said.
“We had grown up dreaming that we could come here. My parents had been telling me to just keep doing what I am doing. The hard work paid off. It was good,” Diing said.
Being on a plane was a whole new experience for a kid who once had to walk an hour and a half in his school uniform to go to school at 6 a.m. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 47,798 students are enrolled across the camp (2014). According to UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) there are over 107 pre-primary, primary and secondary schools in the Dadaab and Kakuma camps.
“I had never been that high, it was crazy. I was scared, but I was happy to because I got to fly a plane for the first time. I got to see new people, white people too. It was different, but it was good,” Diing said.
Basketball was never a thought for Diing while he lived in Kenya.
“You don’t think to play basketball because you are hungry. You haven’t eaten,” he said.
Just to even be ready for school, Diing had to wash his uniform every night and wake up at 4 a.m. the next morning to start his journey. To wash their uniforms, the students had to stand in line with other people at the refugee camp for fresh water. Then when they walked to school, dust could not go past their knee of the school uniform.
Not making it to school on time or having a dirty uniform meant no school for that day.
“When you wake up you just stay at home. If you want to go to school, you go to school,” he said.
While at school, he would sit in a classroom with 300 other students, all ages, all learning levels. But school was a change to normal days in Africa, as most of the time he would just be at home with his family.
“In Africa, life was bad. There was not a lot of opportunity to go to school. Even when you go to school, there weren’t good teachers, and you got to be in class with a lot of people,” Diing said. “I wanted to go because I wanted to learn.”
Diing now has become a part of a new family, the Raven family. The 6’ 8” center never played basketball before coming to America. But when he arrived at Auburn Riverside, some people at the school told him he should play. He saw it as a way to get out of his comfort zone.
“I came here and people said that I am tall. They would ask me, ‘you play basketball?’ I’d say no. I kind of felt embarrassed because I am tall, I have to play because it’s a tall person game,” he said.
But then there was the language barrier. Diing had only spoken Swahili his whole life while living in Kenya. English was as new and foreign as the plane he had gotten on just two years ago. But now, he did a full interview in English and is learning more every day.
He learned most of his English playing basketball for the Ravens. Basketball is a communication-heavy sport, so that helped Diing learn words and phrases as he continued to go to practice and games.
“We spoke Swahili and used English for a little bit. I practiced my English a little bit, but basketball helped me learn. I get to talk to a lot of people, when I meet new people and talk to them. That is good, when you play you have to talk a lot too,” he said.
On his senior night, Auburn Riverside students hold a Diing Diing poster. Ben Ray / The Reporter
But coming to America brought a new type of challenge as he has dealt with bullying throughout his early life here. “Sometimes students bullied me because I looked different. But I was hopeful because my family finally had opportunities we never had in Kenya,”” Diing said.
Washington state in general has an incredible basketball culture, and Diing is right in the middle of it. After coming from a place where he ate just one meal a day, he was playing in front of a packed gym in a rivalry game against Auburn. Diing has seen just about everything this world has to offer.
“It’s a blessing. It was crazy. I couldn’t believe it. How could this happen to me, why me? But God did,” Diing said.
“I was scared, people were looking at me. I had never been somewhere where people look at me. I was scared and I was bad at basketball. So people would be talking and yelling at bad things I would do,” he said.
At times he would just hang out in the key, and not remember to get out and get called for a 3-in-the-key violation. But he took those lumps as a learning experience.
“It was a bad experience, but I liked it because I was learning. I was seeing new people and got me out of my comfort zone,” he said.
As far as goals are concerned, Diing wants to play basketball in college. He wants to further his education as well as play basketball at the next level.
“I want to get a lot more work in. I am late for playing basketball. I’ve played for two years now. I wish I had two more years,” Diing said.
Diing played his final basketball game for Auburn Riverside on Feb. 5, but his impact will always be remembered for the Ravens.
“In two and half years he has worked incredibly hard as a student. Completing not only his classes, but also trying to make up credits he missed to graduate this year. Some of the things he has shared with me about his experience in Kenya and how he had to survive are pretty incredible, and throughout all of that, he has a positive attitude and is so gracious to everyone he meets,” Auburn Riverside Athletic Director Kyle Jones said in an email.
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