Big inspiration

Riiny Ngot is a polite, soft-spoken giant. The 22-year-old stands 7'2" and makes dwarves of the children and teachers at Temperance Street Elementary School who have gathered to hear him speak.
A Sudanese native of the Dinka tribe, he's come to tell the children about his childhood, and the road he followed from then to now. It is a harrowing tale, and he gives the students the PG version.
Ngot grew up in the city of Wau, which is in the southeast of the country. He shows the children pictures of the village where his grandparents lived, the place he found himself when his life changed forever.
He was 11 when civil war fighting reached the village. He says he was working, tending to a newborn calf when fighting broke out. He lifts his trouser leg up to the knee and the children see the welts and dark scaring.
That he says was from trying to save his sister from their burning home, from him kicking his way out of the blaze.
Rescue workers took him and his sister to a displacement camp after the attack on the village. Though he was a boy of 11, Ngot was 6'3" at the time, and it wasn't long before militia men put an AK-47 in his hand, thinking he was a fully grown man.
He and his sister escaped from the camp and gathered with other children, mostly orphaned young boys and teenagers headed for refuge in Kenya. Thousands like Ngot travelled hundreds of kilometres across sub-Saharan Africa to try for safety.
Their journey is known as the Lost Boys Journey, which included approximately 27,000 children who were displaced by the war. It's called the lost 'boys' because many girls never made it out of the villages that were attacked - that or they were taken into slavery or worse.
He came to North America with his sister to live with an uncle he didn't know. At school, he was quickly recruited to play basketball. He won a high school championship and attended college. He was on his way to play a higher level when an injury sidelined him.
Ngot is now studying political science at St. Francis Xavier University.
He doesn't mind speaking to children, he says. But it's a big history to capture.
"My story's really huge. When I'm speaking to kids, I try to limit it and make it really simple so they can understand. And I try to relate to them that when I was young - the most important thing that helped me - was my parents. That's what's important and what I want to pass on to them, how important our parents are."