Once they figured it out, they began to laugh about how the years had aged them, Magot said.

The pair has spent the past few months catching up on the lost years. They’ve gotten close once again and are committed to not let time and distance come between them again.

But hanging over their heads and their relationship is the very real world of their homeland and the very different lives they lead.

South Sudan is still a dangerous place. When Magot, who has spent his entire adult life fighting, returns home this month he’ll take the lessons he learned at ALU to begin bringing order to South Sudan.

Deng, who graduates this month, will head to Fort Riley in Kansas. In recent years he’s visited his villagewhere some family still live and found his mother alive in Uganda. He’s thousands of miles away, but still fretting over the poverty and lack of education his people deal with.

And, for both men, the fear of renewed violence in South Sudan is always there. But as they spoke at Fort Lee a few weeks back, those worries seemed to momentarily take a back seat and they enjoyed just being a couple of guys hanging around.