First Southern Sudanese female commercial pilot ever

Aluel Bol Aluenge's journey has taken her from Africa to America and back again, and a path from young refugee to airline pilot.

Along the way she's had a greater breadth of experiences than most people. Her friend, Diana Albertson, whose family sponsored Bol and her family, called because she thought Bol's story was worth some ink. I think so, too. It's an old American story.

Aluel Bol Aluenge is commercial pilot, flies for Ethiopian Airlines

Bol lives in Ethiopia now, but she's here visiting her three older brothers and their families, so I took the opportunity to speak with her.

Bol, 27, is Sudanese, but her story is different from what you might expect.

You may have seen the move, "The Lost Boys," or read one of the books about the thousands of children and young men, separated from family or orphaned by war, who made their way out of Southern Sudan in perilous treks across wilderness.

Bol came here a decade before about 4,000 Lost Boys were brought to the United States, and she came with her family.

Her father, an appellate-court judge, had fled after a coup in 1989. The family spent two years in Kenya before they were accepted as refugees and resettled in Renton in 1991.

Bol was 9. She saw snow for the first time during a layover in New York. And her new home was white in a different way. The Fairwood area was not especially diverse then.

It was strange she said, but not any more so than Kenya, where the people looked more like her but spoke a language she didn't understand. She is always adjusting to some place new.

Her family spent a month with their sponsoring family. The mom, Diana Albertson told me about Bol.

Bol's own mother died of a respiratory illness shortly after they arrived here. Bol and Albertson grew close and remain so. "She stepped in and became my mother," Bol said.

They make a striking pair, both tall and slender, one light, the other dark.

Bol said her age made adjusting to this new life easier for her than for her brothers or her father.

Her father went from prominence to having to take whatever work he could get, eventually getting a stable position as a substitute teacher in the Lakewood School District, where he relocated the family and where Bol attended middle and high school.

He took the bar exam nine times, missing by only half a point the last time. That was in 2004. There was a new peace process in Sudan then, so he decided to go back and help re-establish the court system in the south. That was always his plan, and Bol said he constantly told his children they should use what they learned here to help rebuild Sudan someday.

Bol was so young when her family left that she really didn't know Sudan.

People here would ask her about the country, but she didn't have answers. When her father told her stories about home, they were all about family, personal stuff.

When she finally did go back, Bol was embraced by people there, and she learned her history, which gave her a new sense of groundedness. I could see how much it meant as she listed the members of her family going back several generations.

I felt a twinge at not being able to do that myself. Knowing one's history that deeply is a powerful thing. "It strengthens your spirit," Bol said, "and without a strong spirit you really can't do anything."

"I love being in South Sudan," she said, but when she is in Africa, "I miss Washington. My mom is buried here. It will always be my second home. I learned to be who I am here."

Before she went back to Africa, Bol tried to become a model. She won a talent show when she was 16 and decided she could make a living in fashion.

It didn't work. She tried New York and London, but often she'd apply for work and be told: We already have someone who looks like you. Sometimes the look-a-like would have light skin and curly hair, but black is black.

She had left college to pursue that dream, but Bol went back, and one day met some students who were studying to be pilots.

When she was a kid, Bol always used to say she would fly someday. She switched her major from international business management to aeronautical science and graduated from Florida Memorial University in 2006. Her father died a few months later.

Bol spent a year getting her commercial pilot's license, then went back to Sudan, thinking she might fly small planes there. But acquaintances urged her to apply with the fast growing Ethiopian Airlines.

She had to be persistent to get a shot — female pilots are rare in Africa — but today she flies Boeing 737s all across the continent.

And she is helping her relatives start businesses and manage a farm and other properties in Sudan, taking up the part her father hoped she would play, as an asset to Sudan.

Instead of a fashion model, she has become a role model.