WHO TV in Des Moines, Iowa reported earlier this week that Dau Jok, a member of Penn basketball from 2010 to 2014, departed Monday for Iraq as a member of the United States Army Reserve’s 103rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command. According to the station, Jok and his unit will be in Iraq for at least a year.
Jok, along with his younger brother Peter were born in Khartoum, Sudan. When Dau was six and Peter three, their father Dut, a general in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, was killed during the Second Sudanese Civil War. Their grandfather Jok Dau Kachuol, the chief of their village, would be killed in 2010, during a clash between the Sudan People’s Liberation Army soldiers and armed civilians.