The South Sudanese will face the United States again Wednesday, this time at the Paris Olympics, and with the Americans now on notice, the odds are distinctly against the African team. But for many of their fans in Africa and elsewhere, that is beside the point.
The way they see it, it is a bit of a miracle that a team of refugees and their descendants, whose home country is just 13 years old and has suffered through devastating wars, made it to the Olympics at all.
South Sudan and its people are known all over the world now, said Aninyesi Tereza Mark, a 33-year-old university lecturer in the South Sudanese capital, Juba. We are very proud of them and we are happy.
South Sudan is the world's youngest country. It won its freedom from neighboring Sudan only in 2011, and since then, has suffered through a civil war that has claimed the lives of some 400,000 people and displaced more than 4 million.
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