'Lost Boys' remember their customs with clay cow sculptures

(CNN) -- Smoothing his hands over a lump of clay, Moses Matet begins to mold a miniature cow from memory.

His hands effortlessly form the cow's four legs, two horns and tail. Then a small, determined smile flickers across his face as he places the finished sculpture on the table in front of him.

Every time Matet creates these clay cows, it brings him back to his childhood -- one that was interrupted by war.

Matet is one of the "Lost Boys," a name given to the thousands of orphaned and displaced children forced to flee Sudan's 21-year-long civil war, which killed about two million people.

He sculpts the cows for a fundraising program called the Cow Project. It's run by the AZ Lost Boys Center in Phoenix, Arizona, a community center for the thousands of Sudanese refugees who have resettled there.

"We still make it today because it's important to us in Sudan," said Matet. "We make it because that is our culture."

Matet learned how to create toy cows out of mud while growing up in Sudan. His parents -- like most Sudanese parents -- taught him the craft, to reinforce the value of the cow.

The animal is a fundamental part of the culture and economy for the Dinka people of South Sudan. It's used not just for milk and food, but in various celebrations and transactions.

Marriages are often negotiated through cows, families sell them to pay for school fees and children are even named after the color of the family cow.

Now that Matet and other Lost Boys have resettled in the United States, they've continued the cow-making tradition.

"We started making some of them for the community around us here, so that they could learn about our culture," said Diing Arok, who helps manage the Cow Project at the center.

"We started and it became popular. The process was telling about our culture, but it was helping us financially too," he said.

The finished sculptures are sold at the center and on the center's website for $20 to $100, depending on the size. Profits are used to fund scholarships for local Sudanese students. The center says it raised more than $7,000 in 2009, with orders coming from the United States, Canada and Europe.

Arok, a Lost Boy himself, is happy to see the cow figurines finding homes around the world. He said they are important in spreading the Sudanese story.

That's especially true now that Southern Sudan is set to become a new nation in July, following a nationwide referendum earlier this year.

"What I enjoy is talking about it and explaining it," Arok said. "It helps a lot of people too, to learn about Sudan. That's another way we tell our history, what is going on there in Sudan. And we tell that history through the cow."

In telling that history, the Lost Boys say the cow sculptures help them reconnect to the past and preserve their rich heritage, no matter where they've resettled.

"It means a lot to me," said Matet. "I'm still making it because I'm Sudanese. I'm still proud of my culture, I'm still proud of how important the cow is in Sudan. That's why I'm still making it."