Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey From the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games (6 page)

I also had to adjust to the fact that death was a regular part of life. In Kakuma, boys got sick and died every day. Whenever boys died, we always said malaria got them. They may have died of starvation, since food was hard to come by, especially after famine struck Kenya and the UN cut our food ration in half, but we didn’t talk about that. We also didn’t want to think that they may have died from the unsanitary conditions in the camp. We did not have a latrine for the ever-growing number of boys in the camp. Instead we used a dry creek bed that ran through the middle of Kakuma as our toilet. During the rainy season, the creek filled up with water and became our swimming hole. We should have known better, and maybe we did, but we swam there all the same. Swimming in the latrine caused disease to spread. Of this I am sure.

Sometimes malaria got boys in my tent, in my own little family. When that happened, it was up to the rest of us in the family to carry the dead body to the burial place. I lost many friends in this way.

Life may have been hard, but we were happy. Yes, boys died and food was difficult to come by, but at least no one was shooting at us. We only ate one meal a day, but for me, coming into the camp at the age of six, I accepted this as normal. I never thought that life was unfair because I had to eat garbage. Instead, I looked at the scraps of food from the dump as a blessing. Not all the boys in the camp could do this. I knew some who chose to feel sorry for themselves, who complained constantly about their lot in life. What is the point of such complaining? After all the whining and complaining is over, you still live in a refugee camp. All the complaining in the world will not make your life any better. Instead, you must choose to make the best of whatever the situation in which you find yourself, even in a place like Kakuma.

I found it easier to maintain a positive attitude when I stayed busy. My friends and I stayed busy playing soccer. Someone made a ball by tying together rags from the dump. It did not bounce like a real soccer ball, but at least we never had to worry about it running out of air.

Nearly every boy in Kakuma played soccer. I loved the game. On the field I lived up to my name, which meant “fast.” I weaved through lines of defenders so quickly no one could stop me. I became one of the best scorers in the camp. Perhaps I was too good. The other boys came up to me and complained, “Lopepe, you never pass the ball to your teammates.” I did not listen. After all, the point of soccer is to score more goals than the other team, not to pass the ball. I kept playing the way I always had. Eventually the other boys had enough. One day I walked out on the soccer field and one of the older boys who ran the games told me, “From now on you are the goalkeeper.”

At first I hated being the goalkeeper. You cannot score from the back side of the field, and I love scoring goals. But what could I do? Instead of sulking, I told myself, Okay, you are now the goalkeeper. Make yourself the best goalkeeper in all of Kenya. And I did. By this time I was eleven or twelve years old, no longer one of the youngest boys in the camp. I still was not big, but I was fast in the goal. I blocked anything and everything.

Kakuma grew larger and larger. Every day we heard the distinctive sound of army trucks pulling up to the gate, delivering more refugees. Just as when I arrived, boys far outnumbered adults and families among the new arrivals. These boys crowded onto the soccer field, making it impossible to play. To solve this problem, the older boys came up with a plan. Before anyone could set foot on the soccer field, they first had to run one lap around the camp. The faster you finished your lap, the sooner you got to play soccer. Kakuma did not have a fence around it, but the perimeter was very clearly defined. One lap around the outside of all the tents from all the sections from all the tribes and nationalities equaled thirty kilometers—that is, eighteen miles. We ran without shoes and without extra water in the hot Kenyan desert.

While that may sound like torture to many people, to me, running those thirty kilometers allowed me to escape the realities of life in the camp. When I ran, I did not think about my empty stomach or how I ended up in this place. I could not control much in my life. The UN dictated when food was delivered, when the water spigots were turned on, even when they dumped their garbage for us to eat. But when I ran, I was in control of my life. I ran for me. None of us had shoes, yet running barefoot connected me to the ground under my feet. It was as though the path under my feet and I became one.

Running became my therapy, but I ran fast because I loved soccer. The faster I finished my lap, the more soccer I got to play. When I finished my one lap around the camp, I didn’t take a water break. I didn’t want to waste time going over to the water station when I could be playing ball. Camels drink once and go on for weeks, and so could I. I was a soccer camel.

When I was not running around the camp or playing soccer, I went to school. Every weekday morning from eight until noon, I attended UN-sponsored classes. We did not have a classroom. Instead, we met under a large canvas tent workers put up to protect students from the sun. The school also did not supply textbooks. We sang most of our lessons. A few lucky boys had books they’d brought with them to the camp, but they were few and far between. In place of books, I used to sit under the stars and remember the stories my mother told me as a little boy. I knew that somewhere, she was under the same sky. The thought made me feel connected to her somehow.

We also did not have paper and pencils. A few boys did—those who were sponsored by someone on the other side of the world. I was not so lucky. I used to stare at those writing with a real pen and think,
Oh, to be so rich as to have a pen in my pocket. Someday, that will be me
. In the meantime, I wrote my lessons in the dirt with a stick. The teacher walked between the rows of boys, checking our work. If I got the problem wrong or if I wrote my letters incorrectly, the teacher smacked me with a stick. “Why did you write that letter that way?” the teacher would say. The beatings motivated me to do my best. I did not enjoy getting smacked with a stick.

On Sunday we went to church instead of school. It was my favorite day of the week. Everything was good on Sundays. I didn’t have to think about food or anything else. Instead, I lost myself singing praises to God. I knew He was there with me. I never, ever doubted that fact for a moment.

And God was with me for a very long time in Kakuma. I did not stay six years old very long. Before I knew it, I was one of the older boys in the camp. Instead of having teenage friends look after me, I took on that role with the younger ones. I never questioned that role or anything else about life in Kakuma. That was just the way things were in the camp—the way life was, and the way it would always be. I never expected anything more.

SIX
From Lopepe to Joseph

I
do not remember the day I came to the realization that my parents were dead. I did not wake up one morning crying, “Oh no! My mother and father are gone. What will I ever do?” During my imprisonment in the rebel camp, I dreamed nonstop about going home. When my angels came to me, they told me I was going to see my mother again. Knowing she was waiting for me carried me through the savannah when my feet left a trail of blood with every step. I did not feel the thorn bushes tearing at my legs because I knew I was on my way home.

But our path did not take us home. It took us to Kenya and Kakuma, a place filled with boys like me, boys without homes, without mothers or fathers. Every day I wondered if today might be the day my parents would come and take me home. Surely they must be out there somewhere, searching for me anywhere and everywhere. Their search had to bring them to Kakuma. Once they walked through the gates, I would be on my way home.

Days turned into weeks, but they never walked through the gates. “Why don’t they come?” I asked over and over to anyone who would listen during my first weeks in the camp. Tears flowed. “If they are looking for me, why can’t they find me?”

“You can’t think like that, Lopepe,” a friend finally answered. I tried to look away and ignore him, but he got right in my face.

“Stop it, Lopepe.
Stop!
You see that boy over there?” He pointed to a boy we all knew about. Like me, he was one of the younger ones. Unlike me, he was not going to survive much longer. He rarely left his tent. All day every day he sat in his tent rocking, rocking, rocking, his mind slowly slipping away. “You cannot sit and wish for something that is never going to happen, or you will lose your mind. No, you must focus on here and now. Do your chores. Go to school. Keep your mind busy. The past is gone. It will not come back. You must live in this day.”

“But . . .” I said, tears welling up in my eyes.

“No buts,” he said. “This is the life you now have. You must accept it and go forward or you will end up like that other boy.” He then smiled at me, which seemed oddly out of place. “You can do this, my friend. I know you can. You are strong.” My friend patted me on the back and left to go play soccer.

I sat and stared at the rocking boy for a very long time. There were others like him in Kakuma, boys who cried for home day and night. Eventually, malaria always got these boys. I did not want to suffer such a fate. The rocking boy looked over at me, his eyes filled with sadness.
What will it be, Lopepe?
I asked myself. The answer was easy. I jumped up, ran out of the tent, and chased after my friend to the soccer field.

My homesickness did not immediately stop, but it changed. The moment I ran over to the soccer field, I knew my parents were never going to come and rescue me. I would not see my home again.

Once I made peace with the fact that I would never go home again, the next step came quite naturally. I did not have a home any longer, and for all practical purposes, I no longer had a mother or father. That made me an orphan. How could I be an orphan if my parents still lived? My mind completed the thought:
My parents have to be dead
. I knew they were. I knew it just as surely as I knew the sun came up in the east and went down in the west.

My parents were gone, but I remained. In many ways, I was the same boy I was in Kimotong. Back home, I pestered my mother and father for chores. In Kakuma, I did not have to ask what to do. We all had specific tasks we had to do every day. “You will stand in line for water every morning, Lopepe,” I was told as a boy handed me a five-gallon jerrican.

“Show me where to go and I will do it,” I said. The UN piped in water for the camp. The water station consisted of four spigots where we filled up our cans. However, four spigots aren’t very many for the thousands who lived in the camp. My first couple of years in Kakuma, I had to wake up in the middle of the night, grab my can, and go wait in line. At six, I was too small to carry the filled bucket back to the tent. One of the older boys came and got it. I did not like having to hand my jerrican over to someone else. “Someday,” I told myself, “I will be big enough to carry the can back myself.”

When I was little, as soon as my chores were over, I went out and played hide-and-seek with my friends. When the rains came and the creek filled up with water, my buddies and I swam until our arms gave out. Then we built little houses in the sand along the shore. We played house with those sandcastles, just like we did in Kimotong.

By my fifth or sixth year in the camp, I did not have time for games, although I still played soccer. In Kakuma soccer is not a game but a way of life. The rest of the time, I took on more and more responsibilities. I was in charge of the ration cards for all the boys in our tent. To make sure no one lost his card, I kept them all together in a safe place. I also calculated our daily rations. The UN handed out food once a month. I had to make the grain they gave us last until the next distribution. It was up to me to take out just the right amount for each meal. If I miscalculated, we would go hungry. I made sure I never miscalculated. Every Christmas and Easter the UN also gave us a chicken, one for each tent. One chicken is not very much meat for ten hungry boys. Therefore, to make it stretch, we cooked it in a soup. Not everyone actually got a piece of meat. But by making it into a soup, we all got a taste of chicken. I made sure of that.

The more responsibilities I took on, the more I wanted. I loved to work. I enjoyed taking care of the younger boys. We had to look out for one another to survive, and survival was the name of the game in the camp. But I wanted to thrive, not just survive. I looked for ways to do more for my family of boys. One of the many relief agencies who came in and out of Kakuma handed out some vegetable seeds. I helped plant a garden next to our house, and I carried the water to each little plant to keep it from dying in the desert sun.

Slowly but surely, I was becoming a different boy. The way I saw life in the camp evolved, as did the way I viewed church and my relationship with God. When I was a little boy, going to church and singing praises to God was enough for me. I loved church, and I loved to sing. The boys in the camp became an informal choir. We passed the time singing and singing and singing. As a little boy, I sang in the tenor section. When I got older, I tried to make my voice deep enough to move to the bass section. The priest listened to me sing a note or two and put me back with the tenors.