Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey From the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games (8 page)

Then came the highlight of the night for me. Runners took their places for a very important race. The announcers talked about one runner in particular, a man named Michael Johnson. I did not know it at the time, but this race was the 400-meter dash, or one lap around the track in a full sprint. Michael Johnson was both the defending Olympic champion and the world record holder in the event. I did not know that at the time. Nor did I know that this was to be his final race, the capstone to one of the most successful track careers of all time. All I knew was the camera focused primarily on one man, a man with skin the color of mine. Across his chest were three letters: USA. He was about to change my life.

The runners took their mark. The gun sounded. Michael Johnson took off. He ran with a very distinctive style: head up, back straight, everything about him screamed confidence. Watching him run on the small, black-and-white television hooked up to a car battery in a remote corner of Kenya, he did not appear to be moving all that fast.
I can run like that. I know that I can
.

Michael Johnson flew around the track. He ran through the string at the end before anyone else. The announcers said he’d just won the gold medal. I was not sure what that was. He took a flag from someone in the crowd, a flag with stars and stripes on it. He wrapped himself in that flag with pride; then he held it up and ran a victory lap with it. I knew this was a very, very special moment.

Then something happened that astounded me. The top three runners took their places on a small platform. A man came up and placed their medals around their necks. Music began to play, and flags rose up from behind the men. As the music played and the flags went up in the air, Michael Johnson did something African men never do: he wept openly and without shame. I shook my head in disbelief and leaned closer to the screen.
Why was he crying?
I wondered. How can a man like this, a man who just won an Olympic gold medal, show such emotion? In my culture, such a display was a sign of weakness. Yet Michael Johnson had just proven his strength and confidence to the world. Why, then, did he cry?

These thoughts had barely had time to bounce into my brain before the farmer stepped over to the television. He flipped the switch. The black, white, and gray images disappeared. “Five more shillings,” he said. The local Kenyans and my friends dug in their pockets. Everyone had more money except me. When the farmer came to me with his hand held out, I shrugged my shoulders. “Sorry, kid,” he said. “No money, no Olympics.”

“Okay,” I said. My friends all looked at me with sad expressions on their faces. However, no one dug down and paid five shillings for me. That was fine. I smiled. “I’ll see you guys back at camp.”

Outside, night had fallen. The stars shone overhead, bright and beautiful. I started back on that long, familiar walk toward my tent. The trail we ran every day came close to the farmer’s house. Even in the dark, I knew where I was and how to get back to where I needed to go. I walked along in the night, staring up at the night sky. The image of Michael Johnson standing on that platform, the letters
USA
across his chest, weeping openly and without shame, flashed through my head. For a man to react to winning a race in such a manner told me that this had been more than a race. Those letters on his chest and the flag he carried around the track, they had to be the key. Clearly, he was not just running for himself. The gold medal by itself was not enough to bring a real man to tears. No, this man, this man with skin like mine, ran for something bigger than himself. That had to be why he wept.

I walked through the night, these thoughts dancing in my head. Suddenly, an idea hatched in my brain, an idea that should have struck me as ridiculous, but it did not. To me, this idea made perfect sense. In my mind’s eye I watched Michael Johnson run his race over and over again and I knew that someday, I, too, would run in the Olympics. I did not know how, but I knew I would. I now had a dream that changed the course of my life: I would be an Olympian. Moreover, I wanted to run with those same three letters across my chest: USA. I wanted to be like Michael Johnson.

The next day came just like every day before in Kakuma. I went off to school in the morning, working out my lessons with a stick in the sand. At noon, school let out, which meant it was now time to run one lap around the camp, then spend the rest of the day on the soccer field. The day may have been like every day before, but I was now different. I took off running my thirty kilometer lap, but my mind was not on soccer. With every step, I saw Michael Johnson; I saw the Olympics; I saw myself running for the USA.

The scenery flying past me on my run looked different as well. From the day I arrived in Kakuma, the camp defined my world. I thought I would always live here, because I never saw anyone leave. The camp kept growing bigger and bigger as more and more refugees flooded in from a never-ending civil war. Life revolved around Tuesday trash day and a brief escape from reality during church on Sundays. That’s all there was, and all there ever would be.

Not anymore. I knew a life existed for me beyond the perimeter of Kakuma. God Himself had brought me to Kakuma. I always thought He must have had a reason for bringing me here. Now I had it. Now I knew where my destiny lay. Michael Johnson opened a wider world to me. By God’s grace, I would get there.

EIGHT
Writing for My Life

T
he United States of America has decided to allow a limited number of you boys to leave Kakuma and go to America,” the priest announced one October Sunday less than two months after I watched Michael Johnson run in the Olympics. The priest might as well have said Jesus had thrown open the doors of heaven to us. From where I lived, the only difference between America and heaven was that I had to die to go to heaven.

I knew all about America—at least I thought I did. The boys in the camp talked about America with the same degree of authority they used when discussing the Olympics. “Everyone eats as much food as they want,” boys said. “Anyone in America can get any job they want,” I heard. “That’s the place where all your dreams come true.”

The occasional sight of an American in our camp only confirmed everything we thought we knew. Every American who visited the camp stood tall and clean and well fed and white and pure. We boys in the camp looked and smelled bad because we had no place to bathe. But Americans, they were white just like the pictures of Jesus I’d seen. That’s why I thought Americans must be close to God, and America must be like heaven. Every boy in the camp dreamed of going to America someday, but we knew that was one dream that had no chance of coming true.

Until now.

A real live American stood up to fill us in on the details. “Thirty-five hundred boys from Kakuma will be allowed to move to the United States permanently,” he said in English, which was translated into Swahili by one of the camp directors. “Anyone can apply to be one of the thirty-five hundred. You must write an essay in English that tells your story. We will accept essays for the next three weeks, but obviously, the sooner you turn yours in, the better. Once we receive your essays, we will read through them and make our selections.”

“You can bring your essays here to the church,” the priest added. “We will send them on to the American embassy.”

We sang a final song. Church let out. We boys went nuts. “America . . . America . . . America . . .” Everyone started talking about America. Questions flew around the room. Everyone asked one another the same things: “Did the
mzungu
[white man] say what I thought he said?” “How did they find out about us in America?” “Do you think this is real?” “Who will get to go?” Every boy wanted to be one of the thirty-five hundred. If they were like me, they felt they
had
to be one of the thirty-five hundred.

Thirty-five hundred. The number sounded so high yet so small at the same time. When I ran my lap around the camp each day, there were boys as far as the eye could see. I never thought of trying to count them all, but I knew thirty-five hundred was a drop in the bucket compared to so many lost boys. And I’d heard other boys’ stories. Everyone had lived through hell. Many of these boys had lived through hell far longer than me. You couldn’t even call a lot of them boys anymore.

Civil war broke out in Sudan in 1983. The first group of lost boys escaped in a large group a short time later. They went to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. However, when the government changed there, the boys had to flee for their lives once again. Perhaps as many as a thousand died on the journey. Many drowned or were eaten by crocodiles when they crossed the Gilo River from Ethiopia into Kenya. The rest of the lost boys were like me, boys who escaped Sudan as the war went on and on and on. Some had been kidnapped and escaped. Others fled when their villages were destroyed by bombs or soldiers. All of us had suffered incredible hardship. How could the United States choose which of us to give new lives, and which to leave behind to live forever in Kakuma?

“So, Lopez,” a friend said, calling me by the nickname the boys gave me in Kakuma, “are you going to write an essay?”

“Of course,” I said. “Isn’t everyone?”

“I don’t know English well enough to write a whole essay. Do you?”

I shrugged my shoulders and smiled. “I won’t let a little thing like that get in my way.”

And I didn’t.

The moment the church service ended, I went back to my tent to pray. “Father, I cannot write anything that stands out from all the other boys in this camp. But I trust You. If You want me in America, I know You will lift up my essay and make it stand out. You will take me to America, not this essay.”

Outside my tent, boys ran and played like any other day, only today they talked about America instead of the Olympics or soccer. I did not have time to join in. I wanted to turn in my essay as soon as possible, before the thirty-five hundred spots filled up.
But what do I say?
I wondered. The man said we were to tell our story. My story began at church. Suddenly it occurred to me that it was not a coincidence that I heard of this opportunity to go to America while at church. I could have heard it anywhere. The
mzungu
might have come to our school on Monday and announced it there. Instead he came on Sunday, to church, to my church. Nearly ten years earlier I went to church one Sunday expecting to worship God, but I ended up in a prison camp. Now God had opened a door to America during church. “God, this has to be part of Your plan,” I prayed.

Before I could start writing, I had to come up with a pencil and paper. Even after ten years in Kakuma, I still did my school lessons in the dirt with a stick. Pencil and paper were hard to find for school, but not for this essay. Most of the boys in my section of the camp knew me. We all looked out for one another. As soon as word got out that I needed pencil and paper, one of the sponsored boys offered me both.

Back in my tent, I sat down and composed my thoughts. “Ten years ago, I woke up early to go to church with my mother and father,” I wrote in Swahili. “We were praying when trucks filled with soldiers came up. The soldiers pointed guns at us. They ordered us to lie down on the ground. I lay down next to my mother. She wrapped her arm around me. A soldier pulled her arm away and picked me up. He threw me in the back of a truck along with all the other boys and girls from my village. They took us to a prison camp.”

Memories rushed back. I remembered details of the day I was taken that I had not thought about for a very long time. It was as though I was back there, reliving the whole thing again. I saw the trucks. I heard the soldiers. I felt the hot truck bed on my bare legs.

“The soldiers blindfolded me in the back of the truck and threw me to the ground. They put my hand on the back of another boy. They marched us in a line. They beat many of the boys. I heard them scream in pain. The line stopped. Someone pulled the blindfold off my face. He pushed me into a hut filled with boys.” I wrote about the smell and how boys died every day.

“Three boys and I escaped through a hole in the fence one night.” I remembered how the door did not squeak and how the soldiers guarding us did not notice us crawling across the compound. “We crawled through the fence. Then we started running. We ran for our lives for three days across the desert.” The more I wrote, the more details I remembered. I could not write down everything that happened. I only had one sheet of paper, and I was supposed to write an essay, not a book. Yet I somehow knew exactly what to include and what details to leave out.

I kept writing and writing and writing. Words spilled across the page. I was not nervous. I did not wonder what the Americans would think of my story or whether they would find it strong enough to select me as one of the thirty-five hundred. Sitting in my tent, paper and pencil in hand, I did not write my story for the Americans. This essay was a prayer I wrote for God alone, a prayer I hoped He would answer.

Once I finished writing my story in Swahili, I read it over and then read it over again. I changed a few things here and there, but not very much. I would like to say the first draft was perfect, but I had no way of knowing if it was any good. This was my story, in my voice. Unfortunately, my voice only came out in Swahili. The Americans did not want Swahili. They would only accept English. I knew I could not translate my essay by myself.

I went to my friends, my family of boys who lived with me in my tent. “Guys, I need some help,” I said. Over the next few days, writing for my life became a community project.

My friends gathered around me while I sat at a makeshift table. I laid out a brand-new sheet of paper. A friend loaned me a pen with which to write in English. I did not want to turn in a scribbled mess. This essay had to look as good as it sounded. The former was much easier than the latter.

“Okay, Lopez, what do you have?” one asked.

“
Tafadhali Mungu ni saidye
.”

“Do you know how to say that in English?”

“I think,” I said. I took out my pen. “Please, God, help me,” I wrote.