Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey From the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games (9 page)

“What’s next?”

“
Wakati nilikuwa mtoto mdogo, wajeishi walikuja wa kanisa yetu boma ya Kimotong nchi yetu wa Sudani. Wanabeba bunduki kubwa
.” I stared at it for a moment. “I have no idea how to put this into English,” I said.

One of the boys pointed at the first sentence. “I have it. When I was child little, soldiers came,” he said in English. Then in Swahili, “Uh, what’s the next word?”

“Village,” another said in English.

“How do you spell that?” I asked.

“V-i-l-l-a-g-e”

I hesitated.

“It looks like this,” he said, and drew a
v
in the dirt with his hand.

“Right,” I said. Carefully, I penned the English words as best I could. “Please, God, help me. When I was child little, soldiers came church ours village Kimotong my country Sudan.”

“
Kuchukwa watoto wadogo kufundishya jinzi wa wajeishi. Mimi ni lukua na wao
,” became, “Carry with them guns big. Take children young teach become a soldier. I am among them . . . We went to fence. We ran through bush dark three days . . .”

Our community English project left much to be desired, but it was the best we could do. Over the next few hours my friends called out English words from my Swahili. More than once we debated a word for a while before landing on the best translation. It seems very funny to me now to think that I could not even read the essay I was writing. I had no idea what most of the English words meant, but I trusted my family.

After we finished my essay, we helped other boys turn their Swahili into English as they wrote for their lives too. “Someday,” I said, “we will all be in America, with jobs and food, and it will be great.” The thought made us work that much harder to perfect our essays. This was our chance at freedom, our only chance. “Oh God, hear my prayer,” I prayed. “Let my cry come to You.”

I took my essay to church the next Sunday. “To You, God,” I prayed as I dropped it in the bin near the front of the church as an offering. If all the boys were like me, God received a lot of offerings that morning. The bin was filled to the top with hundreds of essays. I walked back into the crowd and found a seat on one of the homemade benches. The music began. We stood to sing, but my mind was not on the songs. I stared at the bin. With so many desperate boys from which to choose, how would the Americans decide who goes and who stays behind? I was glad I did not have to make that decision. If it were up to me, every boy in the camp would be on the next bus to America.

The music stopped. The priest delivered his sermon. I could not listen. The bin of essays had my full and undivided attention. “It is up to You, God,” I prayed. “You will decide.” Yes, it was up to Him, not the Americans. God would indeed decide what was best for me. He had brought me to Kakuma with my three angels. He must have a plan for when and how I was to leave. Knowing God was in control was the only thing that allowed me to stop fixating on the bin and to go back to my tent as church ended. I knew I wrote the best essay I could possibly write. My friends and I translated it into English as best we could. I could do nothing more. The rest was up to God.

Sunday came again. I went to church. We sang. The priest preached. At the end of the service he read a list of boys who had turned in essays. He did not say which boys would get to go to America.

More Sundays came and went. Weeks had gone by since I dropped my essay in the bin, but still no word from the Americans. “They never intended to let us leave,” a boy said. “Do you know what people out there call us?”

I shook my head.

“Lost boys of Sudan. No one thinks about us. No one cares about lost boys.”

I did not argue the point. What good would it do?

Christmas approached, my favorite time of the year. I made plans for the chicken our tent would soon receive. My heart wasn’t in it. I found it hard to get excited about a chicken while waiting to be told if I’d get to live in America.

The UN passed out the Christmas chickens. We had our feast and then went to church for Christmas, Jesus’ birthday, the day I became Joseph, the worker, the new man. I walked into our church. Something was different. The
mzungu
was back. My heart raced. He announced, “Please come forward when I read your name.”

He called the first name. A boy went up front. They handed him an envelope.
What does that mean? What is inside the envelope? Is it good news or bad?

More names were called. More boys went forward. More envelopes were handed out. I waited, nervous and excited. Every time the
mzungu
opened his mouth, my heart skipped a beat.
Will my name be next?
He opened his mouth. I held my breath. “Joseph Lopepe Lomong,” he said. I leaped out of my seat. I couldn’t believe my head missed the ceiling, I jumped so high. My friends clapped and patted me on the back, congratulating me. I tried to stay calm. I strolled up to the front. A worker placed a large, white envelope in my hands. I went back to my seat, my heart pounding.

“Open it,” a friend said.

“What does it say?” said another.

“You’re going to America,” someone said.

“You’re not going to America,” someone else said.

“Open it, Lopez!” A friend nudged me.

I clutched the envelope tightly. I could not open it in front of so many people. If it were bad news, I knew I could not control my emotions. And if it were good news . . . oh, the emotions would flow as well.

The last name was called. Church let out. Excited boys with envelopes danced out; dejected boys without envelopes could hardly make their feet work. I ran out to a place where I could be alone. I pulled out the envelope. Carefully, I slid a finger under the flap. I pulled out a very official-looking document. I closed my eyes, said a quick prayer, and breathed in deep.
Okay, this is it. America or Kakuma: which will it be?
I opened my eyes to read my fate.

“What?” I said. The entire thing was written in English! I could not read a single word except my name.

I walked back to the church. One of my friends who could read and speak English well was still there. “Can you tell me what this says?” I asked.

He took one look and broke out in a huge grin.

“Congratulations, Lopez. You are going to America!”

NINE
No Good-Byes

I
heard the airplane before I saw it. I was in my tent with my friends, talking about America, when we heard the drone of its propellers. “This is it!” I yelled. I jumped up, grabbed the white envelope I received at church a week earlier, and took off running toward the airfield in the middle of the camp. Every boy in my tent was right on my heels. I and a couple of my friends had been told to be ready as soon as the plane landed. We were to go to Nairobi for our America interviews. I didn’t know the reasons behind the interviews, but if it would get me to America, I didn’t need to know the reason.

“I’m going to beat you there,” a boy called as he tried to run past me.

I laughed and kicked it into another gear. When you live in a camp full of boys, everything becomes a competition.

The plane rolled to a stop, its propellers still spinning. I ran into the crowd of boys who lined the sides of the airstrip. A
mzungu
in a ball cap held up a clipboard. “When I call your name, step up and get on the plane.” Unlike waiting for the
mzungu
handing out the white envelopes at church, I knew my name was on this list. He went through several names before calling out, “Joseph Lopepe Lomong.”

I jumped up and down, a huge grin on my face, waving the envelope over my head. “Here! Here!” I said.

“Get on up here,” the
mzungu
said.

I pushed my way through the crowd. All my friends were as happy for me as I was for myself. Guys I did not know cheered and clapped. “I’ll see you guys after my interviews,” I said to one of the boys from my tent.

“Tell me what it’s like,” he said. “I’m going myself one day.”

“We’re all going to go soon!” I called back as I ran up to the plane. The
mzungu
took my envelope, gave it a quick once-over, and then handed it back to me. “Find a seat,” he said as he motioned me up the stairs that led up into the back of the plane. A couple of boys from my tent whose names had been called were already seated. They both gave me a thumbs-up. You’ve never seen a happier bunch of boys.

I sat down. The airplane filled up. A nice lady came over and showed me how to buckle my seat belt. I’d never ridden in anything with seat belts. I’d never ridden in anything except the rebel army truck that kidnapped me and the Kenyan border guard truck that carried me to Kakuma when I was six.

The airplane propellers sprung to life. The plane slowly rolled forward. It turned twice, stopped briefly, then lunged forward very quickly. The plane gathered speed, which surprised me. I thought this was a bus. Only when the plane lifted off of the ground did I realize we were flying to Nairobi. I watched airplanes up high in the sky with my father when I was a little boy. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine flying in the sky myself. I looked out the window as Kakuma grew smaller and smaller. “This is great,” I said to the kid next to me, a huge grin on my face.

I did not know this was the last I would see of Kakuma. The Dominican Sisters who worked in the camp for Catholic Charities told us we were going to Nairobi for interviews and tests. (Catholic Charities was one of many aid organizations that helped lost boys go to America.) The sisters may have explained how we would stay in Nairobi until the time came to leave for America. If they did, I never made the connection between interviews, tests, shots, and orientation classes with the fact that once I stepped foot on that plane, I was never coming back to Kakuma.

If I had, my leaving would have been very different.

In Africa, family comes before everything else. Over the past ten years, the boys with whom I lived became my family. As excited as I was about going to America, the thought of leaving them behind filled me with sorrow. But I knew I had to go, if for nothing else than to find a job, earn money, and send it back to support my family stuck in Kakuma. I knew if the situation were reversed, the other boys would do the same for me. Even so, thinking about telling my family of boys good-bye made going to America very bittersweet. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I did not have to say good-bye because I did not realize this was my last day in Kakuma.

Once we landed in Nairobi, buses took us to the Boys’ Center in the city of Juja.

I never counted on living there for more than a day or two. Looking back, I understand I needed to stay there for a while. Our dorm had actual toilet facilities, instead of the dry creek bed we used for a latrine in Kakuma. The toilets consisted of little more than a hole in the ground, yet that was a huge upgrade over what I’d known my entire life. Cars and people crowded the paved streets. Electric lights lit up the night, while most of the staff in the dormitory and offices spoke English. Little did I know that they were British, not American. I thought all white people were Americans. Learning the English language from Brits gave me a double accent, which complicated life for me once I arrived in the United States. However, that did not matter in Juja.
This has to be what America is like
, I thought.

The staff in Juja gave us a crash course on life in America. My favorite class introduced me to a strange, cold, white substance. “This is snow,” the instructor said as he pulled a snowball out of a cooler. “It is very cold. It falls from the sky and piles up on the ground during the winter in America.” He passed the ball of snow around the classroom. I was anxious to hold it. Wow. I had never felt anything so cold in my life! How did people live in such a cold place? Then it dawned on me:
No wonder these Americans are so white. The cold and snow make them that way
. “I hope the place where I live doesn’t get much of this stuff,” I told one of the other boys. Little did I know God planned on sending me to one of the snowiest places in America.

Beyond learning about snow, our classes focused on things like the stripes on streets where you could cross without getting hit by a car, and money. I’m sure they tried to teach us more, but all the lessons sort of ran together—all but one.

According to my orientation classes, the one thing I needed to know about America above everything else was this: “There is no such thing as
hakuna matata
in America.” I laughed the first time the instructor said this.
Hakuna matata
means “no worries.” In Africa, it is more than a catchy saying. It is a way of life in the camp. Time simply does not matter. From presidents and kings and judges all the way down to boys in a refugee camp, arriving somewhere “on time” is a very foreign concept. If you say, “Be here by nine,” that means, to us, “Show up sometime before noon.” If you are late,
hakuna matata—
no worries. In Africa, no one expects you to show up on time, anyway.

No one, that is, except the people running things in Juja. “When you have an interview, you must not show up late. You must arrive early,” I was told. “
Hukana matata
does not work in America, and it will not work here.”