Running for My Life

by Lopez Lomong

  “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 goodbye made going to America very bittersweet. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I did not have to say goodbye 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.”

  The instructor meant what he said. We had to arrive everywhere on time. My first interview was scheduled for nine in the morning. All the boys in my dorm had nine o’clock interviews. The workers woke us up by six thirty. We all went down to the waiting area by eight o’clock, where we did just that: we waited until our names were called. Sometimes we waited up to three hours. I wondered why I had to arrive so early, only to have to sit around and wait. I guess they were preparing us for going to the Department of Motor Vehicles in America.

  During my time in Juja, I went through a series of four interviews spread over several weeks. The first interviewer asked me about my background. When we boys left the camp, we did not have birth certificates or any other paperwork. We had a name and approximate age but nothing to document either one. America will not let anyone in without lots and lots of documents. The first interview started that process. After the interview, I shuffled into a room where a man took my photograph for my official paperwork.

  After the photographer was finished with me, a woman led me down the hall to a room filled with people in white coats. People in white coats in official buildings do one of two things: they either stick a needle in your arm and inject something into you, or they stick you with a needle to draw something out. This was not a room I wanted to visit again.

  The second interview consisted of more basic questions about my story. This interview not only made my file of paperwork larger, but Catholic Charities used the information I gave to match me with a family in the United States. Even though I was an elder in Kakuma carrying out adult responsibilities, in the eyes of America I was still a minor. All of us lost boys talked about going to America and finding a job. I did not know it at the time, but because I was only sixteen years old, a different fate awaited me.

  The third interview was much like the first two, only this time the interviewer asked me things like, “Why do you want to go to America? What
is America to you? What would you do if you had to go to a different country to live?” I answered the best I could. The interviewers did all they could to put me at ease. I could not fail the interview and go back to Kakuma. I was definitely going to America, no matter what!

  My interviews finally came to an end. Within a few weeks boys began leaving Juja for America, not just lost boys from Sudan but also refugees from Somalia. Every Wednesday a list of names was posted on a bulletin board in the middle of the facility. The moment the list went up, boys crowded around, looking for their names. They shouted and sang when they saw their names. They also called out the names of their new homes in America. The names all sounded very odd, places like Chicago and Atlanta and New York. None of us knew anything about any of the names. We only knew they were in America, and that was enough for us.

  A couple of my friends were among the first to find their names on the America list. Within a few days they left Juja for good. Saying goodbye to them was easy. “I will see you in America!” I told them. I watched them climb on the bus for the airport, while I stayed behind, checking the list every Wednesday and wondering what was taking so long.

  While I looked over the list week after week, a man named Rob Rogers picked up a bulletin on his way into church near Syracuse, New York. There he saw an announcement that read, “We need host families to serve as foster families for the lost boys from Sudan.” He later showed the bulletin to his wife, Barbara, and said, “I think we should do this.”

  Barbara wasn’t so sure. She thought Rob was a little nuts for suggesting it. However, she agreed to attend the informational meeting the following Thursday. Rob had to go out of town on business, which meant Barbara attended the meeting alone. By the time the meeting ended, she was a little nuts herself. She signed the two of them up to become a host family. Over the next few months they attended more classes and had every part of their life investigated by the state of New York. A social worker conducted a home study along with police background checks. Finally a letter arrived telling them that they had been certified by the state to serve as foster parents.

  I did not know any of this. All I knew was that my weeks in Juja had turned into months and still my name did not appear on the list.

  A worker called me in for my fourth and final interview. This time, the interviewer was not only an American, but an American who had just flown in from the United States itself. He worked for Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS). I knew this interview was very important.

  “Are you still in touch with your family back in Sudan?” he asked.

  “No. I have not seen or heard from them since I was kidnapped when I was six.”

  “If you were to find them, would you want to take them to America?”

  “They are dead,” I said very calmly.

  The interviewer paused for a moment. I think my answer took him by surprise. “Okay, then. Uh … Why aren’t Juja and Kakuma places you can call home?”

  “As a Sudanese, I cannot call them home. The rules prevent me from being anything besides a refugee there.”

  “Why is that not enough for you?”

  “I want to do more with my life than survive in a camp.” I looked him in the eye. “That is not the kind of life anyone wants.”

  He did not respond. “What do you want to do in America?”

  I broke out in a huge grin. “I want to work hard! I love to work.”

  The American did not smile back. He looked down at his piece of paper. “Okay. I think that’s all I need.”

  Wednesday rolled around again. Six months had passed since I climbed on the airplane in Kakuma. Most of my friends had left for America. I had begun to wonder if I would ever join them. I walked outside to the bulletin board. A worker had just posted this week’s list of names of boys going to America on the next flight. A group of boys crowded around me. A Somali kid tapped the list with his finger and shouted. His friends danced around him. I wished I could be so fortunate.

  The board of names was about the size of a large flat-screen television. I scanned down the list from right to left. Once again, my name was missing. However, for some reason, I decided to look one more time. Starting on the left, I read one name after another. All of a sudden, in the middle of the list, I saw it. My heart raced. I could hardly breathe. I had to sit down.

  Somalis crowded around the list. I sat off to one side, watching. A couple of them found their names. Their friends kissed them and shouted for joy. “That can’t be me,” I said to myself. By now I had convinced myself that I had misread the list. Some other boy’s name had to be in the middle, not mine.

  As soon as the Somalis cleared away, I went back over to the list. I scanned down the middle column. There it was once again, right in the very middle, the words for which I had waited for months. My heart raced again. A smile spread across my face that was so wide my cheeks hurt. I had to sit back down.

  A few minutes later I went back to the list. I scanned down the middle column. Those words were still there. I got so excited I could not stand still. I had to sit down. I left for a few minutes, then came back again. And again. And again. Still the words were there, “Joseph Lopepe Lomong, Syracuse, New York.” I left a fifth time. When I returned, the mzungu who posted the list said to me, “Once you see your name, you can leave. We aren’t going to change anything.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. Okay. Okay!” I danced away.

  I went back to my dorm and sat on my bunk. “This is it,” I said. “It is time to go to America!” I wished I could share my joy with my family in Kakuma. If I had been there when I saw my name on the bulletin board, we would have celebrated. But since they were back in the camp, no celebrations were possible. However, I did not let that get me down. Joy flowed over me. “When I get to America I will get a job, and then I will really be able to help my friends,” I said.

  This was my plan.

  This was the plan of every boy set free from Kakuma. We went to America not for ourselves, but for every lost boy left behind. I planned to send part of the money I earned back to my friends to help support them and make their lives better. If they could not come to America, I would send as much of America as I could back to them. I knew they would do the same for me. After all, that’s what family is all about.

  TEN

  “Welcome Home, Joseph”

  I am a talker. I can talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere. But when I boarded the bus to the Nairobi airport, I had no one to talk to. My friends who traveled to Nairobi with me had already left, and the rest of my family was back in Kakuma. Nearly everyone on the bus came from Somalia and Rwanda. They were funneled through the same refugee processing facility in Juja as the lost boys.

  The Somalis and Rwandans laughed and talked in languages I could not understand. All of them wore nice clothes and shoes, much nicer than my one set of Goodwill clothes I brought with me from Kakuma. I felt very out of place in my jeans with the odd pattern. I thought they were stylish when I put them on. After I lived in America a short time, I discovered the only people who wear pants like mine are middle-aged men on a golf course. I had no other clothes and no luggage. All my worldly goods consisted of my airplane ticket and a bag the INS people handed me before we got on the bus. Inside were papers that guaranteed my entrance into the United States. “Hold onto this bag,” the officials told us. “Don’t drop it or hand it to anyone.” I gripped that bag so tight my hand hurt, and I hadn’t even arrived at the airport yet.

  At the airport, we filed off the bus and into a holding area. The mzungu workers in charge handed each of us some bread and a can of Fanta soda. “For me alone?” I asked one of the aid workers. She smiled and motioned for me to take a seat without answering my question. I found a spot on the floor away from the Somalis and Rwandans. I gulped down the soda, but I was not so sure about the bread. I’d never had bread before. I sniffed it and then took a small bite. The bread tasted different than anything I’d had before, but I liked it. However, I could
hardly enjoy it because I just knew that at any moment an official would come over and scold me for hogging it for myself. Back in Kakuma, half of a loaf of bread could feed ten people. I felt guilty having so much food all to myself.

  The other refugees waiting for our flight did not have the same apprehensions about the food. I watched them take one or two bites, then drop the rest on the floor. I could not believe my eyes. For ten years my friends and I lived on one meal a day. We made every scrap of food last. Yet here in the airport no one seemed to care about how much food they wasted. A couple of the others noticed me staring and yelled something at me. I don’t know what they said, but the look on their faces told me they weren’t telling me to have a nice day. I moved to the other side of the holding area and waited for more instructions from the mzungu.

  I did not have to wait long. The mzungu made an announcement in English I did not understand. Everyone stood. We lined up again. I shuffled along through the line. Outside through the window I saw the biggest airplane I’d ever seen in my life. The lights flashing on the tips of the wings shimmered on the glass of the airport windows. I’d never seen glass windows before either.

  The line moved along until I arrived at the front. An official-looking person examined the I-94 form in my bag. He looked at my photo on the form, then looked at me. He smiled and motioned for me to move forward. I followed the line through a door and outside. Wow! The airplane was huge! An entire village could fit inside it.