by Lopez Lomong
I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I uttered my favorite English word, “Yes.”
Dad’s idea of adding a closet meant more than adding a wall or two inside my room. The roof of the house sloped down at my room, which made the ceiling come down at an odd angle on one side. “We’re going to open up the roof and add a dormer,” Dad explained. “That should give you some head room and make space for another closet.”
“What’s a dormer?” I asked.
Dad laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I just need you to be my gopher.”
“A what?”
“When I need something, you grab it. Gopher means you ‘go for’ things for me.”
“Okay,” I said. I didn’t get the joke.
The weather turned brutally cold the Saturday we started the remodel. I knew absolutely nothing about construction then, and I still know very little about it today. However, within the first five minutes of our remodel, I figured out one little fact: when you cut a hole in the roof and expose the inside of the house to the weather outside, it is best to do it in the summer. We did not do our project in the summer. No, we did ours in the middle of my first winter.
I also learned pretty fast what a go-for is. “Hand me the saw, will you Lopez? … I need the hammer … Bring up those two-by-fours …” I flashed back to Sudan helping my father on his farm. I love to help. However, I never helped on the farm in winter in Sudan since we don’t have winter back there. We sure had winter in Tully, New York.
I handed Dad a saw and then waited for my next set of instructions. Before I knew it, I could not feel my fingers in my gloves. My toes felt like they’d already fallen off from the cold. I waited for Dad to ask me to go get something. He looked like he had everything he needed up on the roof. I sneaked inside the house and went straight to the kitchen, where Mom was. “It’s c-c-c-cold,” I said.
“Oh, Lopez,” she said in that Mom tone. “Would you like some hot chocolate?”
“Yes, very much.”
I sucked down the hot chocolate as fast as I dared. Then, from outside, I heard Dad yell, “Lopez, where did you go? I need you.”
I sat my hot chocolate on the counter, pulled my gloves back on, and went back out into the cold to help. Half an hour later, I was back in the kitchen drinking hot chocolate. “Lopez, where did you go?” Dad yelled. I pulled my gloves on and went back out to the cold. He and I did this dance for the next couple of weekends until the room was finished.
One evening after a day of working on the remodel, Dad and I warmed up in the hot tub. For no particular reason, he looked at me and asked, “When you first got here, why did you say yes to everything? When you needed something or didn’t know something, why didn’t you just ask? Why did you say yes and go along to get along?”
“Honestly?” I asked.
“Yes, honestly, why did you do it?”
I was ashamed to answer. Finally I forced the words out. “I was afraid I would make you mad and you would send me away. I knew I was not supposed to be here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I thought someone made a mistake letting me live in this nice place. I thought if I made you mad, you would send me away.”
“Why on earth would you think that?”
“Because all this is too nice to be real. I do not deserve it, or people like you and Mom.”
Dad looked at me with a mixture of shock and sadness. “Son, you know better than that now, don’t you?”
I could hardly look him in the eye. I was ashamed at what I had once thought of him and Mom. “Yes, Dad, I do.”
“Listen to me. This is your home. It always will be. Nothing can change that, and nothing can change how we feel about you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” I said.
If I ever had any doubts about where I stood in the family, they disappeared completely when I tried to get a learner’s permit to drive. The state of New York had a rule against foster children getting driver’s licenses. I do not know why they had this rule. Perhaps they thought the moment we got behind a wheel we would take off for Canada or something. The rule made no sense to me or to my dad. And he tried to do something about it.
Dad took me into Syracuse for a meeting with my case worker and some official in charge of foster care in upstate New York. I did not know who everyone was in the room, but I knew they wielded a great deal of authority. The meeting started with the officials telling my dad why I could not get my driver’s permit. Dad cut them off. “You let these boys come into this country, and you tell them that it is now their home, but then you make all these rules that tell them they don’t belong here. Well let me tell you, you can either waive this rule and let Lopez get his learner’s permit, or I am going to go find a judge who will slap an injunction on you so fast it will make your head spin. So what’s it going to be?”
The officials in the room had clearly never been spoken to in such a manner. They stammered around and spouted more of their rules, but my dad would have none of it. He kept pressing and pressing until they gave in. Right then and there, I knew my dad loved me. No one had ever stood up for me before, ever.
A few weeks after we finished the remodel, life got even better at home. Since I first arrived in America, Mom and Dad arranged for me to go hang out with the other lost boys in the area at least once every couple of weeks. All the boys were older and had jobs, all but Dominic. Dominic was my age, but due to a clerical error when he first came to America, he lived with the older lost boys in downtown Syracuse instead of living with a family. It wasn’t a good situation for him. All that changed the day after the state of New York approved Mom and Dad to take in another foster son. They chose Dominic. The courts signed off on the decision, and he came to live with us.
When Dominic moved in, I showed him around. I took him to our room, pointed at the remodeled part, and announced, “Dad and I did this together.”
“What? The two of you did this?”
“Yes,” I said proudly. I didn’t see any point in telling him that I spent most of my time running back and forth to the kitchen for hot chocolate.
“Wow,” Dominic said. He looked all around the room. “Next year, I want to do a construction project with Dad!” I think he made Dad’s day.
A few months later a third brother moved in. Peter came from Kakuma. He was one of the few lost boys allowed to immigrate after 9-11. Once the three of us were together at home, nothing could stand in our way. Now I was the big brother once again. I showed Peter all the things I did not know when I first came to America, like how to turn off the lights and how to adjust the hot and cold water in the shower.
Dominic, Peter, and I were inseparable. Before they came, our family went out to eat every Friday night. Mom and Dad meant it as a treat, but for me it was sheer torture. I had no idea what to order. The photos of food on the menu did not help. But once Dominic and Peter arrived, Friday nights became a blast. One of us would pick out something on the menu, and the other two of us immediately announced, “Yep, we’ll have that too!” The three of us also ran together. The first spring Dominic lived with us, before Peter arrived, he and I became a force on our track team. I ran everything Coach Paccia asked me to run: the mile; the 800-meter run, which is two laps around the track; the 4-by-800 relay where I ran the anchor leg; the triple jump and long jump—it did not matter. Dominic was the same way. We did whatever Coach needed to help the team win the meet. In track, you score points for the team based on where you finish in individual races. First place scores ten team points; second place, eight; third, six; fourth, four; and on down the line. Between Dominic and I, we often scored eighty points for the team. Needless to say, other high schools probably wondered where they could get lost boys for their track teams.
Life was good. Very good. But life never stands still, even in the good times.
An early summer day in 2003, I sat in the backyard with Dominic and Peter. The phone rang. Mom answered. “Sure, just a m
inute,” she said. Then she looked at me. “Joseph, Simon wants to talk to you.” Simon is the lost boy I called on my way home from the airport the day I arrived. By now we were very good friends. We talked all the time. The fact that he called did not strike me as odd in any way.
I grabbed the phone. “Simon, what are you doing, my friend?” I said in Swahili. We always spoke to one another in Swahili.
“Someone was in Kakuma today looking for you,” he said.
“For me?” I asked. “Who could possibly have been looking for me in Kakuma?” My friends were all either in Kakuma already or had resettled in the United States.
“Your mother.”
“What?” My heart jumped into my throat. I started to say that that was impossible because my mother is dead. But I stopped myself. I did not know for certain my mother was dead. That was something I had to tell myself to survive the refugee camp.
“Your mother came to Kakuma looking for you. She heard two of your friends talking about how they wished Lopez had been on the soccer field today. She asked who they were talking about. They said you. She wanted to know where you were, and they told her you are in America. They called me. I have a cell phone number for your mother if you want to call her.”
All the time I am talking to Simon, my American mom is watching me. The look on my face told her my world had just flipped upside down. “Okay,” I said. I found a piece of paper and wrote down the number. “Thanks,” I said and hung up the phone.
“What’s going on, Joseph?” Mom asked.
“It’s my mother,” I said. I could not force myself to say anything more. I could not make up my mind if I believed what I had just heard.
“Your mother? What?” Mom asked.
I looked up at Mom; tears filled my eyes. “My mother is alive. Here’s her phone number.”
“Call. Call right now,” Mom said.
“I don’t know if I can,” I said.
“I’ll dial the number for you,” she said. And she did.
The next thing I knew, I heard a voice on the phone I could not even remember. “Lopepe?” she said.
“Yes, this is Lopepe,” I replied.
My mother had not heard my voice since I was six years old. I was now eighteen. She expected the voice of a child, not a full-grown man. “No, this does not sound like my Lopepe. You must be the wrong child.” My mother spoke Buya, not Swahili. I had not heard Buya since my three angels disappeared from Kakuma. I could hardly understand what she said.
“Mother, it is me. Lopepe. The soldiers tore me from your arms when I was six years old.” My voice cracked. Tears flowed down my face.
“Lopepe …” My mother wept on the other side of the world. “Lopepe … you’re alive,” my mother said.
“Yes, Mother, I am alive.” I wept. “And Father, is he … ?” I could not finish my sentence.
“Yes, he is alive. Where are you?”
“America,” I said.
“You are alive?” my mother said over and over.
“Yes, Mother, I am alive.”
The two of us tried to say more, and maybe we did. To be honest, I do not remember what we said. The words did not matter. All we needed to hear was the sound of the other’s voice. For years I had wondered, and now I knew, they were alive.
My mother and father were alive.
SIXTEEN
“This Place Will Take You to the Olympics”
When are you coming home, Lopepe?” my mother asked. She asked the same question at least ten times during our twice weekly phone calls. The first time she asked, my stomach knotted up on me and a lump jumped into my throat. How do you tell your desperate mother who had returned from the grave that she still may never see you again? By now I had answered the question enough times that I did not feel the rush of emotion.
“Mother,” I said, “I explained that to you. I live in America now. I am in school. I am going to go to college and get an education. I cannot come back to Africa now.”
“No, no, no, Lopepe. You need to come home.”
“That is impossible. America is very far away. I cannot come home.”
My mother’s concept of distance mirrored my own before I climbed on the 747 bound for New York by way of Beijing. “Will you come home today?” she asked.
We had a variation of this conversation at the end of every phone call. She wanted me back home. I could not blame her. After the rebels took me from my church, my family searched for me, to no avail. Eventually they decided I must be dead. My family buried the few items I’d left behind. The entire village turned out for my funeral. They mourned me for weeks, but they never forgot me. Even after my funeral, my mother never gave up her dream of finding me. Now that she had, I had to come home.
But I could not go back to Africa, not yet at least. My mother wanted me to come back to the only life she had ever known, but my world and my dreams went far beyond taking care of my father’s cows. To return to Kimotong now meant giving up my goals of a college degree and running in the Olympics. I must have inherited some of my mother’s determination that made her search for her dead son for a dozen years, for I was determined never, ever to give up on my goals until I either reached them or gave my all trying. I knew God gave me these dreams. How could I give up on them?
The thing about dreams, though, is they usually sound crazy to everyone but you. All it takes is one other person to buy into them to keep you going. At the start of our first cross-country practice of my junior year, Coach Paccia sent the entire team running up a hill that overlooked Tully High School. Tom Carraci and I took off in front of the rest of the team. Tom is the same friend who opened my locker for me every day my first year at Tully. Coach Paccia was supposed to run up the hill with us, but his bad knees kept him from keeping up with Tom and me.
Tom and I raced up the hill. I don’t remember who won that round. After all, this was just a warm-up for the real practice. We stood on top of the hill, hands on hips, trying to catch our breath. Down below, the lacrosse team practiced on one field, the football team on another. “Did I tell you, Tom, that I am going to run in the Olympics in 2008?”
“Only about a million times,” Tom said. “Tell you what: when you make the team, I am going with you to the Olympics. I don’t care where it is; I will be there to watch you run.”
Another member of the team, one of my best friends named Sean, came up at the same time. “Me too. When you run in the Olympics, I’m going too.”
“Really?” I said.
Tom looked at me with complete seriousness. “If anyone can do it, you can. And when you do, I’m going to be there.”
This was a big moment for me. I knew I had the ability to make my dream come true, but it is one thing to believe in yourself. It is something else entirely to have friends believe in you as well.
“It’s a deal, then,” I said. “You’re both going with me to Beijing, China, in 2008!”
“You got it,” Tom said. He shook my hand to seal the deal, as did Sean. 2008 was five years away. I was a skinny high school junior—well, sort of skinny. Mom fed me so well that I was starting to look more like a football player than a runner. That did not matter. My dream would come true.
My second year of high school in America I won the state cross-country final, which qualified me for the national regional high school championships. I finished twelfth in my region. The next year, my senior year, I did even better. After winning state, I finished in the top six in the national regionals. I then traveled to San Diego for the Foot Locker National High School Championships. I did not win the Foot Locker Championships, but I did well enough for college recruiters to come calling. Big schools recruited me, schools like Oklahoma, Florida, even Princeton. Unfortunately, my SAT scores kept me from qualifying for a Division 1 scholarship right out of high school. I could have gone to a nearby junior college to get my prerequisite classes out of the way. If my grades were good enough, I would have been eligible for a scholarship without my SAT scores.
But going to a junior college near Syracuse, or any other school in upstate New York, was not an option. Dominic and I graduated at the same time, and we both had the same plan for college. Of course, we planned on getting our degrees. Mom made it clear we had to get our degrees, end of discussion. However, the way we saw it, if we can get a college education anywhere, we ought to get it someplace warm. After three years in upstate New York, I’d had my fill of cold weather.
Mom came up with a highly scientific way of finding a college for two former lost boys who wanted to get out of the cold: during spring break, she loaded us in her car and drove south. We did not bother to stop anywhere in New York or Pennsylvania. Mom took us to a handful of colleges in Maryland, but none of them felt right to me. We kept going south.
On our second day of driving, we arrived in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Mom had set up an appointment for us at Norfolk State University. As soon as we drove onto the campus, I thought, This is the place for me. The campus tour sealed the deal. The day was warm, the campus green and beautiful, and the school seemed just the right size to me, not too small and not too large. Norfolk State also happened to be a predominantly black school, which appealed to me. I did not want to stand out in this new place.
Mom arranged for us to meet the track coach, but she kept the meeting very low-key. For her, academics and finding a place where we would actually graduate meant more than anything else. If she had mentioned the fact that I was the number one cross-country runner in the state of New York, the coach probably would not have let us leave until we signed letters of intent to attend and run cross-country and track. She didn’t, and we didn’t.
After a tour of the campus, we drove to the beach. I walked out on the sand and stared east. I knew Africa lay on the other side of the Atlantic. That made me feel connected to my homeland, while still being close enough to my new home for my mom and dad to drive down and visit. Syracuse was only nine hours away. That may seem like a long distance to some people, but not me. Norfolk State was the closest warm school I could find. I planned on staying there four years and leaving with my degree. Because I chose not to sign a letter of intent, I did not have a scholarship. Instead, I took out federal loans to pay for my school myself. To me, this was an investment in my future.