Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey From the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games (13 page)

So that’s how you turn that thing off! Whew. I don’t think I could sleep with that thing shining in my eyes another night!
That’s what I wanted to say, but I didn’t know how to say it in English. Instead I simply said, “Thank you.” I never slept again with the light, or the lamp, on.

The shower took more time to master than the light. Mom and Dad showed me the shower my first day. “You turn the water on like this,” Dad said, lifting up the single handle. Okay, I could remember that. Raise the lever and water comes pouring down from above. It beat bathing with a bucket of water. However, I quickly discovered the shower was not as great as I first thought. The first time I tried to use it, I raised the lever and climbed inside. Brr! That was the coldest water I’d felt in my life. I jumped around, trying to wash and stay warm at the same time, without much success with either. No wonder these people were so white. Showering every day in such cold water had to turn them that way.

I turned the water off and stood there, shivering, waiting for the water to dry. Mom showed me the towels and told me to use one to dry myself, but the towel felt more like a blanket. I couldn’t use something so nice to wipe water off my body.

After a few days of frigid showers, I decided to go back to what I knew. I found a large pot in the kitchen and filled it with hot water.

Dad walked in. “What are you doing, Lopez?” By this time I told him my friends all called me Lopez.

“Getting water for shower.”

“We have hot water upstairs too,” he said.

I gave him a look that told him I thought he was crazy. I caught myself before any words came out of my mouth that might make him angry. “No problem,” I said, “I can use this.”

“Come on, I’ll show you,” he said. He led me upstairs and showed me how to turn the lever in the shower and change the temperature of the water. Thank God! I knew I could not take one more cold shower.

“Thank you, Dad,” I said. I returned the pot to the kitchen and went back upstairs for a shower. I moved the lever as far from the frigid water as I could and stepped inside. Whoa! I thought the hot water might boil my skin right off of me. I danced around, trying to bathe while avoiding burning myself, without much success with either.

Over the next several days I experimented with the lever, moving it back and forth to several places on the dial. Some days I froze and other days I fried. Finally, after ten or twelve days, I happened to find a place where the water was not too hot and not too cold. From that day until the day I moved off to college, I never moved that lever again!

I learned to use the toilet a little quicker, but it took me a very long time to become comfortable with it. In Africa, you do not do your business inside a house, especially not in a house as nice as Mom and Dad’s. For the first few days I could hardly bring myself to use the toilet. Unfortunately, Mom kept offering me Cokes and I kept drinking them. I wanted to go out in the yard, but Rascal, the family dog, was the only one with permission to do his business outside. That left me no choice but to come to terms with an indoor toilet that sat in a room close enough to all the other people in the house to hear what was going on in there.

At first the size and shape of the toilet, to say nothing of the flush mechanism, threw me for a loop. All the toilets I had ever seen consisted of a hole in the ground with a board placed over the top to keep you from falling inside. Needless to say, the indoor bathroom was much nicer than a hole in the ground.

Slowly I learned my way around the house. However, I kept waiting for the day when the Rogers would discover a mistake had been made and I would be forced to leave and go to work. That day never arrived, and I did not understand why.

Instead of forcing me out, Mom and Dad worked to make me feel welcome. They invited the neighborhood teenage boys to come to our house nearly every day. Communicating with these boys was a bit of a problem, but we found a way around it. On warm, sunny days we played soccer in the backyard along with basketball on the driveway. When it rained, which seemed very odd to me that rain could come in the middle of summer, we went inside and played Uno and Mancala. Mancala is actually an African game that my friends and I in Kakuma played using rocks and holes in the ground. I never imagined finding it in America. My new friends also introduced me to a new game with a Swahili name that means “build”: Jenga.

I spent a lot of time that first summer playing games with my new friends. Along the way they taught me words in English I had never heard before. Mom quickly pointed out that these were words I should not use, ever.

About a week after I arrived, Mom announced, “Joseph, we need to get you some new clothes.” The agency that arranged my stay with them did not tell her or Dad my story. They assumed I would bring clothes with me. I didn’t. The first few days I wore Robby’s hand-me-downs. Now it was time for clothes of my own.

Mom took me to a large clothing store. When we walked in, I could not believe my eyes. I had never seen so much merchandise in one place. She held up a pair of pants and asked, “Do you like these?”

“Yes,” I said. Yes remained my default answer to all questions.

She led me down a few more aisles. “How about this pair? Do you like them?”

“Yes.”

“How about this shirt?”

“Yes.”

“What about this one?” she said, holding up the ugliest shirt I had ever seen in my life.

“Yes.”

“Uh-huh.” She put all the clothes down. “Joseph, you do not have to say yes to everything. I need you to tell me what you really think. It will be okay. You won’t get in trouble for telling me no.”

“Okay,” I said.

“So, what about this pair of pants? Do you like them?” she asked.

“Yes,” my words said, but my face said no.

“No you don’t.” She put them down and found another pair I liked much better. “What about these?”

“Yes!” I said. My words and my face finally said the same thing.

“That’s better,” she said.

She bought several pairs of pants for me, along with shirts, underwear, socks, and a pair of shoes. These were the first new clothes I had ever owned. Everything else I had ever worn came out of the Goodwill box in the camp or had been handed down to me from my older brother. I wondered how I would ever repay her, but Mom waved off my concerns. “I’m your mom,” she said. “This is what moms do.” I accepted what she said, but I did not fully believe it. Again, I decided to enjoy this moment while it lasted. Once the Rogers came to their senses and sent me off to where I belonged, perhaps they would let me take these clothes with me.

Around my second week in the Rogers’ home, Dad told me, “I have a surprise for you today. How would you like to go hang out with your friend Simon and some of the other guys from Sudan?”

“Yes,” I said, and this time I meant it. A short time later I found myself in downtown Syracuse, surrounded by old friends. Even though none of these boys had been in my tent, we all knew one another in Kakuma. Seven thousand miles later I felt very close to these boys. These guys were all in their twenties, all except one. That made them too old to be placed with a family, which is why they lived on their own. We spent the afternoon laughing, playing games, and best of all, talking in Swahili. I had not realized how much my ears ached to hear my own language. We talked about old times, and they shared rumors they’d heard about which boys would get to come to America next. It was a great afternoon. I hated to tell them good-bye when Dad came and picked me up.

“Did you have a good time?” Dad asked on the drive home.

“Yes. Very good. Thank you,” I said.

“My pleasure,” he said. “I’ll try to set something up for next week, if you would like.”

“Yes; very much.”

I did not say much more on the ride home. My poor English made long conversations difficult. That gave me time to think. It felt so good to reconnect with friends from Kakuma. All of us were so blessed to be here.

Then it hit me.

I thought about my life with the Rogers and compared it to my friends in downtown Syracuse. All of us had been robbed of our childhoods. Most of the boys in Kakuma had to flee their homes or were taken from them prior to their tenth birthdays. I was only six when I was taken. Yet here I was ten years later with an opportunity no other lost boy had, at least no other lost boy that I knew. All of us were lost boys, but thanks to Rob and Barbara Rogers, I got to be a boy in the truest sense of the word once again. My stolen childhood had been returned to me. I did not know how long this could last, but I knew God had given me a priceless gift.

I broke out in a big grin while fighting back tears.

Dad noticed. “Everything all right over there?”

“Yes,” I said. “Everything is wonderful.”

THIRTEEN
Two Dreams, One Goal

T
wo people changed the direction of my life forever, and both did it within the first week of my coming to America. The first one changed my life on my second full day here. The man who tried to run alongside me on my fourteen-mile run showed up the next day with a package under his arm. I didn’t know who he was, but Mom and Dad did. “Joseph, my name is Jim Paccia,” he said, “Coach Jim Paccia.”

He had my attention. In Africa, “Coach” is a title of great honor.

“I am very happy to meet you,” I said.

“I coach the cross-country team at Tully High School.”

I looked at him with a blank expression. He might as well have told me he coached curling or ice dancing. I had no idea what a cross-country team was.

“That’s a running team,” Dad added. “The cross-country team runs five-kilometer footraces against teams from other schools.”

“I am a soccer player,” I said. Even after watching Michael Johnson in the 2000 Olympics, soccer was the only real sport I knew anything about.

“Joseph,” Coach Paccia said, “after what I saw yesterday, you need to be on the cross-country team. You have a real gift. It would be a shame to waste it.”

“I’m a good soccer player,” I said.

“I don’t doubt that,” Coach said. “I think you’re probably one of those guys who will excel at any sport they try. But very few people can run like you do. I would love to have you on my team.”

I hated to disappoint anyone. “Perhaps one race for you,” I said.

“I had something more in mind,” Coach said. He reached into his bag. “Joseph, I had this made for you. It’s yours if you come out for the cross-country team.” Coach Paccia held up a Tully High School team jersey and jacket. The white letters popped off of the all-black background. I was very impressed. Then he turned the jacket around, and my jaw dropped. There, across the back, were the letters L-O-M-O-N-G! For a boy who grew up wearing hand-me-down clothes courtesy of Goodwill, this was the most beautiful piece of clothing I could imagine. A huge grin broke out across my face, but my soccer dreams refused to go down without a fight.

“I can wear this for one race?” I said.

Coach shook his head. “No, not for one race. You only get the jacket if you commit to run the entire season.”

This was a hard decision. For ten years soccer had been more than a game to me. Back in the camp, it was a way of life. Running had never been more than a means to an end. If the older boys in Kakuma had never made the rule that we had to run thirty kilometers before we could step foot on the soccer field, I might never have run farther than from one end of the soccer field to the other. In fact, I never even thought of running as a sport, except, of course, for that Michael Johnson guy running for the USA on television.

“Two races?” I said.

Coach Paccia was firm. “No, the entire season. I tell you what I will do. You run this season, you get this jacket. If you run again next season, I’ll give you another, and another for the season after that.”

I looked at that jacket dangling in front of me. How could I turn my back on something so beautiful? In my mind I saw myself hanging
three
of them in my closet at the end of high school. “Okay,” I said. “I will run cross-country.”

Less than two months later I ran my first race. Mom and Dad were right there, cheering for me. I was surprised. The sight of them convinced me that I had to win this race, not for myself, but for them. After all, I did not belong here. But now, with this race, I could show them I belonged. In my eyes, this was my chance to show my value and prove that I might be worthy to be a part of a family. This race was my chance to validate my place in America.

However, I had one little problem. Although my English had improved somewhat, I did not fully grasp all the nuances of high school cross-country. In this particular race, a golf cart led the runners around the course. Everyone seemed to understand this little detail except me. I thought I was supposed to beat the golf cart to the finish line.

The moment the gun sounded, I took off after that cart like my life depended on it. Within a few hundred meters I zipped right by it. Once I passed it I did not think it could catch me. I was right. However, the golf cart driver cheated. He took a shortcut and pulled around back in front of me. That just made me run even harder. I passed the cart a second time. He cheated again and got in front of me. Over the course of the first four kilometers of the race, I passed the golf cart several times. I passed him so often that I ran completely out of gas by the end of the race. My huge lead over the cart and the field disappeared. Two guys passed me before I stumbled over the finish line.

Coach Paccia ran over to me. I was fuming. I should have won the race with ease, and I would have if the golf cart had not taken so many shortcuts. Coach grabbed me and said, “Lopez, you ran a great race, but you don’t have to run against the cart. You only race the other runners.”

Great
, I thought.
Now you tell me
.

“I tell you what. In the next race I want you to run alongside the race leaders. Stay right at the front. Then, if you feel up to it, you can run as hard as you want the last mile.”

I shook my head to show that I understood. I could hardly breathe, much less talk. Racing a golf cart takes a lot out of you.