Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey From the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games by Lopez Lomong

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