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

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