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

had. Eventually the other boys had enough. One day I walked out on the soccer field and one of the older boys who ran the games told me, “From now on you are the goalkeeper.”
    At first I hated being the goalkeeper. You cannot score from the back side of the field, and I love scoring goals. But what could I do? Instead of sulking, I told myself, Okay, you are now the goalkeeper. Make yourself the best goalkeeper in all of Kenya. And I did. By this time I was eleven or twelve years old, no longer one of the youngest boys in the camp. I still was not big, but I was fast in the goal. I blocked anything and everything.

    Kakuma grew larger and larger. Every day we heard the distinctive sound of army trucks pulling up to the gate, delivering more refugees. Just as when I arrived, boys far outnumbered adults and families among the new arrivals. These boys crowded onto the soccer field, making it impossible to play. To solve this problem, the older boys came up with a plan. Before anyone could set foot on the soccer field, they first had to run one lap around the camp. The faster you finished your lap, the sooner you got to play soccer. Kakuma did not have a fence around it, but the perimeter was very clearly defined. One lap around the outside of all the tents from all the sections from all the tribes and nationalities equaled thirty kilometers—that is, eighteen miles. We ran without shoes and without extra water in the hot Kenyan desert.
    While that may sound like torture to many people, to me, running those thirty kilometers allowed me to escape the realities of life in the camp. When I ran, I did not think about my empty stomach or how I ended up in this place. I could not control much in my life. The UN dictated when food was delivered, when the water spigots were turned on, even when they dumped their garbage for us to eat. But when I ran, I was in control of my life. I ran for me. None of us had shoes, yet running barefoot connected me to the ground under my feet. It was as though the path under my feet and I became one.
    Running became my therapy, but I ran fast because I loved soccer. The faster I finished my lap, the more soccer I got to play. When I finished my one lap around the camp, I didn’t take a water break. I didn’t want to waste time going over to the water station when I could be playing ball. Camels drink once and go on for weeks, and so could I. I was a soccer camel.
    When I was not running around the camp or playing soccer, I went to school. Every weekday morning from eight until noon, I attended UN-sponsored classes. We did not have a classroom. Instead, we met under a large canvas tent workers put up to protect students from the sun. The school also did not supply textbooks. We sang most of our lessons. A few lucky boys had books they’d brought with them to the camp, but they were few and far between. In place of books, I used to sit under the stars and remember the stories my mother told me as a little boy. I knew that somewhere, she was under the same sky. The thought made me feel connected to her somehow.
    We also did not have paper and pencils. A few boys did—those who were sponsored by someone on the other side of the world. I was not so lucky. I used to stare at those writing with a real pen and think, Oh, to be so rich as to have a pen in my pocket. Someday, that will be me . In the meantime, I wrote my lessons in the dirt with a stick. The teacher walked between the rows of boys, checking our work. If I got the problem wrong or if I wrote my letters incorrectly, the teacher smacked me with a stick. “Why did you write that letter that way?” the teacher would say. The beatings motivated me to do my best. I did not enjoy getting smacked with a stick.
    On Sunday we went to church instead of school. It was my favorite day of the week. Everything was good on Sundays. I didn’t have to think about food or anything else. Instead, I lost myself singing praises to God. I knew He was there with