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 Page A

me. I never, ever doubted that fact for a moment.
    And God was with me for a very long time in Kakuma. I did not stay six years old very long. Before I knew it, I was one of the older boys in the camp. Instead of having teenage friends look after me, I took on that role with the younger ones. I never questioned that role or anything else about life in Kakuma. That was just the way things were in the camp—the way life was, and the way it would always be. I never expected anything more.

SIX

From Lopepe to Joseph
    I do not remember the day I came to the realization that my parents were dead. I did not wake up one morning crying, “Oh no! My mother and father are gone. What will I ever do?” During my imprisonment in the rebel camp, I dreamed nonstop about going home. When my angels came to me, they told me I was going to see my mother again. Knowing she was waiting for me carried me through the savannah when my feet left a trail of blood with every step. I did not feel the thorn bushes tearing at my legs because I knew I was on my way home.
    But our path did not take us home. It took us to Kenya and Kakuma, a place filled with boys like me, boys without homes, without mothers or fathers. Every day I wondered if today might be the day my parents would come and take me home. Surely they must be out there somewhere, searching for me anywhere and everywhere. Their search had to bring them to Kakuma. Once they walked through the gates, I would be on my way home.
    Days turned into weeks, but they never walked through the gates. “Why don’t they come?” I asked over and over to anyone who would listen during my first weeks in the camp. Tears flowed. “If they are looking for me, why can’t they find me?”
    “You can’t think like that, Lopepe,” a friend finally answered. I tried to look away and ignore him, but he got right in my face.
    “Stop it, Lopepe. Stop! You see that boy over there?” He pointed to a boy we all knew about. Like me, he was one of the younger ones. Unlike me, he was not going to survive much longer. He rarely left his tent. All day every day he sat in his tent rocking, rocking, rocking, his mind slowly slipping away. “You cannot sit and wish for something that is never going to happen, or you will lose your mind. No, you must focus on here and now. Do your chores. Go to school. Keep your mind busy. The past is gone. It will not come back. You must live in this day.”
    “But . . .” I said, tears welling up in my eyes.
    “No buts,” he said. “This is the life you now have. You must accept it and go forward or you will end up like that other boy.” He then smiled at me, which seemed oddly out of place. “You can do this, my friend. I know you can. You are strong.” My friend patted me on the back and left to go play soccer.
    I sat and stared at the rocking boy for a very long time. There were others like him in Kakuma, boys who cried for home day and night. Eventually, malaria always got these boys. I did not want to suffer such a fate. The rocking boy looked over at me, his eyes filled with sadness. What will it be, Lopepe? I asked myself. The answer was easy. I jumped up, ran out of the tent, and chased after my friend to the soccer field.
    My homesickness did not immediately stop, but it changed. The moment I ran over to the soccer field, I knew my parents were never going to come and rescue me. I would not see my home again.
    Once I made peace with the fact that I would never go home again, the next step came quite naturally. I did not have a home any longer, and for all practical purposes, I no longer had a mother or father. That made me an orphan. How could I be an orphan if my parents still lived? My mind completed the thought: My parents have to be dead . I knew they were. I knew it just as surely as I knew the sun came up in the east and went down in the west.
    My parents were gone, but I remained. In many ways, I was the same boy I was in Kimotong. Back home, I pestered my