In 1999, when I was twenty-four years old and Martha was sixteen, the U.S. State Department decided to allow certain refugees from the Sudanese civil war into the United States. The UN agreed with the decision. It said Sudanese children without parents could not be safely sent back to Sudan.
Interviewers from the outside world began coming to Kakuma. They represented social service agencies in the United States and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. They began screening Lost Boys to see whether they had living relatives in Africa, and whether they had fought in the war. In either of these cases, you were not eligible for their program. About 3,600 Sudanese passed the interviews and began being processed for relocation to America.
One American interviewer who spent a year screening refugees at Kakuma said those who had tried very hard to get a good education in camp seemed to have survived with better mental health than those who had not. “Because they can see a way forward for themselves, they didn’t lose hope,” the interviewer said.
I was invited to apply to go to the United States. A refugee resettlement office called the Joint Voluntary Agency opened a file on me, took my picture, and scheduled me for an interview. I had to write my life story and give it to the interviewers. They asked me lots of questions, trying to see if they could catch me saying something that conflicted with my written autobiography. They knew that some refugees were so desperate to get to America that they would tell lies.
I had no trouble with the questions. I kept saying the same things over and over because those were the things that had happened. I told how I had lost my family the night the northern soldiers came to Duk Payuel, and how I fled across Sudan with Abraham. I told of how many people had tried to kill me, but that I had never become a soldier for the SPLA. I told of my years in Pinyudu and Kakuma. And I truthfully said I knew of no living relatives.
That was all very good. The interviewers said that I had passed, and they sent me to get a medical checkup. All the doctor could find, besides my being extremely thin, was a case of malaria. That could be kept in check with medicine, so the doctor sent me on my way to a final interview with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
I had trouble following everything the interviewers said, but fortunately a translator repeated everything in Dinka. I learned that if I went to America, the government would take care of me for ninety days. My apartment, groceries, and utilities would all be free. After that, I would have to get a job and pay for everything. I did not stop to tell the translator or the interviewers that I did not know what apartment, groceries, and utilities were. When we were all done, the interviewers told me I would get a letter at the compound of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in about two months telling me whether I had been accepted for relocation to the United States.
Believe me, when the letter came in May 2001, I was very happy. “You have been accepted,” it said. I did not know exactly where or when I would go, but I did not care. I was going to America!
I began taking classes on how to be an American. I learned many of the things that American children learn in school, as well as some things they pick up at home. For example, I learned how to use a telephone. Perhaps the biggest surprise was learning about cold weather. A teacher told me, “I will show you how cold it gets in America.” He pulled something out of a box and showed it to me. It looked like glass, only it had rounded edges like a river rock. He put it in my hand, and the rock burned the skin with intense cold.
“That is water,” he said. “It gets so cold in America that water sometimes turns hard. We call this an ‘ice cube.’ Feel it, and feel the cold in America.”
I had never seen ice. I could not imagine a country where water turned to stone. But I was aching to go there.