Hope Runs

by Claire Diaz-Ortiz

  I decide that I’ve had enough, and I go to dinner that Friday to contemplate what I am thinking and feeling over a plate of delicious githeri, the food that always makes me think of home and of all the wonderful things here. That night the githeri doesn’t taste the same. It tastes like something amazing that I have never tried before. That night at fellowship, I also feel different. I’m not the same Sammy who usually jumps up and down and runs around singing and dancing with the rest of the kids. I am a relaxed Sammy, a composed Sammy. I am absorbing everything around me and taking it all in.

  That night during my prayers, I ask God to take care of me and to help us all follow through with this plan. My normally cold bed feels warm, and the hard mattress is soft. And then it hits me. My dreams. I am about to have my dreams come true. In my heart, I can’t believe that I, a Kenyan orphan living in an orphanage, am about to achieve the dream of almost every Kenyan high school kid—to finish high school in the United States.

  I may be sleeping in the orphanage now, but tomorrow I might have the chance to meet my hero, Barack Obama! I think.

  Who am I kidding? I chuckle to myself.

  And then I fall asleep.

  The next morning I wake up and get ready to go out for the usual Saturday morning run. Everything about that morning is marvelous. I put on my shoes, the torn, ripped shoes I really, really love and the old shorts and sweater I have been wearing for years. Outside, it is still cloudy and the sun hasn’t come out yet. With the coach, my friend and I start running. As we run, we keep going farther, and at the end of the run I realize we have completed thirty-one kilometers on just a regular Saturday.

  I see that morning that you never really know how amazing something is until you lose it—or until you are about to. In my case, I am about to lose the orphanage family I have come to love. There are wonderful opportunities ahead of me, but this is a loss I will feel.

  Later that morning after a breakfast of porridge, the manager calls me in and gives me the application to a high school called Maine Central Institute. I have never heard of Maine before. Is it near Alaska? That was where the missionaries Mr. and Mrs. Thomas were from, I remember.

  The essay I am supposed to write is about my strengths and weaknesses as a person, and I ask some people around me to tell me what they think those might be. When I ask one friend, though, she starts getting suspicious. “Why are you asking me that?” she says. “We never talk about things like that.”

  Then my friend Hezron finds me writing the essay. At first he thinks it is a letter, and so he starts teasing me. “I see somebody has a girlfriend! Who are you writing to?”

  Since having a girlfriend at Imani is not allowed, it is a big deal when I lie and say, “Yes, I have a girlfriend. I’ll tell you about her later.”

  I think saying I have a girlfriend is morally worse than saying I am going to the United States, but I have doubts about telling people. I worry that they will feel jealous and will all start asking, “Why him? Why not me?”

  Lara has come back for another week and is having lots of meetings with Manager and is always carrying papers around. She plays with the children and looks very busy, but I find time to tell her about my feelings. She says that, yes, she and Claire know that some kids might feel bad, so I should be sensitive to them. She explains that they had reasons for choosing me and that the manager will explain it all to the whole orphanage. She says she is happy the opportunity is for me, but she is also happy that I have earned a position fairly by doing well in school.

  When I finish my essay, I turn it in to the manager, and she reads through it while I stand there waiting. I was nervous when I wrote it, and I know I said some silly things, trying to make my school sound better than it is so the school in Maine might consider me.

  Manager starts to laugh very hard. “Sammy,” she says kindly, “you know this is ridiculous. You have to write it again.” I think she probably doesn’t believe a good weakness for an application essay is the fact that I don’t brush my teeth that much.

  When I go to rewrite the essay, I start thinking about my little sister. Since my family had said it was better that I never see her, I have not seen her for five whole years—the entire time I have been at Imani. I start wondering if she would recognize me if she saw me. And if I leave for the United States and come back, would she recognize me then?

  These questions start eating me up inside, and when I turn in the new essay I have written, I talk to Manager about them. She tells me that we will actually be seeing my little sister very soon. She says we have to go to the government offices in Nairobi in order to get a passport, then the American embassy in order to get a visa, and my sister will be nearby.

  When I hear that I will see my sister, I am happier than I have felt in a very long time, and I go to my room and start sobbing. My best friend Simon comes in and sees me and teases, “Ah, big man crying.” But I just let him say that, because I am so happy.

  The next Monday morning, after Lara has left again, Manager comes to school and tells me that we are going to take some passport photos. After we take them, Manager takes me to lunch in a restaurant. This is the first time I have ever eaten in a restaurant, and even though I can tell it is not very nice, I try to have the highest level of etiquette.

  On Friday night after fellowship, I sit with Simon on my bed reminiscing and talking about our futures. Simon is really ambitious and wants to become a successful businessman. He has lots of dreams and always talks about them. This is when I decide to tell Simon what is really happening with me and about the opportunity to go to the United States. He smiles wide and asks me, “Haven’t you always told me that you would like to go study in the USA and meet that Obama you always talk about?”

  I tell him I have always dreamed of that, but I never thought it was possible. He tells me I have to start thinking differently about what is possible, and I agree. “I will now try and do well and meet that Obama,” I promise him.

  The next morning I wake up early to find Simon curled up next to me like a little boy, and I am glad to have found such a great friend like him. I think about all my great friends that morning, and I pray to God that whenever I go to the United States I will be able to find good friends like these.

  Finally, one day the manager tells me that we have all the papers ready and it is time to go to Nairobi to get the passport. After I eat my porridge, I see a car waiting for us. It is only the second time I have been in a personal car—the first time was with Claire and Lara and the Runner’s World photographer—and I can’t wait to enjoy the ride.

  It takes more than three and a half hours to reach Nairobi, and when we do I am so surprised by what a huge city it is. There is a lot of traffic, and it is very hot out. Slowly but surely we get to an enormous building. When we enter, Manager begins trying to call someone on her phone. I am looking at the big buildings around me, taking it all in, when I think I see someone I recognize walk through the door. Someone I have waited five long years to see. It is my little sister, Bethi.

  I can’t hold back my tears and start running toward her. I pick up Bethi, who is now almost twelve, and hug her tightly. I start asking her how she is, and I realize quickly that she is so excited she is having trouble standing up. Her legs are really small and it looks like she can’t walk well. My aunt, who has brought my sister here, says that she and Bethi are well, and although Bethi has some trouble in school, she is trying hard.

  I want to know more about how my sister has adjusted over the years, and my aunt says that it was hard at first, but when Bethi was ten she sat down with my aunt and told her something that changed things. That day little Bethi asked my aunt what type of mother in her right mind would leave her three babies. My aunt didn’t know what to say, and Bethi had simply told her, “I don’t think that’s my mother. You are my mother.”

  That moment changed my aunt’s life, and Bethi’s, and I am happy that Bethi found someone like her.

  We must wait three weeks for my p
assport to be ready. It is a long process because the authorities have to make sure that, as an orphan, I am not being trafficked, and they ask me many questions about my family. The man in the suit once even asks me why I think my mother left me. I tell him I don’t know and look away from his eyes.

  After we get the passport, it is time to try for the visa, and I get to spend another whole day in Nairobi with my little sister at my aunt’s store, where she sells lunches to workers. We walk around the park, I help Bethi with her schoolwork, and that night I sleep at my aunt’s house. It is the best day.

  The next morning we wake up very early and go to the embassy at 5:00. Zach, who works with Hope Runs, is my representative at the interview and accompanies me since I’m a minor. The line is long, and we sit drinking Kenyan tea. Zach brought some cheese puffs and I try one. They are a little too cheesy for me, and I don’t like them very much.

  The manager laughs at me. “You really are a Kenyan,” she says. “But if you want to survive in America, you better start liking cheese.” Zach laughs and says it is true.

  Finally, after hours of waiting, my name is called. I am nervous, and I walk in repeating to myself all the questions that Zach and Manager and I have practiced in the mock interviews they made me do. Zach comes with me and sits down next to me across from the interviewer. All the interviewer wants to know is how I will be financed at school, and I explain about Claire and Lara and Hope Runs. And then he approves the visa and says to make sure we are back there in three weeks to pick it up.

  I am baffled. The interview has taken less than five minutes! A few months earlier, Manager had been denied a visa to go to the United States on a trip, and here I get one in five minutes? I know that someone is looking out for me up above and that God is making things work.

  Now that I have my visa approved and just three weeks more to wait, I know the time has come to start saying goodbye to my friends and family and my beloved country.

  I have a big challenge in front of me to break the news to everyone at Imani. I know that some people—like Simon and Hezron and my brother and cousins—will be happy for me. But I also know that there are some who will be jealous and will wonder why I have gotten something wonderful that they didn’t.

  And that is what happens. When everyone finds out, and when Manager explains to everyone, most are really happy. But some are not. They say it is favoritism. I try to remind them of how, in seventh and eighth grade, some students had been chosen to go to a provincial school and no one had complained. “How is that different than me?” I try to tell them. “It’s not that different. It’s just this time I’m going to the US instead of to another school in Nyeri town.” I do know it is a bit different, though.

  Since school is closing for the year, there are many kids who don’t live at Imani who I won’t see again before I leave. This is hard, as these are my friends from primary school who helped me fit in when I first came to the area to live with my aunt, even when I didn’t know the language and didn’t have any friends.

  I spend a weekend with the aunt I lived with before entering Imani so that I can say goodbye to my family. They have moved and now live in a stone house. This makes me happy for them. In turn, my aunt is happy for me and says that this visa will open many, many doors that my sixteen-year-old self cannot yet even imagine. Aunt Lydia tells me that now I have an opportunity to change my life.

  “Sammy,” she says, “I’m really proud of how you have proved yourself at Imani. Now this is your time to go and show the world who you are and what you are capable of. You have to go and do things that have never been done before. Help the kids from the streets. It’s okay to work with people in high offices, but always remember to work with everyone in the world, not just the high-ups.” She adds, “Keep smiling, because you don’t know whose day you will shine up. And don’t forget, make the world proud so that anyone who knows you will be honored to have known you.”

  Even though I have tears falling from my eyes, I keep the words deep in the bottom of my heart.

  Saying goodbye to my aunt is hard. It was not always easy being with her, but this is the woman who took care of me when no one else would. When everybody in our family said no, she took in my brother and me, even though she lived in the countryside with a falling-down house made of wood that already had a dozen other people under its roof. She worked hard to make sure we had something to eat every day, and she taught us the language of the area. She helped us become people of purpose who were respected around the orphanage and in the school.

  Aunt Lydia Njeri made sure we had a secure future when our mother couldn’t.

  To me, she is an iron-bred lady. She is a person of integrity. She is the symbol of an African woman.

  Three weeks have closed in, and it is time for my goodbye. Like always, the big thing that is happening to me is happening on a Wednesday. On Wednesday morning I will drive to Nairobi to get my visa and then leave for the United States that night.

  On Tuesday night the orphanage gives me a goodbye dinner. I am supposed to sit at the front of the dining hall, but I decide to sit with my tablemates as usual. That night even the people who are jealous of me are glad I am leaving, because everyone is eating meat and chapatti. It has been eight months since Christmas when we last ate chapatti with stew, and everyone is so excited. They laugh and say, “Thank you for leaving, Sammy! You are making us happy with this food!”

  When Manager sees me sitting with my tablemates, she tells me I have to go to the front of the dining hall and take my seat as the guest of honor. Once again my tablemates are happy for me—one less person to share our table’s portion means more food for them! On the way to my seat, I get distracted helping other kids pass out food, and Manager finds me again. She does not look happy and says sternly, “It’s your goodbye dinner. Go sit down, relax.” And then she tells me, “I think you’re the worst guest I have ever seen.” But I can tell she is not really mad, because she is shaking her head with laughter.

  During that dinner, Reverend Mathu, the founder of the orphanage, is there, even though he is old now and we don’t see him much. He prays for my journey and for my years in the United States, and he prays for Claire and Lara, my new guardians. A lot of people give me words of advice. They caution me about getting too involved in Western culture and tell me to be smart and know what is right for me.

  After the festivities, I go to pack the few clothes I have. The matron has given me new pajamas and a big travel bag to put my clothes in. After I finish packing, the bag is still very light because I have almost nothing in it. I test it and can pick it up with my pinkie finger.

  The next day we leave Imani at 9:00 a.m. Manager, Matron, my brother, and twelve of my friends all crowd into the back of the orphanage truck. Along the way, we stop a few times, and when we arrive in Nairobi we go straight to my aunt’s lunch shop, where she serves us all a big lunch for free alongside the regular workers. My little sister is there, and I feel like such a proud big brother introducing her to each and every one of my friends. Then we spend a few hours roaming around Nairobi, looking at the tall skyscrapers and the handsome parliament buildings.

  After our lunch we go to the embassy to pick up my visa. Everyone stays in the car while Manager and I go inside, since we don’t want all seventeen people to go through the security checks.

  We have been waiting only about ten minutes when my name is called. The well-dressed woman greets me and asks if I am Samuel. She looks at the passport photo to confirm, and then she tells us something we do not expect.

  “There is a problem,” she says gravely.

  Apparently, there is something wrong with the thumbprint. They have confused the right thumb and the left thumb, and she tells us that now we’ll have to wait two more weeks to resolve the issue. We explain my flight is that night, and she tells us it is impossible to do the whole process again today, but we keep pleading and pleading. She tells us to wait half an hour to see if we can fix the problem, then they take
new thumbprints and we wait some more. It is the longest wait of my life.

  The manager stands there, dumbfounded, not speaking, and I can tell she is praying in her head. But finally, the lady comes back with the passport and tells us that everything is good. She hands us the passport and tells me to have a nice flight. I am thrilled, and the manager gets us out of there as fast as we can to make sure we aren’t called back in!

  We return to the car, where everyone has been worrying for hours, and explain what happened. It feels like my trip to the United States could have been taken away any moment for such a small thing as the difference between right and left thumbs!

  We head off in the truck to go to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. During that ride, I sit with Bethi on one side and my brother on the other, holding their hands. My friends are all around me. I pray to God that I will be able to come back and see them all again one day. I know it is going to happen, but I want God to tell me for sure.

  When I reach the airport, it is time to say goodbye to everyone one last time.

  I start by thanking the manager. She has done so much for me over the years I have been at Imani, and everything she has done in the past few months to help me go to America has been amazing. When Claire and Lara couldn’t be there, she helped with all the visa and passport applications. She has been like a caring mother, always asking if I had a coat or if I was hungry.

  I say goodbye to everyone who is there—all sixteen people. I give Hezron, Simon, and my other friends big hugs, and I squeeze my brother and little sister so hard. And then it is time to walk through the place where they can’t pass. Walking away is one of the hardest things I have ever done.

  Soon I have lost sight of them.

  Sammy

  Chapter 12

  Walking into the airport is a goodbye to Kenya and a goodbye to my family and friends. I approach the lady from Kenya Airways to get my ticket, and she takes my bag, looking at me with a funny expression like she doesn’t understand why I am carrying such a big bag with almost nothing inside. She takes my passport and then gives me two papers. One, she explains, is for the plane from Nairobi to Dubai. The next one, she says, is from Dubai to New York. She staples them together and puts them in my passport.