Hope Runs

by Claire Diaz-Ortiz

  Then she looks at me again and says very carefully, “Do not lose that passport or the two papers.” I remember Manager telling me exactly the same thing.

  After I pass through the airport’s security, I go into an internet café. I log into the Gmail account that Claire and Lara set up for me and send them an email saying I am in the airport and can’t wait to see them. I log off, and the man tells me it costs two dollars. I can’t understand that, since I was only on for one minute!

  I find the gate where the plane is waiting. A lady at the gate asks me for my boarding passes, and I look at her, confused. Then she says she’d like to see my passport, and inside she finds the two papers. “These are the boarding passes,” she explains. She takes the passes, puts them on a scanner, and lets me go inside the plane. I go on the ramp and into the plane, and I simply cannot believe that I am here inside a real plane.

  It is huge. It has four seats across and is so much bigger than a car. I sit down, and as soon as I do I fall asleep. When I awake, the plane is on the ground and I think we haven’t left yet. But then I look around and can sense that something is different, and I realize I have arrived in Dubai. I slept through the first flight of my life!

  My boarding pass tells me to go to Gate 52, but I have no idea how to get there. I decide to ask around, but everyone looks so busy. I find a man cleaning the floor, a janitor, and he gives me directions. I realize I want to call Claire and Lara to tell them I am in Dubai, so I ask the janitor how I can do that. He says I need to buy a calling card to make the call, so I do. It costs me twenty-four dollars, almost the rest of the thirty-five dollars I started with in Nairobi. I call the cell phone, but no one answers, so I leave a message. After the call, I don’t know what to do with the card. So I decide to give it to the janitor, and he smiles from ear to ear. I wonder if I have seen a smile bigger than that before.

  I am running out of time, so I race to the gate but get lost along the way. The airport areas all look the same. I return to where I found the janitor originally, and he is still there. I explain I can’t find the gate and ask if he doesn’t mind taking me. He guides me straight there, and I see that people all around me are getting on. I board the plane and am shocked all over again that it is so much bigger than the Kenya Airways plane—it has ten whole seats running across! I am amazed and do some calculations to realize there must be almost four hundred people on the plane. I am baffled at how a plane can be as big as this, and I don’t understand how it can stay in the air for more than a few minutes.

  I sit in my seat and find myself next to a nice man named Joost from Canada. He tells me he is a university professor, and I think he is the coolest guy I have ever met. I am happy to have made a new friend.

  Soon it is time for the plane to take off, and I start to have doubts again. How can a plane this big fly in the air without falling? I remember the things Claire and Lara had written in a long letter about the plane ride—how it will feel and what it means when it starts shaking at first—but it doesn’t help much. When we get into the air, we start going up and up, and I decide to look out the window. It is amazing to see how many lights are on in Dubai. I never thought in my life I would see such a thing as that city from high in the air.

  When we have been in the air for about five minutes, I am still holding my arms tightly to the chair as if the plane will fall. Within a few minutes, I decide if everyone else thinks it is okay, I will also be okay. My fears slowly go away.

  We have a delicious dinner, but I don’t want the cheese, so I put it aside to give to Claire. Then I fall asleep. When I wake up, we are above a body of water, and I can’t believe how huge and immense the blue is. I get a little scared again, so I start a conversation with Joost to distract myself.

  As we chat, the flight attendants come by, passing out drinks. When they come past me, I say I only want water, but then I see that they are giving things to people for free. I want some soda, because I have never had things like that for free before, so I point to what I want. But when I open it up and take a sip, I am disgusted. The flight lady gave me beer!

  I hate the very feeling of beer on my tongue. In Kenya, drinking is looked down upon, and the only people who drink are the drunkards who live in the streets and beat their wives.

  Joost, who sees me take a sip of the beer, says, “Oh! So you drink!” And then he says, “Cheers!”

  I say, “Cheers!” also, and I think that sounds funny. But the beer makes me feel disgusting, so I put it down. Then I start explaining things to Joost, saying, “Well, you see . . . when I’m flying I don’t like to drink beer. That way if something bad happens to the plane, I won’t be drunk.” It doesn’t make much sense, but I just don’t want to look different, so I keep talking.

  By and by, I fall asleep again, and eventually we arrive at a huge airport called JFK, where we ride around on the plane for twenty minutes before it is time to get off it. As we are leaving, I decide to follow Joost, so I make sure he is right in front of me. We walk past the front of the plane, where the seats are even bigger, and he gives me a bag full of stuff that he says people who pay more to be on the plane get for free. I am excited.

  When I step out of the plane with my bag of free things, I realize I am in America. I know then that my life has changed and taken another turn. I know I’ll never be the same Sammy again.

  Joost takes me to another security checkpoint and tells me he will be waiting on the other side. I know Joost is hurrying to catch his own plane, but he waits for me at all the security checkpoints and helps me get my bag.

  Finally, we get to the checking area for my Boston plane. The lady takes my passport and enters my name in her computer, but then she has a confused look on her face. She can’t find my name in the computer. Joost takes out his phone and we reach Lara. She talks to me, and then they talk for a few minutes before Lara also talks to the airline lady. I can hear Lara over the phone trying to explain everything, but she is also confused about what has happened. Apparently an airline representative was supposed to meet me between flights, and Joost was clearly not an airline representative.

  Suddenly, a bell rings in my head, and I remember that Claire might have used the Kenyan way of referring to people—my second name, Ikua—when she booked the ticket. So I ask them to look for Sammy Ikua, and ta-da! My name shows up.

  I ask the lady to put that name on my ticket, and she prints it out and gives it to me. Joost then starts running away, saying he has to catch his plane, so I am left shouting my thank-yous and goodbyes to him. Luckily, he has given me his phone number and his email address. I will email Joost later that day once I’ve arrived in Boston. His help was the best welcome to the United States I could have imagined.

  While I wait to get on the last plane, I make another friend. Her name is Robin, and like Joost, she is interested in me. She actually wants to take pictures with me, and when I ask why, she says she wants a picture with the future president of Kenya!

  I sleep the whole way to Boston, and when we arrive, I go to get my bag. Then I see Lara standing there with a big sign that says, “Welcome to America, Sammy.” And I could not be happier.

  Lara’s mom, whom I had met in Kenya, is there also, and after we hug we walk outside. The summer air in Boston is so heavy that I can’t breathe. We drive for a while and then arrive at a very nice house in a quiet area with lots of green grass, and I get into a bed that Lara says was her bed when she was growing up. One minute later I am asleep.

  The next morning when I wake up, the air is fresh, and out the window everything looks so beautiful and green. I can see trees—lots of them—and I know I am in a totally different place. But I feel strange because the room looks so nice. The curtains are white and the bed is so pretty. And it is all so clean.

  And then I look on the floor.

  I see it is filled with pieces of little glass. That gives me a shock, and I don’t know what is happening. And then I see a post on the floor, and a broken bulb, and I immediately r
ealize I somehow tipped over a light and broke the light bulb while I was sleeping.

  I open the door carefully to go apologize to Lara. I feel so scared and don’t know what she is going to say. But instead of Lara, I see Claire, who greets me with a huge hug and looks so excited to see me. But I am not very happy, as this is one more person to know that I messed up Lara’s house on my very first day.

  I go to Lara to bid her good morning and to apologize for breaking the glass. But when I start apologizing, she laughs and says, “No worries!” She tells me that she heard the bulb break during the night and that it is easy to clean up. She makes fun of me that I could sleep through such a noise. It is the first of many, many times Lara and Claire will marvel at my ability to sleep through anything. With her teasing, I know it is okay, and then my heart is at rest.

  They serve me a really delicious breakfast. I haven’t eaten in a long time, and I have never in my life had cereal, so I eat a lot. After the wonderful food, I go to take a shower. Lara gives me a towel and shows me the shower, and the sink to brush my teeth, and the toilet. I have never seen a toilet bowl before like this and am amazed how nice it looks. It is nothing like a pit latrine, and nothing smells badly and there are no bugs.

  It is the first time in my life taking a shower in hot water and without a bucket, and I shower for more than an hour. The soap smells so good. I spend forever in that bathroom, and it is one of those moments I’ll never forget.

  Then I put on my best clothes, as I am told that we are going to go out. We walk out of the house and go toward a car, but I am not sure who is going to drive. What I don’t know is that Lara and Claire can drive, and this comes as a big surprise. In Kenya, not many people can drive, so everyone uses drivers. When Lara starts driving, we head out on some really nice, smooth roads. This is so different from the drive I’d taken from Nyeri to Nairobi just days before! Here there are no bumps at all, and it feels nothing like the two times I have been in cars in Kenya.

  Lara and Claire are excited, and we start talking about everything all at once. They tell me we have one weekend to explain everything about America, as I am already supposed to be at school. The delays with the visas and passports mean that I have less time to prepare than they planned. So they just do not stop talking.

  One of the first things we talk about is the cost of things in America. They say they want to teach me to understand money and how much things cost. Like how much a piece of pizza or a dinner costs, for example. If I want candy or ice cream, I need to have an understanding of the American dollar. We even talk about the costs of houses and cars—I can’t believe that a house costs more than a car, as that is backwards to life in my village. I realize quickly that the American dollar isn’t worth nearly as much in the United States as it is in Kenya.

  One of the first places we drive to is a mall in Boston, where I am amazed by all the elegant shops. There are so many different food places and clothing stores, and it is all such a new world for me. While we are in the mall, I see a car in the middle of the building, and I am so confused. People are signing up for a contest to win the car. But I am trying to understand how a car can get into the middle of the building. Was it built in there?

  I have pizza for the first time, and it is one of the most delicious foods I have ever eaten. I think about how wrong I have been about cheese. I still have the cheese I saved from the plane to give to Claire, and I remember to give it to her later. We talk a lot about race, and Claire and Lara explain that race relations are very different in the United States than in Kenya. I keep feeling stunned that not everyone around me is black. For my whole life, everyone around me except for Claire and Lara and a few others has been black. And now only some of them are. Claire tells me that when we go to Maine, there will be a lot less black people than in Boston, and that confuses me. Less than here? I think, shaking my head. I don’t know how that is possible.

  It is a long day of learning about everything very fast, and then we go home to Lara’s parents’ house and have a delicious dinner. I am happy to find orange juice, as it was one of my favorite things in Kenya, but in the United States it isn’t very sweet, so I do not like it. I realize that like everything else, orange juice is different in the United States and Kenya.

  We spend the next day, Saturday, sorting out all the clothes Claire and Lara have collected for me to cope with the weather in Maine, where my scholarship is. I don’t know why I need all these different clothes, but they just keep telling me I can’t understand how cold it is there. Whenever I say I am used to the cold in the Kenyan Highlands, they shake their heads and say, “It’s a little different than that.”

  On Sunday Claire has to leave. I know she has a new job and can’t go to all these places like Kenya and Maine with Lara, and she says how sorry she is. But I am not sure why she is so sorry. I feel lucky she was in Boston with us.

  On Monday morning, bright and early, we are on our way to school. I think three days is probably the shortest time in the history of the world that anyone has ever immersed himself in a new culture!

  Lara and I pack the big bag I now have and put it in the car, and then she says she is going to drive all the way to Maine. She says she thinks it will take about four hours, so if I want to sleep in the car I can go ahead and do so. I am glad about this, because I am so tired from all we have done over the weekend.

  As soon as we pull out of Boston, I fall asleep. When I wake up, I see one straight road ahead with many trees on one side, and she tells me we are in a state called New Hampshire. I start wondering why there is no one around. There are no people or houses on the side of the road, only cars coming and going in both directions.

  Then she explains that we are on an interstate, a state highway. She says that in America the state highways don’t have people on the side of them, because people think it is dangerous. Then we start talking about more cultural differences that we haven’t discussed yet.

  One example, she says, is drinking wine. She explains how she knows that in Kenya, drinking alcohol is really looked down upon. But in the United States, she says, many people over the age of twenty-one have drinks sometimes. (She makes it clear that I cannot drink!) It might be a glass of wine, it might just be something small. But people do drink—even good people and even good Christians. She says she and Claire have wine sometimes at dinner. She explains that many of the rules from Kenya are different here, and I need to be careful what I assume about people I meet. But she also tells me I am a good kid and that I should trust my feelings and my intuition and always ask her or Claire if something seems wrong.

  We also talk a lot about consequences—that I will see kids doing things I know are wrong and I might be tempted to join them. She explains that though I am still a kid I also need to act like an adult—I have a great opportunity, and I need to be mature enough to remember that and to act more responsibly than other children my age.

  Sooner or later we see a sign that says, “Welcome to Maine.” She sticks her foot out toward the front window of the car, and she says she entered Maine first!

  With Lara’s teasing words, I understand this new place will become my home. My state of mind begins to change drastically. I start getting excited, thinking about my life and wondering, Really, what am I doing here?

  About two hours later we enter Pittsfield, where my school is. This time I am the one to stick my foot toward the front window of the car and say, “I entered Pittsfield first!” Lara looks happy that I am so excited.

  When we arrive at the school, Maine Central Institute, or MCI, we meet up with a man named Mr. Clint Williams, who has helped Claire and Lara get the scholarship for me. He starts showing us around the school, and it is so large and beautiful I am sure it is really a university. I thank him for the wonderful opportunity, and then he walks me to the registrar, where he says I have to go see my class advisor to be able to pick my classes and take my English and math tests.

  As we talk with the advisor, he explains to me a
bout the extracurricular opportunities at MCI. He is also the head coach of the soccer team, and when he asks if I want to play soccer, I say, “That’s a really good idea. I’d love to do soccer.”

  Lara jumps in and suggests, “If there is cross-country or track, he’s been doing cross-country!” I try to picture doing the same running in this new place that I had always done in Kenya, and I cannot imagine it.

  After I take my math test, the teacher places me in an advanced math class, and after the easy ESL test, they place me in a normal English class. Then we start talking to the nurse so I can be cleared to live in the dormitories. She explains that I need a few more vaccines. This comes as a shock, because we did all the vaccines we thought we needed in Kenya. Apparently, though, it wasn’t enough, so it is back to the doctor’s.

  For two nights, Clint Williams lets us stay with him while everything is finished up. Mr. Williams has two small children, and Lara uses the time to teach me to ride a bike. Even though I am scared, I do it. Lara says I learn fast, and I am thrilled with the feeling of the bike.

  On Wednesday—always a Wednesday in my life—it is time for classes to start.

  At lunch that first day I am introduced to the new cross-country coach, who says she is really glad to have a Kenyan on her new team. She tells me it is the first year they have had a cross-country team, and she is excited. So am I.

  Joining cross-country gives me a whole new routine. I wake in the morning for breakfast at 7:00. Breakfast is always really good, and I am amazed to have eggs every single morning. Homeroom starts at 7:45, lunch is at 11:45, and then we leave school at 3:00 p.m. After school, I go straight to cross-country practice. Dinner is at 5:00, and then we have study hall and lights out at 10:30.