Byline: Clay Latimer, Rocky Mountain News
Lopez Lomong couldn't help himself.
He had to see it.
He had to go back to the place in Africa where his parents buried him 17 years ago, certain their second son was dead after Sudanese soldiers dragged him out of a church.
'They'd made a funeral for me,' Lomong said. 'They had this pile of stones and things like that. They'd buried some of my childhood stuff. Symbols. A necklace. Other things from me.'
Lomong, an assistant cross country coach at the Air Force Academy, will carry the American flag during Opening Ceremonies today for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Last month, he qualified for a spot on the U.S. track and field team, finishing second in the 1,500-meter run in Eugene, Ore.
Very quickly, the 23-year-old has become a symbol of the American dream, a man who found unimagined opportunity in a welcoming land.
For some, that might be an overwhelming burden. But it won't unnerve Lomong, who overnight went from a happy 6-year-old to one of more than 20,000 'Lost Boys of Sudan,' never knowing a moment of safety as he walked through thousands of miles of desert, grasslands and forests. Battling starvation, death squads and lions, Lomong made it to a refugee camp in Kenya, where his ordeal continued for another decade.
Lomong had no one else but the Lost Boys - until he arrived in 2001 in Tully, N.Y., with the help of his adoptive parents, Robert and Barbara Rogers, and started a running career that took him to Northern Arizona University, Colorado Springs and eventually Beijing.
'Becoming an American citizen was a big step,' Lomong said. 'I was seeing everything and said, 'Now, I'm not just one of the Lost Boys, I'm an American. I'm just like any other American out there with my rights, and I can compete for the country that I want to compete for because I have my passport.' It's just payback for the people that helped me through my childhood and coming to the U.S.
'Before, I ran from danger and death. Now, I run for sport.'
The day that changed everything began innocently enough. One moment, Lomong was focused on Mass in the village of Kimotong in southern Sudan; the next, the militia was bursting through the church doors. After ordering everyone else to lie down, soldiers rounded up the children, loaded them on a truck and hauled them off to a prison camp.
Hundreds of boys sat in cramped rooms, pawns in Sudan's long-running civil war between the Arab north and Black African south of the country, where Lomong's family farmed and raised cattle.
Fearful of being turned into government soldiers, Lomong and three other boys crawled through a small hole in a fence three days later, then ran barefoot for three days.
'We kept running and running,' he said. 'We didn't know where we were going, but the whole time they were telling me, 'We're going to go and see your mom,' and I was excited about that.'
At one point, the two older boys carried Lomong on their backs. On the third day, they unknowingly crossed the border, encountering another group of soldiers - the Kenya Border Patrol.
An estimated 2 million died in Sudan's Second Civil War - it's described by the International Rescue Committee as one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century - and thousands of children were forced into labor or turned into soldiers.
The Lost Boys escaped, but at a devastating cost. They saw friends snatched and eaten alive by lions, drop dead from thirst and hunger, turn violently sick from eating raw animal flesh. They saw others go mad, haunted by the Janjaweed, the Arab horsemen who wiped out villages and then rode away with young women, eventually turning them into concubines.
Lomong was fortunate; the Border Patrol took him to a the Kakuma Refugee Camp, a sprawling slum of 70,000 men, women and children, where he settled in to wait.
'I'm 6. I don't have parents at that point. I was like, I'm going to live my own way to just survive.'
Orphaned and alone, the Lost Boys formed new families. They listened to one another's troubles, shared food, played soccer and ran around the camp to blot out the hunger and boredom.
'Life in a refugee camp is a hustle . . . you've got to get your own food, work just to survive. We had one meal a day,' Lomong said.
'I wanted to go to school, but we had no books or pens or paper. We learned to write in the sand.'
As Lomong got older, he helped take care of the younger children.
'For kids who came there older, they probably had more stress about missing their family. For me, I was brainwashed and said, 'This is my home. This is where I will grow up,' ' he said.
One day in 2000, Lomong ran five miles to a local village, where he paid five shillings to watch the Sydney Olympics on a black- and-white television. The money came from his job shoveling dirt at the camp, but it was worth it when he saw Michael Johnson win the 400-meter dash and then accept the gold medal, The Star-Spangled Banner playing in the background. During his daily runs around the camp, he imagined racing against Johnson.
'It gave me a dream,' he said. 'I said, that's what I want to do.'
In 2001, a Catholic Charities official came to the refugee camp and said there were opportunities to come to the United States. Inspired, Lomong wrote his life story and sent it to the American embassy in Kenya; officials were moved and set up an interview.
'I thought the U.S. is next to heaven, and I wanted to be part of that,' he said.
Shortly before 9/11, Lomong boarded a plane to New York, still wondering about the fate of his biological family.
Two years later, he received an unusual phone call. It was his mother. Incredulous that she was alive, Lomong and Rita Namana exchanged information during several phone calls. Rita told him she lived in a modest apartment near the Kenyan capital of Nairobi with his two younger brothers and a sister. His father, Awei, had returned to Sudan to farm, she said.
Then, one day they realized they'd been at the same camp at the same time.
'We started crying,' Lomong said. 'For 12 years, I thought they were dead and they thought I was dead.'
After developing into a high school track and cross country star, Lomong enrolled at Northern Arizona, the first member of his family to attend college. A month before he became a U.S. citizen, he won the 1,500 meters at the 2007 NCAA championships.
Meanwhile, he continued to send $200 a month to his mother and phone his family in Kenya several times a week.
But Lomong never had been reunited with them - until last Christmas, when he returned to Kenya, unsure of what to expect after 16 years.
'I had no pictures. I didn't know what they looked like,' he said. 'It was so long ago, and I was just 6.'
But Lomong didn't end his trip in Kenya. He insisted on going back to Kimotong, to the cemetery where his family 'buried' him so many years ago.
'I went to the graveyard where they held a funeral for me and had made a little pile of stones,' he said. 'We had to dig me out. We dissected a goat and blessed it and did some ritual stuff.
'And they brought me back to life.'
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As a 6-year-old, Lopez Lomong battled starvation, death squads and lions while running through thousands of miles of desert, grasslands and forests after escaping from a prison camp. JONATHAN FERREY / GETTY IMAGES CAPTION: Lomong said running is 'payback' for those who helped him as a child and to get to the U.S. ANDY WONG / ASSOCIATED PRESS
