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—You are here! You are here!

Gop was yelling but wasn't close enough to be heard. He ran, waving his arms wildly. Soon he was near enough for the woman in green to see him, but only as a vague shape in the dust. I had run ahead and could see his family clearly.

—Hello! he yelled.

She turned her head to him and gave him the kind of disgusted look reserved for drunkards and the raving mad. The driver helped them with a few bags he retrieved from the back, and deposited them on the ground in front of the house.

—It's me! It's me! Gop was screaming, and it was evident that his running toward them was making the girls, and their mother, uncomfortable. Gop was no more than one hundred yards away when he seemed to change his mind. He slowed and then stopped, and then ducked out of the road. I followed him as he dodged between the anarchic maze of homes nearby. We were now out of sight of the road and Gop's family. He leaped over the low fences of the neighboring homes and under the clotheslines and around the sad stringy chickens kept by our neighbors, until he was at the back door of the home we shared. He entered his home and I followed him. I could hear someone at the front door, and guessed it was the Red Cross driver, whose knocking was loud and impatient.

Gop was in his bedroom.

—Don't answer the door! he begged me. —Let me change.

I waited by the door.

—I don't want them to know I was the man screaming down the road. By now, I had guessed as much. I waited by the door as Gop splashed and straightened and cleaned. In a minute he emerged, freshened and wearing his finest white shirt and clean khakis.

—I'm ready, yes?

I nodded, and opened the door. Gop strode through, his arms wide.

—My wife! My daughters!

And he lifted the girls, one after the other, starting with the oldest and finishing with the youngest and most delicate, a tiny girl he kept on his arm for the better part of the day, as they unpacked and ate. The family had brought many foods from Sudan, and he and I showed the women the house we had constructed for them. —There was a crazy man running down the road, his wife eventually said, as she arranged sheets on the girls' beds. —Did you hear him?

Gop sighed. —There are all types here, my darling.

I became close with Gop's wife, Ayen, and their daughters, Abuk, Adeng, and Awot. The restructuring of the household, which was extensive, changed my life and worked to everyone's advantage. Because Gop and his wife now needed a bedroom of their own, we built another one, and the girls moved into the one that he and I used to share. Gop and his wife wouldn't have me sleeping in the room with the girls, so a separate bedroom was built for me, and in the middle of building it, we had an idea: it was unusual for a boy my age to have his own room, and Gop and I knew of plenty of boys who would gladly move in with us and would help bring in more income and food, so invitations were extended to Achor Achor and three other boys, all students of Gop's, and my bedroom was built to accommodate five boys. When we were done, the household had grown from two to ten in one week.

There were four shelters now, all of them attached, and a kitchen and common room in the middle and it made for a very large household with many young people moving within it. It was never a question of whether or not all us kids would get along; there was no choice but to become a perfect machine, all of us parts moving in sync, peacefully and without complaint.

Every day, all eight of us kids would wake up at six o'clock and together go to the water tap to fill our jerry cans for our showers. The water would run from the tap starting at six o'clock; it was then that everyone in our region of the camp, about twenty thousand people, had to get their own water for washing; the water for cooking and cleaning was retrieved later. The line at the tap was always long, until years later, when the UN dug more taps. But at that time, there were commonly over a hundred people in line when the taps came alive. At home we would all shower and dress for school. During those years, breakfast was not eaten at Kakuma—it was not until 1998 that there was enough food for morning meals—so if we consumed anything before leaving the house it was water or tea; there was enough for one meal a day, and that came at dinner, together, after school and work.

We all attended the same school, a short walk away, with an enrollment just under one thousand. First there would be an assembly, where announcements would be made, and we all would be given the advice of the day. Often the advice pertained to hygiene and nutrition, an odd subject given how poorly we were fed. Just as often, it would cover malfeasance and punishment. If any students had been misbehaving, there would be retribution then and there, with a quick caning or verbal reprimand in front of the student body. Then there would be prayer, or the singing of a hymn, for all of the students in that school were Christians, at least as far as we could tell. If there were Muslims, they were very quiet about their faith, not protesting then or during the regular sessions in what they called Christian Religious Instruction. There were sixty-eight students in my class. We stayed in one classroom throughout the day, sitting on the dirt, as our instructors,specialists in English, Kiswahili, Math, Science, Home Science, Geography, Agriculture, and Arts & Crafts & Music moved in and out. I enjoyed school and was well liked by my teachers, but many of my friends had stopped attending classes. They were impatient with it, could not see the point, and went into the markets to make money. They would trade their rations for clothes, sell the clothes in the camp and turn a profit. And of course they continued to leave Kakuma for the SPLA, and we would hear soon enough about who had been shot, who had been burned, who had been separated from his limbs by a grenade.