The Silver Linings

Last Sunday, Brooklyn Tabernacle Church in Brooklyn New York, hosted a viewing of a documentary called “God grew tired of us” about the Lost Boys of Sudan. Narrated my Nicole Kidman and produced by Brad Pitt, the story is about a group of boys between 7 and thirteen who fled death in the Sudan and marched thousands of miles to Kenya, then Ethiopia. About 400 of them were lucky enough to be adopted by American charities and brought to the United States. The story is about four of these boys and their experiences.

I never would have watched this if I had not been tricked into thinking I was coming to church for a praise and worship service. Usually, I try and stay away from gut-wrenching African Stories. Actually, I usually try and stay away from movies that might make me cry, or scared, or scream. But I was in church and it would have looked awkward to leave right after I got there. So I sat.

I was in tears ten minutes after the camera started rolling. To me, this was not just a movie about a bunch of boys. It was about kids that could have been my brothers. It was all too close to home. Zambians have never had a war to be refuges, but we’re surrounded by warring countries on 5 of our 7 borders. We see refugees every day. This brought it all home. The scenery, that horrible red dust that clings to everything, the hot dry air that parches your throat and sucks moisture from your pores was all too familiar. The endless walking. Once, my father dropped my siblings and I at his village to bond with his father and the land. We were left in the middle of the bush, half a day’s drive from the nearest town. My youngest brother, then about 8 years old, had an asthma attack one night and the next day, my uncle and I had to walk all day to the next farm to use their phone to call home. I remember we started off around 4am in the morning and walked constantly, up and down hills. My legs were so sore. I remember the dust clogging my throat and my tongue feeling so heavy. In retrospect, it hadn’t been so bad, the walk had really only been a couple of hours, three at the most, with constant stops because I kept whining. I was a city kid. I was sure I was going to die from fatigue.

The terrain the boys had walked, although not my backyard, looked familiar. For me, these kids weren’t just little African boys far far away. They could have been my cousins, my relatives. I watched as they came to America and marveled at electricity and wowed over the fact that they would all get an entire bed to themselves. I watched as they talked about getting ready to work, to do whatever work they could get here in America. ‘Even digging pit latrines’. It was funny, but it was sad too. I watched as, in the end, when a mother of one of the boys finally meets her son again after almost fifteen years, after thinking he was dead, then lost. I watched her do the welcome dance at the airport and saw how everybody looked at her strangely. It was funny. The church laughed, even as I wept into yet another Kleenex. I could imagine my own mother doing that dance, making that noise, being that happy.

It was more than just a documentary. It was a slice of life. It was different, because, even through all the gloom and doom, the hope was there, a little flame. Soft, but never wavering. For a change, Africa had been portrayed to have hope. Something of the innate joy and eternal optimism and drive that is so much a part of every African had been captured. In the end, I was glad I had seen it. My grandmother used to say that there is a silver lining even in storm clouds. I had stopped and forgotten to look for life’s silver linings. This movie, as much as it made me cry, made me homesick, made me laugh. It also reminded me about hope, about never giving up. About walking even with no end in sight. It reminded me about silver linings, and about how I can find them, if I just stop and look.