"It was terrible. People shouting, screaming: 'Run, swim, go, go!' Where was my friend? He was taken by the river. Nobody was anybody's friend. How can you be a friend when people are shooting at you and the river is going whoosh — and you have to go in that river? The bang, bang and the whoosh, whoosh made my mind go dead and I don't remember who was there, who dies, what happened." http://www.pbs.org/pov/lostboysofsudan/photo_gallery_photogallery.php?photo=3#gallery-top
When Peter's home village in Sudan raged with war threataning the lives of not only himself, but his family and his loved ones aswell, he had no other option but to escape. Along with 20,000 other Sudanese boys (known as the lost boys) Peter wound up in a refugee camp in Kenya.
Spending 9 years of his life there, Peter and some other boys got the chance to go to America to make a living, get an education, and help their family back in Kenya. Peter thought he was going to be on heavan on earth, have all the opurtunities he never thought he would have, he thought he was going to live the dream. When he got to America, he realised there is no Heavan on earth.
Trying to get settled in America was hard for Peter. People looked at him differently, and he wasn't used to it. He noticed that men couldn't touch other men in America or they would be called homo-sexuals. In Kenya, and in the dinka culture, it was normal for the men to show affection towards one another, so for peter to adjust was difficult. Trying to adjust, Peter wore different clothes to fit in with the "black americans", he ate all of the fast food and he didn't show affection to his friends in public. Peter was strugling with money also, he got paid minimum weige, and some of the other people wouldn't pay their rent, and Peter found himself having to pay for them. Driving was something that Peter was never taught in his refugee camp, and when he had to take a driving test and failed he was very dissapointed.
A few months into his stay at Houston, Peter called a friend in Kansas and talked to him about what life was like for him, because he was struggling in Houston. His friend in Kansas really liked it there, and invited Peter to come and stay. Peter decided to go, leaving his heart-broken best friend Santiago behind. Once he got in Kansas, Peter got a birth cetificat and enrolled in one of the high schools. Being very different to the people at school and in his neighbourhood, Peter tried to join in by trying out for the basketball team, and attending religious gatherings he didn't follow.
Life in general was hard for Peter, being in a different land, trying to make it in a different society. Even though he did the best he could, he was always missing his friends and family back home, always had people staring at him, and always being different.
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