Something Quick

Just want to drop down a quick few lines. I have been out for a couple of weeks, and need to get some fresh material up. So going back to the saga of Valentino Achek Deng, there are not words to describe just how unbearably easy life is for anyone who has had the good fortune to spend their childhood in the United States. I say this after comparing the average life of an American child to that of any one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, who endured more atrcities and horrors before their sixteenth birthdays than any ten American children will experience in their lifetimes.

The sad thing is that so few of us understand or will ever understand the lives of these children, and what it took for them to stay alive and manage to get themselves out of Africa. And when they did get themselves to America, attempting to setting into anything resembling a normal life seemed to be just another roadblock on the way to happiness. At one point, Valentino says that, despite everything he went through in Sudan and Ethiopia, he at times wished he was back there, instead of dealing with the uncomfortable realities of life in America. How could that be? There are no lions hunting you, no armies trying to gun you down. I guess home is always home, even when you have to run away from it.