I remember getting a tour of the office after talking briefly with Mary that day about my needs and plans, and I remember being confused. I was shown a very large and elaborate display case that held hundreds of glimmering statues and medals awarded to Jane Fonda. While moving slowly down along the case, my eyes dry-I couldn't blink; I admit I like to look at trophies and certificates-I saw many pictures of a white woman who did not resemble Mary Williams. Mary was African-American but I slowly surmised that Jane Fonda was a white woman, and I knew I would have more questions for Mary after I finished inspecting the contents of the glass case. In so many of the pictures around the office, Jane Fonda was in very small outfits, exercise clothing, in pink and purple. She seemed to be a very active woman. As we left the office, I asked Achor Achor if he could explain all this.
'Don't you know about her?' he said.
I knew nothing, of course, so he told me her story.
Mary was born in Oakland in the late sixties, into the world of the Black Panthers; her father was a captain, a prominent member, a brave man. She had five siblings, all of them older, and the family was poor and moved around frequently. Her father was in and out of prison, his charges related to his revolutionary activities. When he was free, he struggled with drugs, working odd jobs. Her mother, at one time the first African-American woman in the local welder's union, eventually succumbed to alcohol and drugs. Amid all this, Mary was sent to a summer camp in Santa Barbara for inner-city youth, owned and operated by the actress Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda came to know Mary well over the course of two summers, and eventually took her away from her crumbling home and adopted her. She moved from Oakland to Santa Monica and grew up there, with Jane Fonda's other, biological children. Fifteen years later, after college and human-rights work in Africa, and after her sister, who had become a prostitute at age fifteen, was murdered on an Oakland street, Mary read newspaper articles about the Lost Boys, and formed her organization soon after. The seed money was provided by Fonda and Ted Turner, who I was told was a sailor and an owner of many television networks. I later met both Jane Fonda and Ted Turner, separately, and found them to be very decent people who remembered my name and held my hand warmly between theirs.
This was not the only time the Lost Boys in Atlanta found themselves in contact with high-profile people. I cannot understand why it is, but I suppose it was the work of Mary, who tried everything she could to bring attention to us, and by extension to raise money for the Foundation. It did not, in the end, work, but along the way I shook the hand of Jimmy Carter and even Angelina Jolie, who spent an afternoon in the apartment of one of the Lost Boys in Atlanta. That was an odd day. I was told a few days before that a young white actress would be coming to talk to some of the Lost Boys. As always, there was much debate about who would represent us, and why. Because I had led many youth in Kakuma, I was among those chosen to be present, but this did not sit well with the rest of the young Sudanese. I did not care, though, because I liked to be present, to make sure the correct picture of our lives was presented, and that not too many exaggerations were made. So twenty of us crowded into the apartment of one of the Lost Boys living longest in Atlanta, and then Ms. Jolie walked in, accompanied by a grey-haired man in a baseball cap. The two of them sat on a couch, surrounded by Sudanese, all of us trying to speak, trying to be heard while also attempting to be polite and not overloud. I must admit that when I met her, I had no idea who she was; I was told she was an actress of some kind, and when I met her, she did look like an actress-she had the same careful poise, the same flirtatious eyes of Miss Gladys, my extremely attractive drama teacher in Kakuma, and so I liked her immediately. Ms. Jolie listened to us for two hours, and then told us that she intended to visit Kakuma herself. Which I believe she did.
There were so many interesting things happening in those first months in the United States! And all the while, Mary Williams was calling me and I her, and we had a very productive relationship. When I was having trouble receiving treatment for my headaches and my knee-it had been damaged in Kakuma-Mary called Jane Fonda and Jane Fonda brought me to her own doctor in Atlanta. This doctor eventually operated on my knee and improved my mobility greatly. She was very generous, Mary was, but she had already been hurt by the attitudes of some of the Sudanese she served, and I could see in her eyes, which always seemed on the verge of tears, that she was exhausted and would not last long in service to our cause. I remember first understanding how difficult it was for her, how little gratitude she received for the work she did, at a birthday party. She had arranged it all-a party with food, tickets to an Atlanta Hawks game, a private speech given by Manute Bol, the most famous Sudanese man in history, a former NBA player who diverted a large portion of his earnings to the SPLA. But still, there was grumbling and speculation about the job Mary was doing with the Lost Boys Foundation. Was she misusing donations? Was she ineffective in getting Lost Boys into college?
I had only been in the country a few months, and there I sat, in a suit, courtside at a professional basketball game. Picture it! Picture twelve refugees from Sudan, all of us wearing suits, all of these suits one size too small, donated by our churches and sponsors. Picture us sitting, trying to make sense of it all. The confusion began before the game, when a group of twelve young American women of many skin colors, well-built and wearing leotards, fanned out over the empty basketball court, and they performed a hyperactive and very provocative dance to a song by Puff Daddy. We all stared at the gyrating young women, who put forth an image of great power and fierce sexuality. It would have been impolite to turn away, but at the same time, the dancers made me uncomfortable. The music was the loudest I have heard in my life, and the spectacle of the stadium, with its 120-foot ceiling, its thousands of seats, its glass and chrome and banners, its cheerleaders and murderous sound system-seemed perfectly designed to drive people insane.
Shortly after, a different group of cheerleaders began shooting T-shirts far into the stands, using devices designed to look like submachine guns. I stared at the guns, which stored ten rolled-up T-shirts in their barrels, and were capable of launching the shirts forty or fifty feet into the air. These young people, cheerleaders for the Atlanta Hawks, were trying to inspire the crowd, giving away clothing and miniature basketballs, though their task was a difficult one. The Atlanta Hawks team was playing the Golden State Warriors, and because neither team was winning that season, there were only a few hundred people occupying the stadium's seventeen thousand seats.
A good percentage of the attendees that night were Sudanese-one hundred and eighty of us-and twelve had been chosen to sit right near the court with Manute Bol. There we were, watching the basketball game next to one of the tallest men ever to play professional basketball. It was a strange thing, this night in my life, and it should have been positive, all of it, but it was not, and the first sour note was sounded when one of the Lost Boys, who had not been given a courtside seat, found his way to us, and began complaining loudly, even to Manute, about the unfairness of it all. And while this young man, whose name I will not mention, railed about this injustice, it was Mary's name that came up, again and again, as the source of the trouble.