Clutching our homemade piggy bank -- a quart-sized mason jar chock full of silver change that had been wedged through the crudely slit metal lid -- my daughter and I stood at the end of the check-out isles in the Bellemeade Kroger. We'd walked the length of them twice, me turning my head to and fro, searching. I stopped and glanced at the busy clerks, picked one and started walking her way. And that's when I saw him. The bag boy.
But. This was not just any bag boy. He saw me first. His characteristically short, round face so-African-black it shined and gave way to auburn hues. It is over there, he said, knowing my search was for the coinalator, the machine to count our "Gratitude Jar's" contents for charity. I looked in the direction he pointed, then back at him. Next I smiled and he smiled back, giving a show of white teeth that stretched across his already broad face. It was a smile of sunshine that seemed to emanate from somewhere deep. From a soul perhaps. It beamed from within him and arched over and touched my own. His demeanor is typical of his kind, defying the life that brought him to our shores. He was, he is, a Lost Boy.
Jack Spencer, the nationally acclaimed photographer who captured the boys' proud bodies and spirits on film and who built a gallery and a launched an art program for them, had described the temperment of these young men perfectly. Despite the fact that their elders had blessed their fleeing from their war- ravaged villages in Sudan, despite the fact that they crossed the Black Continent by foot, chased by lions, bitten by crocodiles, spending years in refuge camps, there is a gentle peace and a baffling quiet joy about these young men. I see them everywhere scattered about my city. Quietly they tend counters. Bag groceries. Wait for public transportation. Their short, dark faces telling instantly who they are and what they went through to call my Land of Plenty their Home now, too.
One of the Foundation's initiatives is an art center where the Lost Boys can create and exhibit their art. According to Spencer, they are developing their own genre of art. In December, Tinney Contemporary featured a show of the boys' work and their stunning tribal-like masks are also being sold at Magpie. Saturday night marks their second anniversary show.
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