Luol Deng: A Tale of Wau

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"One day," he said, "we will represent Sudan in the World Championships. You will see and remember this."

There is one, raised outdoor court, made of cement blocks, with a teetering hoop nailed to a pole at each end. Anything out-of-bounds on any side falls two feet to the red clay below.

The "team," eight or nine boys and one old woman, wear whatever they were given or could find. One young man plays barefoot, another in ragged sandals. The ball, so threadbare it seems ready to explode, is the only ball in the entire region. One basketball and 300,000 people, Aldo Deng cried, isn't it an outrage? We need uniforms and sneakers, coaches and especially balls.

I nodded. And electricity and water and....

"Yes, but we deal with the heart of our children," he said quietly, smiling. "This is our future."

I sat that night on the banks of a tributary of the Nile and watched the villagers bathe and gather water for their meals. Children and cattle wandered and drank from the same river.

Another fire began to light the evening sky on the southern banks, another refugee camp being built. I imagined what they had gone through these last years, tried to imagine what meager meals they had managed just that day. The guilt of what I had left on the table that evening flooded me.

The father, the armed guards standing in the shadows behind him, came and sat with me. We said nothing for the longest time, our eyes and minds and hearts wandering the skyline.

Finally he turned to me.

"Will you tell?"

I nodded.

But what?