Just When you Think he's got it Figured

For me a significant point of interest was on page 252 when Jacob returned back to Kakuma with all of his shillings. He returned to thank his teacher and truly say farewell to his friends. At this point in the story I thought he had made it, it felt like he had made it, I was so sure all he had to do was get to Nairobi. Just when you think he's got it all figured out, life throws another curve ball; but that's the thing with life it does that. Life tends to throw us all a curve ball or two at unexpected times, some people are just better at getting back up than others. As we have seen throughout reading the book, Jacob is one of those people that can just get up and continue on. Jacob leaves Kakuma to journey to Nairobi with some UN truck drivers he's never met. When they get to the city they drop him off with basically no sense on where he should go. So now here's this boy, who's never been in a city before in his life, standing in the middle of Nairobi. How would you feel? I'm willing to bet you'd be pretty scared. Jacob befriends a little boy the same age as Willy who seems to know his way around, his name is Jabari. Jabari takes him to Nairobi Academy but the headmaster just looks at his cross around his neck, tells him the school is to expensive for him and to try someplace else. Jabari takes him to Laiser Hill Academy, the headmaster there speaks to Jacob. Everything is good until the headmaster informs him that he needs a family member to act as his guardian. He's done now, basically this whole book we read he has had no family with him besides Monyroor who is gone fighting in the war, there is no way he's going to find his family in Nairobi. Just when I thought he had things figured out again, he's thrown down; but Jacob is determined. Jabari takes him to a place where he lives it's the poor part of the city with starving people and lean to houses. They walk around until they hear dinka voices, they are all gathered around two dinka men wrestling. Jacob searches for a familiar face, until he hears someone yelling a familiar phrase “ don't let him see your eyes!” Low and behold it's his uncle Daniel, he found someone to sign his letter. Jacob and his uncle catch up since the last time they saw each other which was at cattle camp. Daniel signs his letter, he goes back to Academy and they let him. The outcome of this book was great, but I find myself looking back on it and thinking about the amount of things Jacob's been through just in the last 50 pages. In the last 50 pages he worked so hard to get to school. He traded his clothes for tobacco, his tobacco for goats and his goats for shillings to go to school. When he gets to Nairobi he is first turned down at one academy and then told he needs to somehow do the impossible task of finding a family member to act as his guardian; all to go to school. School? When you think about it school is something we pretty much take advantage of, we expect to go, it's just given to us, when really it's more of a privilege. Jacob had to work so hard to get there though. I guess if there's one things you should get out of this book is that you shouldn't take advantage of something so many kids around the world don't get to have.