Sudan to the States

Santino arrived in America seeking "heaven" but in reality he found the opposite. His new life was full of hard work, struggle for money, crime and having to adapt to a strange culture.

Santino's life was very difficult. He quickly got his job and worked very hard to improve his performance, but Santino had no say in which job he was given in the first place. He found it difficult, because he had never encountered any of the things in the factory before - such as the machines. But when none of the other lost boys found jobs, he felt obliged to keep working so he could pay the rent for all of them. Santino's job was not high paying, and he could not get an education to improve his qualifications, so money was a constant problem for him. Not only did he have to support all of the lost boys in his apartment but he also got fined a lot of money in court for driving a car illegally. Also, because Santino lived in a high crime district, he was robbed, leaving him with even less money. He couldn't afford to live in a safer part of the city. Santino had a lot of pressures on him, and even though he was trying to do the right thing for himself and the other lost boys, he found life a constant struggle.

Santino also had trouble adapting to the completely different culture in the States. When he arrived, he found it quite hard to make new freinds. Even though Santino tried to mingle with Americans, for example, through playing basketball, he couldn't understand what the other players were doing. He found their style of playing basketball different from what he had played in Sudan. He also had to quickly abandon all signs of his culture, such as hugging or holding hands with a male freind, which was frowned on and misread in America, even though it was normal in Sudan. All of these changes put added pressure on Santino, which made his money problems even harder to deal with.

Santino had been through a terrible time in Sudan, and America was supposed to be wonderful for him. But in reality, the American dream proved almost impossible for Santino to reach.