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GREENSBORO - So many pictures of so many things.

Wel Jok flips up his laptop, clicks through picture after picture and tells countless stories about going home to southern Sudan, the place of his vaguest memories, the place he left 22 years ago.

Not anymore.

Two weeks before Christmas, thanks to the generosity of his American friends, Wel flew to his homeland and spent a month there, retracing his steps and rediscovering the faces of his childhood.

When Wel came back late last week, some of his American friends said he had changed. They're probably right.

Wel, 27, a UNCG student studying chemistry, still has that boyish laugh. Yet ask him about his trip back home, and his clipped English becomes as reverential as a prayer.

Particularly when it comes to his mom.

He hadn't seen her since he was 5. It was 1987. He was playing with clay cows in the dirt when he saw government soldiers storm his village and shoot everyone they saw.

Wel, naked and barefoot, ran away. He never returned. He became one of the Lost Boys of Sudan - the 30,000 orphans sent adrift by Sudan's bloody civil war .

For years, he heard his mom thought he was dead. And since 2005 , he heard her voice only on the other end of a telephone, constantly asking him, "When are you coming home?"

He never told her. He wanted to surprise her. So, last month, he spent 17 hours on five airplanes, and accompanied by a cousin he didn't know, he spent nine hours on a bus and took a 15-minute trip on a motorcycle to stop in a village, a few feet from his mother.

"Mama," his cousin announced. "This is your son."

She started singing. Right away.

"You are so grown up!" she said, her voice rising. "Come on and sit here! Come on and sit here!"

She pointed to her lap.

"No, Mom, I'm grown," Wel responded.

"But remember when you left?" she asked. "You were sitting on my lap! Do you remember?"

Wel hadn't eaten for hours, and during his trip halfway around the world, he dealt with a roller coaster of emotions, caused by the constant questions in his head.

But once he sat down with his mom, all his nervousness disappeared. He and his mom talked until 6 in the morning. Wel felt no hunger, no pain.

"This is home now," his mother, Aluel , the village pastor, told him. "This is home."

Wel saw hundreds of relatives and took part in at least a dozen spontaneous celebrations in honor of his return. And everywhere he went, he got quizzed about America.

"What do people eat?"

"What kind of car do you people have there?"

"Are black people the majority in America?"

"I know someone in Chicago. Is Chicago close to your place?"

"Is America really like what we see in the pictures?"

Wel saw his 12 nieces and nephews, ages 1 to 15 . They didn't say anything. They just wanted to sit near their new uncle and stare.

But Wel's two sisters, Achok and Lith , and his younger brother, Deng , didn't.

"Wow, you're bald and very old," his 25-year-old brother told him.

"Yes,'' Wel laughed, "but so are you."

Yes, some funny moments. You see that everywhere in Wel's pictures, especially when you spot an empty seat for him at a relative's wedding and ask about the cow in the photo, a gift to the bride's family.

You hear Wel's boyish laugh. Then, you hear about his mother - and her wish.

"There's a girl over there, and I want you to marry her," she told her oldest son. "We have all the cows you need."

"Yes, I need to get married," Wel responded. "But I need more cows. I haven't finished school."

There are somber moments in Wel's pictures, too.

Of hungry children. Of roadside destruction from the civil war. Of the tall tree in his old village, where his mother climbed to the top to see if any rifle-wielding soldiers were still prowling their dirt-caked streets.

Ask Wel if he's going back, and he doesn't hesitate. Next Christmas.

And eventually, armed with possibly a master's degree in agrochemistry , he'll go back for good. He wants to farm, to network, to do anything he can to help his homeland.

Because he remembers what his mother told him, Bible in hand, right before he left: "Remember, we'll still be here for you."

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com