Scott Bordow

azcentral sports

The two boys have their arms around each other, their smiles wide and bright.

Their lives have been filled with misery and sorrow. Kelvin Lewis didn't know his father. His mother died of AIDS when he was 4 years old. Afonso Slater lost both his parents to AIDS before his fourth birthday.

“The only memory I have is crying the day one of them died,” Afonso said. “I don’t know which one.”

The photo reveals none of that. The boys are standing outside an orphanage in Mozambique, Kelvin in bare feet, Afonso in sandals. It’s how they’ve always been, more brothers than best friends.

They didn’t know then of the incredible journey they would take. That a family from Gilbert would adopt Kelvin. That another Gilbert family would adopt Afonso. That the two sets of parents, who were acquaintances through their older children but didn’t know each other well, happened to live less than 2 miles apart in a tight-knit conservative community dotted with red-tile roofs and manicured lawns.

MORE: Complete Arizona high schools coverage

Eight years after they arrived in the United States, after they went to school together at Gilbert High and were teammates on the school’s soccer team that lost to Chandler Hamilton in the 2016 Division I state championship game, Kelvin and Afonso still sometimes marvel at the circumstances that brought them to where they’ve always been — together.

“It’s crazy,” Afonso said. “Honestly, it didn’t really register how much of a miracle and how amazing this really was until we got here. It’s just wonderful.”

The story begins in 2002

The children of Mozambique were in despair. Five million lived in poverty. Almost half were malnourished. The AIDS crisis in the eastern African country had become an epidemic; one study estimated that more than 13 percent of the population suffered from the disease.

After his mother died, Kelvin spent his days playing with friends on the street, hoping a merchant might be kind enough to give him a bite to eat. He spent nights with different family members, his grandmother one night, his aunt the next.

He and Afonso already were friends, their first meeting at such a young age that Afonso said, “In my earliest memories I’ve always known Kelvin.”

One of those memories: monkeying around with a primate at Kelvin’s house.

“I remember he had this type of monkey,” Afonso said. “I would go over to his house and we would play with his monkey.”

Meanwhile, In Gilbert, John Lewis, now the mayor of the city of Gilbert, and his wife, LaCinda, had decided to adopt an eighth child because, as LaCinda said, “seven wasn’t enough, apparently.” Their future-daughter-in-law, who helped start a non-profit organization in Mozambique called Care for Life, told them they should adopt Kelvin.

Greg and Sharon Slater weren’t planning on adopting. But they traveled to Mozambique to promote an AIDS-prevention program and, Rogiero, the young man who met them at the airport and was their guide, told them he had brothers and sisters in an orphanage who needed a family.

“The minute he told me I got this overwhelming feeling I was supposed to adopt them,” Sharon said. “It haunted me the whole time I was there. I kept trying to push it out of my mind and it wouldn’t go away. I guess I had a spiritual experience and started to realize that my thought was maybe from above. At that moment I decided I better pay attention.”

Becoming inseparable

One day, Kelvin’s aunt, who couldn’t afford to feed her own children and Kelvin, dropped him off on the street in front of the orphanage. Everything Kelvin had — other than the clothes on his back — was in a plastic bag he carried. A T-shirt, a pair of shorts, a banana and an apple. He wasn’t wearing shoes. He couldn’t afford them.

Brought to the orphanage by tragedy, Kelvin and Afonso became inseparable.

“They were each other’s families, essentially,” LaCinda Lewis said.

The boys quickly learned the sleeping arrangements at the orphanage. Kids who peed in their sleep had to take a bottom bunk. Those who stayed dry could take one of the two top bunks.

“So I learned from a young age not to wet the bed,” Kelvin said.

Their meals were the same every day. Beans and rice. Rice and beans. Maybe, if they were lucky, they’d get some meat on Sunday.

When the Lewises met Kelvin they told him they wanted him to be part of their family. The Slaters, meanwhile, had decided not just to adopt Afonso but two of his older siblings in the orphanage as well: Luis, 11 at the time, and Amelia, 9.

The two families, who lived less than 2 miles apart in Gilbert, discovered each other — and their mutual dreams — more than 10,000 miles from home.

“We had found these children independently and we hadn’t realized they were best friends,” Sharon Slater said. “Yes, I think it’s amazing but I don’t believe in coincidences. I believe in God-incidences. I don’t think this all happened by chance.”

Both families also found out that adopting a child in Mozambique is a long and painful process. The Slaters and Lewises tell the same story: that Mozambique judges are hesitant to approve adoption to American families for fear the children will become slave labor.

“The head judge told us she’d wait for a couple of weeks before we got our decision,” Sharon Slater recalled. “When we got the decision it said that we were probably traffickers in children. She had seen in our passports that we traveled to some countries that were involved in trafficking, so she went to the newspaper and said she had broken up a trafficking ring.”

“They thought we were going to turn our children into slaves,” John Lewis added.

It took the Lewises six years, five trips to Mozambique and four judges before they could adopt Kelvin.

“Every time she came I thought I’d be able to leave with her so it was pretty emotional quite often,” Kelvin said. “But she always told me she would come back.”

Afonso arrived in Gilbert first, in January 2008. Kelvin arrived six months later.

They were together, again.

A new life in Arizona

The boys took to life in Arizona immediately. Sharon Slater recalled “spying” on Afonso a couple of days after he started elementary school just to see how he was doing.

“Even though he didn’t speak the language he was ordering everybody around in kickball,” Sharon Slater said. “He just took to American culture and American life. It didn’t matter that he was Black or from a different country.”

Kelvin, meanwhile, ran for president of his fifth grade class — he lost — and enjoyed the fruits of his new-found affluence.

“When I would go out to eat with Kelvin somewhere I could always predict what he wanted,” John Lewis said. “It was the most expensive meal. His eyes were bigger than his stomach."

There were a few adjustments. Because they didn’t have parents during their formative years, Kelvin and Afonso weren’t used to having a mom tell them, “Don’t do this. Don’t do that.” Afonso struggled to follow the household rules. Their natural self-reliance — born from having to be on their own in Mozambique — also caused bumpy moments. One day Kelvin decided he needed a belt so he found one of John’s belts, got a hold of Sharon’s sewing scissors and then added holes with a hammer and a nail.

“It took him a couple of years to ask first,” Sharon said.

The boys settled in eventually. And always, as always, they relied on each other.

“Having Kelvin around … he was someone I could relate to,” Afonso said. “Gilbert is a very family-friendly place and I was very welcomed but sometimes I couldn’t really understand everything. But I could talk to Kelvin about it.”

Their high school years are coming to a close, but Kelvin and Afonso won’t say goodbye to one another. They’ve both been accepted into Brigham Young University and they’ll be roommates in the fall.

“The way I like to think about it is that God put me in his life. There’s no way this could be chance,” Afonso said. “I feel like God is running my life and he wants me to stay with Kelvin for some reason.”

Their arms around each other. Their smiles wide and bright.

Reach Bordow at scott.bordow@arizonarepublic.com or 602-448-8716. Follow him at Twitter.com/sBordow.