by Dave Eggers
—All of this land you see before you is potential food, all of it. If we can work this land wisely, all the food we’ll ever need can be provided by this land, by this river and the care we invest in it.
We thought this was a fine idea, but of course we knew that the most difficult aspects of working the land would be left to the unaccompanied minors, and indeed they were. For weeks, Mayen Ngor instructed us in the use of hoes, spades, wheelbarrows, axes, and sickles, and we went about doing the manual labor after the large Ethiopian machinery was long gone. While we worked and eventually planted seeds for tomatoes, beans, corn, onions, groundnuts, and sorghum, Mayen Ngor, his eyes alight with visions of the bounty of the land, walked among us, proselytizing.
—What is your name, jaysh al-ahmar? he asked me one day. The Eleven, who worked close to me, all took notice of the great man’s presence among us. I told Mayen Ngor my name. He chose not to use it.
—Jaysh al-ahmar, do you have a sense of what this land will look like when you’re finished? Do you see that all this earth is potential food?
I told him that I did, and that the thought excited me greatly.
—Good, good, he said, standing and looking out at the rows of hundreds of boys beyond, all bent over their hoes and spades. The sight of these emaciated boys working under the summer sun gave him much pleasure.
—All of it! he exclaimed.—All of it, potential food!
And then he strode on, down the row.
When he was out of earshot, the laughter broke out all around me, with the Eleven unable to contain themselves. That was the day Mayen Ngor became known as Mr. Potential Food. For months afterward, we would point to anything—a rock, a shovel, a truck—and say ‘Potential food!’ Achor Achor did the best imitation, and took his performance the farthest. He would point at random objects and, while gazing out at the horizon, proclaim: ‘You see that tree, jaysh al-ahmar? Potential food. That tire? Potential food. That lump of manure, that pile of old shoes? Potential food!’
When the fall came, the transformation of the camp grew more complete—it was now a militarized place, with rigid rules, more constant and varied chores for us all, and far more intimations that we were there for one primary purpose: to be fed and fattened such that we might fight once we were large enough to do so, or the SPLA was desperate enough to use us—whichever came first. Many teachers had returned from their training at Bonga, and the marching began. Each morning, we were brought to the parade grounds and we were lined up in rows, and made to do calisthenics, counting with the elders. Then, using our farm implements to simulate AK-47s, we marched up and down the parade grounds, all the while singing patriotic songs. When the marching was done, we were given the announcements for the day, and were informed of any new rules and regulations. There seemed to be no shortage of new guidelines and prohibitions.
—I know that most of you boys are learning English now, said a new teacher one day. He was fresh from Bonga, and he came to be known as called Commander Secret,—and a few of you are becoming proficient. I need to warn you, though, that this does not mean you can use your English to speak to any of the aid workers here. You are not permitted to talk to any non-Sudanese, whether they’re black or white. Is that understood?
We made clear that this was understood.
—If for any reason you do find yourself asked a question by an aid worker, observe these guidelines: first, you should act as shy as possible. It is better for this camp and for you personally if you do not talk to an aid worker, even if they ask you a question. Is that understood?
We told Commander Secret that it was understood.
—One last thing: if you’re ever asked anything about the SPLA, you are to say you know nothing about it. You do not know what the SPLA is, you have never seen a member of the SPLA, you don’t know the first thing about what those letters stand for. You are merely orphans here for safety and schooling. Is that clear?
This was less comprehensible to us, but the dichotomy of the UN and the SPLA would become clearer as the months went on. As the UN presence grew, with new facilities and more equipment arriving each month, the SPLA influence on the camp grew, too. And the two factions evenly divided up the day. Before nightfall, the camp was dedicated to education and nutrition, with us attending classes and eating healthfully and in all ways seeming to the UN observers a mass of unaccompanied minors. But at night, the camp belonged to the SPLA. It was then that the SPLA took their share of the food delivered to us and the other refugees, and it was then that operations were undertaken and justice meted out. Any boy who had shirked or misbehaved would be caned, and for many of these boys, skeletal as they were, canings could prove debilitating, even fatal. The canings, of course, were done at night, out of sight of any international observers.
The boys at the camp were split in their opinions about our rebel leaders. Among us were plenty, perhaps even a majority, of boys who could barely wait to leave for Bonga to train, to be given a gun, to learn to kill, to avenge their villages, to kill Arabs. But there were plenty like me, who felt apart from the war, who wanted only to learn to read and write, who waited for the madness to end. And the SPLA did not make it easy to fight with them, for their army. For months I had been hearing rumors of hardship at Bonga, about how difficult the training was, how harsh and unforgiving. Boys were dying over there, I knew, though the explanations were shifting and impossible to confirm. Exhaustion, beatings. Boys tried to escape and were shot. Boys lost their rifles and were shot. I now know that some of the news from Bonga was false, but between what was hidden and what was exaggerated there is some truth. Those who had gone to fight the Arabs had to fight their elders first. Still, every week, boys willingly left the relative safety and comfort of Pinyudo of their own accord to train at Bonga. We lost four of the Eleven that way, between the summer and winter, and all of them were eventually killed. Machar Dieny fought and was killed in southern Sudan in 1990. Mou Mayuol joined the SPLA and was killed in Juba in 1992. Aboi Bith joined the SPLA and was killed in Kapoeta in 1995. He was probably fourteen years old. Boys make very poor soldiers. This is the problem.
Our days were now entirely reconstituted. Where before there had been studying and soccer and simple chores like water-fetching, now there was manual labor—in addition to the farm work—and jobs we were much too young to be expected to do.
Each morning, when we were lined up on the parade grounds, the elders would indicate one group:—You will help Commander Kon’s wife build a pen for her goats. Another group:—You will find firewood in the forest. Another:—You will help this elder build a new house for his cousins. When school was over and lunch had been eaten, we would know where to go.
I spent two weeks building a house for a friend of my biology teacher. We were hired out for any task, no matter how great or small. We planted seeds in gardens, we built outhouses. We did the wash for any elder who demanded it. Many SPLA members had brought their families to Pinyudo to live while they trained nearby at Bonga. So we did their wash in the river, and brought water to the officer’s wives, and performed whatever task they could concoct. There was no payment for our work, and we could not ask for or expect even a glass of water from the beneficiary of our labor. I asked once for a drink, after me and the Eleven—ten of them, actually; Isaac was playing sick—had completed the home for the family of a newly arrived officer. We came to the door of the hut, a door we had just installed, and the officer’s wife stepped through it, looking angrily at us.
—Water? Is this a joke? Get out of here, mosquitoes. Drink from a puddle!
Often the work lasted until dark. Other times, we were released in the late afternoon, and could play. Soccer was played everywhere at Pinyudo, in games that often had no discernible boundaries or even goals. One boy would take the ball—there were always new soccer balls available, gifts of John Garang, it was said—and dribble off with it, and would soon be trailed by a hundred boys, who wanted only to touch it. Even then, though, in the late afterno
on, an elder might have an inspiration.
—Hey you! he could call out to the mass of barefoot boys chasing the ball across the dust—You three, get over here. I have a job for you.
And we would go.
No one wanted to enter the forest, for in the forest, boys disappeared. The first two who died were well-known for having been devoured by lions, and thus hunting in the forest for building materials became the job everyone chose to avoid. When our number was called for forest duty, some boys went mad. They hid in trees. They ran away. Many ran to Bonga, to train as soldiers, anything to avoid having to enter the forest of disappearing boys. The situation became worse as the months wore on. The forest’s bounty was depleted daily, so boys searching for grass or poles or firewood had to venture further every day, closer to the unknown. More boys failed to come back, but the work continued, the construction spread wider and wider.
The winds came one day and blew down the roofs of dozens of the elders’ homes. Six of us were assigned the task of reconstructing the roofs, and Isaac and I were busy with this assignment when Commander Secret found us.
—Into the forest with you two. We have no kindling. I tried to be as formal and polite as I could when I said:
—No sir, I cannot be eaten by a lion here.
Commander Secret stood, outraged.—Then you’ll be beaten!
I had never heard such delicious words. I would take any beating over the risk of being devoured. Commander Secret took me to the barracks and beat me on the legs and backside with a cane, with force but without great malice. I suppressed a smile when it was over; I felt victorious and ran off, unable to hold off a song I sung to myself and to the night air.
Soon after that, no boys would enter the forest, and the beatings multiplied. And when the beatings multiplied, so did the methods to reduce the impact of each. An extensive system of clothes-borrowing was instituted for those anticipating a caning. Usually the recipient would have a few hours’ notice at least, and could borrow as many pairs of underwear and shorts he could convincingly wear. The canings usually took place at night; we thanked God for that, because our additional padding was that much less detectable.
After a few weeks, the teachers, out of sloth or an interest in instilling a sort of military discipline in us, ordered us to cane each other as punishment for whatever offense arose. Though initially a few boys actually followed through with the beatings—they paid in the end for their enthusiasm—overall a system was devised whereby the caner struck the ground, not the victim’s backside, and caner and canee still made the expected sounds of effort and pain.
The new military strictness was an annoyance, but otherwise we felt strong and no one was dying. Most of us were still gaining weight, and could work and run. There was enough food, and the food, in fact, provided the one reliable excuse for avoiding the afternoon work. In our groups of twelve, we were each assigned one cooking day, on which that boy was allowed to skip school and the work detail afterward, because that boy busy was ostensibly cooking for the other eleven others. Food was distributed once a month, by truck. We were sent to carry it back to the camp, where we stored it in a series of corrugated sheds. The bags, full of corn flour, white beans, lentils, and vegetable oil, were as big as many of us, and often had to be carried by pairs.
Every twelfth day was my free day, and that was a good day. In the nights leading up to it I fell asleep smiling, and as the day approached my mood bubbled closer and closer to giddiness. When it arrived, I slept in after the Eleven had gone to the parade grounds and to school, and once awake, I thought about what I would cook. I thought about it on the way to the river to fetch water, and I thought about it on the way back. Soup was just about all we could make for lunch, but when it was my turn, I tried to make a soup that was not lentil. Lentil soup was the everyday soup, and most of the Eleven were content to cook it and eat it, but being the leader of the group, I tried to do something better on my cooking days, something that would make the Eleven feel extraordinary.
I would check the supplies we had to see if there was an extra portion of something that could be traded. If we had an extra ration of rice, for example, I might be able to trade it for a fish by the river. With a fish, I could make fish soup, and the Eleven very much liked fish soup. While they were at school, I would be busy, preparing the soup and thinking about the evening meal. But preparing soup doesn’t require all the hours of the day, and allowed for some leisure. Even if an elder found me lounging, I could tell him, ‘I’m a cook today,’ and the elder would be silenced. Being a good and responsible cook was essential.
I was an excellent cook, but serving the soup was difficult at first. When the camp began, there were no plates or utensils, so the food, and even the soup, was served on the bags that had held the grain. The bags were sturdy and made of woven plastic, so the food would stay on its surface without soaking through. After many months, we were given utensils, and some months later, plates were distributed, one aluminum plate per boy. No one ate breakfast in all the time we were at Pinyudo, but after a time, we began to drink tea in the morning, though tea was not distributed. We would have to trade part of our food ration in the town for the tea and sugar. When we had nothing to trade for sugar, or there was no sugar in the shops, we learned how to hunt bees and extract honey from their hives.
I was cooking one day when one of my neighbors, a round-faced boy named Gor, rushed toward me. It was obvious he had news, but he and I weren’t friends, and he was visibly disappointed that because no one else was around, I would have to be the recipient.
—The United States has invaded Kuwait and Iraq!
I didn’t know what Kuwait or Iraq were. Gor was a smart boy, but I was stung by his knowledge of world affairs. I had assumed we were getting the same education at Pinyudo, and yet there were inequities that were difficult to account for.
—They’re rescuing Kuwait from Saddam Hussein! They’re bringing five hundred thousand troops and are taking back Kuwait. They’ll get rid of Hussein!
Finally, after feigning understanding for a few minutes, I swallowed my pride enough to ask for a thorough explanation. Saddam Hussein was the dictator of Iraq, Gor told me, and had been supplying guns and planes to the Sudanese army. Hussein had given Khartoum money and nerve gas. It was Iraqi pilots who flew some of the helicopters that strafed our villages.
—So this is good, I asked,—that the United States is fighting him?
—It is! It is! Gor said.—It means that soon the Americans will fight Khartoum, too. It means that they will remove all the Muslim dictators in the world. This is definitely what it means. I guarantee this. God has spoken through the Americans, Achak.
And he went off, in search of more boys to educate.
This was the prevailing theory for some time, that the war in Iraq and Kuwait would lead, inevitably, to the toppling of the Islamic fundamentalists in Sudan. But this did not happen. The fortunes of the SPLA were not promising that year. Battles and territory had been lost and the rebels, as might be expected, began to eat their own.
One morning at ten o’clock, an assembly was announced. School was called off and we poured out of the classrooms.
—To the parade grounds! the teachers ordered.
I asked Achor Achor what the assembly was all about, and he wasn’t sure. I asked another elder, who snapped at me.
—Just get to the parade grounds. You’ll enjoy it.
—Do we have to work this afternoon?
—No. This afternoon is education.
Achor Achor and I walked to the grounds, our moods buoyant. Anything was better than work in the afternoon, and very soon we were sitting in the front row of a growing throng of boys. There was an SPLA commander, Giir Chuang, at the camp that week, and we assumed the assembly was called to honor him.
Commander Secret was there, as was Commander Beltbuckle and Mr. Potential Food and Mr. Kondit and every other elder at the camp. I looked for Dut, but didn’t find him. His presence at the camp
had been sporadic for many months, and the boys who had walked with him concocted theories about him: that he was now a commander in the SPLA, that he was in college in Addis Ababa. In any case, we missed him, all of us, that day. I looked around and saw that most of the boys assembled were close to me in age, somewhere between six and twelve. Very few were older. All the boys were grinning and laughing, and soon they were singing. Deng Panan, the best-known singer of patriotic songs and a celebrity among the rebels, stood before us with a microphone. He sang of God and faith, of resilience and the suffering of the southern Sudanese at the hands of the Arabs. A cheer rose up as he began to sing the words written by one of the boys in Pinyudo.
We will struggle to liberate the land of Sudan
We will! With the AK-47
The battalions of the Red Army will come
We’ll come!
Armed with guns on the left hand
And pens in the right hand
To liberate our home, oh, ooo.
Meanwhile a platoon of fifteen soldiers marched into the grounds and assembled themselves in a straight line, shoulder to shoulder, facing us. Next, a line of men, bedraggled and tied together by rope, were pushed into the parade grounds. Seven men, all of them looking malnourished, some bleeding from abrasions on their heads and feet.
—Who are they? Achor Achor whispered.
I had no idea. They were now kneeling in a line facing us, and these men were not singing. The SPLA soldiers, in clean uniforms, stood behind them, AK-47s in hand. There was a man, one of those tied to the rest, sitting directly in front of me. Quickly I caught his eye, and he stared back at me with a look of unmitigated fury.
When Deng Panan finished his song, Giir Chuang took the microphone.
—Boys, you are the future of Sudan! That is why we call you the Seeds. You are the seeds of a new Sudan.
The boys around me cheered. I continued staring at the tethered men.
—Soon Sudan will be yours! Giir Chuang yelled.