The Canal House

by Mark Lee

  “He speaks English?” Daniel asked.

  “Yes. Sometimes. Isaac’s father was a schoolteacher. The Lord’s Righteous Army killed his parents and probably forced him to be a soldier. Somehow, Isaac escaped and wandered into the camp about two weeks ago.”

  We went outside and they scrutinized a three-meter-high steel tower near the tent. A video camera powered by a photoelectric panel was mounted on the tower. Other towers were placed around the camp. I hated them.

  “What’s that?” Nicky asked.

  “It’s one of Richard’s ideas. You really should go and talk to him.”

  “Maybe later,” Daniel said. “I’ll stay here and ask some more questions. What are you going to do, Nicky?”

  “Wander around aimlessly.”

  “If you’d both excuse me, I need to fix a water pump.”

  I headed back across the camp. Nicky tagged along, his camera bag bumping against his hip. “I thought you were going to wander aimlessly,” I said.

  “Aimless people like to follow decisive people.”

  “It’s a facade, Mr. Bettencourt. I just react to the current problem.”

  “It’s a good facade, Dr. Cadell. You do it well.”

  KOSANA WAS COMPLETELY dependent on the two water wells drilled by the Kenyan firm that had helped us set up the camp. The well pump on the northern edge of the camp was still working, but the southern pump had been disabled by sand. If the northern pump broke down, the next available water was a border outpost about eighty kilometers away. Possibilities like this forced their way into my dreams and woke me up at three o’clock in the morning.

  I got the toolbox out of the supply tent and Nicky followed me over to the broken pump. Kneeling beside the machinery, I took a wrench and began to remove the coupling.

  “I don’t suppose you know anything about water pumps?”

  “I can fix a broken camera, but that’s about it,” Nicky said. “If there’s a real problem, you should talk to Daniel. I’ve seen him adjust the timing on his sports car.”

  “They didn’t offer a repair class when I was studying medicine. Wish they had.”

  “Where did you go to school? London?”

  “Bristol. I was going to be a pediatrician.”

  “How did you get into relief work?”

  “It was sort of an accident. I went to Pakistan during the summer with Save the Children. It was only supposed to be for three months, but when the contract was up I couldn’t make myself leave. I’ve worked for Médecins Sans Frontières and a few other NGOs, but this is the first time I’ve been in charge of the entire operation.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. But all that means is that it’s my responsibility to fix the pump.”

  Nicky kept moving around me, the camera shutter clicking rapidly. “What about the illustrious Richard Seaton? Why can’t he help?”

  “That’s enough questions—and photographs. Put the camera away and make yourself useful. Hold this hose steady while I turn the wrench.”

  Nicky looked embarrassed and lowered his camera. Well, that’s good, I thought. At least he had a degree of self-consciousness, perhaps even a sliver of morality.

  In fifteen minutes, the pump was working. A thin stream of water began to fill up one of the empty oil drums. The pump drew up liquid in pulses and the pencil-thin spurt of water reminded me of a cut artery.

  “Can I take another photograph?”

  “Just one.”

  I walked over to the northern well and turned off the pump that had been running nonstop for the last three days. After that we walked to the medical tent where Fiona and Ellen were trying to organize a group of Karamojong children for inoculations. One of the nurses would get four or five children to stand together, but the line would dissolve and they would dart about, whistling and calling to each other like little birds. Finally, Peter and Tobias appeared carrying eight boxes of oranges and the children clustered around them.

  Daniel stood to one side having a conversation with Steven Ramsey, the other physician in camp. He was an American who had worked for several NGOs and I had been forced to hire him as a last-minute substitute when another doctor had a relapse of malaria. Steve was lazy and unreliable, the kind of doctor who got into relief work because he couldn’t find a position back in the States. Now he was talking to Daniel, probably telling him that inoculations were a bourgeois artifact of the industrialized world.

  The refugee children didn’t have enough fat and muscle in their arms so Fiona injected the first boy in a fleshy part of his hip. Tobias handed him an orange and the boy tossed it into the air. Within a few minutes, the oranges were rising and falling through the air, little globes of bright color. The children pushed forward to receive their shots and no one cried from the pain. I glanced at Nicky and he looked happy, switching cameras, then moving around to get different angles on the scene.

  Richard came out of the staff tent. Billy stood on one side of him carrying his Uzi while Erik Viltner, the bush pilot, stood on the other. Daniel shook hands with Richard in a formal way, as if they were two Victorian explorers meeting on the shores of the Nile. The oranges flew higher and some children began to dance, and the sun blazed bright in the sky.

  RICHARD KNEW HOW to handle journalists. Daniel told him that he had come to Kosana to find the Lord’s Righteous Army and Richard nodded yes, of course, quite so, then acted as if he hadn’t heard. He told Billy to arrange a spare tent and insisted that our guests spend the night. After Peter and Tobias flew back to Apoka Lodge, Richard proceeded to give the two Americans another tour of the camp. He pointed out the medical tent, the trucks, and the water wells, then went into the supply tent and showed them our battery-powered computer.

  “I suppose you’ve seen the towers scattered around the camp. Each one has a digital camera that feeds into this tent. The images are sent out on a sat phone to the Hand-to-Hand web site. You can sit at your computer in the safety of your home and see refugees being fed and children’s lives being saved. Right now, we only have the live feed, but my staff is going to introduce a choice bar next month. If you click it with your mouse you can instantly contribute twenty, fifty, or one hundred pounds.”

  Daniel studied the image on the computer monitor. “So you show them what their money is used for.”

  “Yes. But it’s more than that, really. We’re trying to develop an emotional link between our donors and the refugees. In previous generations, people gave money to charities because they believed in God or the vicar told them to do it. That doesn’t work anymore. People don’t respond to moral imperatives. They need personal connections.”

  “Too bad there aren’t any dogs,” Nicky said. “I spent a week in Turkey waiting for some rescue dogs to show up. Dogs and cute babies. That’s the way to go.”

  “We’re not making a Hollywood movie here,” I said. “Richard just wants to show what happens in a relief camp.”

  Richard was oblivious to Nicky’s sarcasm or my annoyance. He concentrated on Daniel, trying to win him over. “No, this isn’t a Hollywood movie. But the success of reality-based television in Europe and America has showed me that people do want a dramatic, true-life story. In the future, we might train our local staff to carry around video cameras. People can watch at home and wonder if a certain refugee will live or die. They can click their mouse and save a life, for a small contribution.”

  The sun was going down when Richard finished the tour. “Want a cold beer?” Billy asked the visitors. “Still on ice. Straight from Nairobi.”

  We all went to the staff tent and ate curry rice mixed with canned chicken. There were two tables and benches where everyone ate together, telling jokes and drinking the beer. After dinner, Daniel moved down the table and began to talk to Ellen Reagan. Ellen was twenty-five and still innocent about journalists and their questions. Every relief camp had a few scandals that needed to be concealed. There had been a minor disaster two weeks ago when some Karamojong left the camp
and crossed the border into Kenya to steal cattle. If a reporter decided to publicize this incident, I would have to fly to Nairobi and sit in a government office while some bureaucrat scolded me like an angry headmaster.

  I sat down beside Ellen and forced a smile. “Is Mr. McFarland asking you too many questions?”

  “No,” she said, clearly enjoying the attention. “We’re talking about my family’s village. Mr. McFarland has visited Carrick on Shannon. He even remembered the name of our pub there.”

  “I’m sure that Mr. McFarland has visited a great many places.”

  “I’ve never been in this area of East Africa,” Daniel said. “What do you think about Kosana, Ellen? Do you like it here?”

  Ellen chatted about the camp. The children were wonderful, but it was very hot and dusty and Mr. Monroe had killed a snake that slithered into her tent. I watched Daniel stare at Ellen’s Celtic cross earrings and the anxious, fluttery way she moved her hands. Throughout the conversation, he would turn his head slightly and glance at me.

  Finally Ellen got tired and left the tent. Daniel looked straight at me as we faced each other over the table. I felt like we were two gamblers ready to play cards with each other.

  “So why are you doing this?” he asked.

  “Doing what? Running an aid organization?”

  He nodded. “I’m trying to fit you into one of the six categories of relief workers.”

  “Is this a theory of your own, Mr. McFarland? You must explain it to me.”

  “There are the obsessively religious. They pass out Bibles to starving people. There are the benevolently religious. They feed the natives first, then hope they’ll ask for Bibles while they’re eating. There are the professional aid workers who are in it for the money or because it looks good on their résumés. Then there are the cowboys …”

  “Aren’t they usually American?”

  “Cowboy aid workers like to speed around the desert in new pickup trucks and drink cattle blood with the Masai.”

  I found myself smiling. “There are also cowgirl relief workers.”

  “The fifth category is the confused or the incompetent—people who don’t know what to do with their life so they decide to play God in a Third World country.”

  “I don’t want to be God, Mr. McFarland. It’s too much responsibility.”

  “The final category of relief worker is quite rare. It’s the idealist who sees things clearly. That might be you, Dr. Cadell. Or perhaps not. There’s a certain professional air about you.”

  “Cynicism is not a substitute for knowledge. Though for the misguided it can seem that way.”

  “You’re right. I’m frequently misguided. But I did manage to find out that a group of Karamojong warriors got food rations from your organization, then crossed the border to steal cattle from the Turkana tribe.”

  “Did Dr. Ramsey tell you that?” I asked.

  “I don’t reveal my sources.”

  “Are you going to put that in an article?”

  “Nicky and I came here to find the Lord’s Righteous Army. I’m not really interested in writing about relief aid. The editors want pity or heroism. Usually, they cut the paragraphs where I try to give an explanation.”

  I checked my watch and got up from the table. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to turn off our water pump. We don’t have enough petrol to let it run all night.”

  Billy and Erik sat across from Nicky at the long table teaching him how to play a card game called Danube. Richard sat at the other end talking on his sat phone to someone in London. “Yes, we’re in the banking business,” he said. “But we’re also in the information business. You’re not exploiting the potential here.”

  I slipped through the mosquito netting and stepped outside. Kerosene lanterns were burning in the medical tent and the staff tent, but the rest of the camp was dark. The motor on the repaired water pump was as noisy as a lawn mower and I headed toward the sound. I switched on my flashlight so that the Karamojong would know that I was passing through. Some of the men had been brewing homemade beer from the maize we gave them, but everyone respected the graceful fiction that no alcohol or weapons were allowed in the camp. There was an unspoken agreement that I wouldn’t search the tents and the refugees wouldn’t publicly break the rules.

  Two girls were filling up plastic bottles when I reached the southern well. I touched their heads. They giggled and disappeared into the night. Kneeling beside the water pump, I felt around for leakage, then killed the motor. Silence came instantly. I switched off the flashlight, stood beside the four steel drums and saw the moon reflected on the surface of the water. Thousands of stars were visible in the sky in different shades of blue or yellowish white, each point of light glittering separate and distinct. I could hear the Karamojong talking in their tribal language and the quick, hard snap of someone breaking a branch for a fire. After eight years of working in relief camps, I still felt the strangeness of each assignment. Here I was in Africa, under the stars, and it was all quite amazing. I skimmed up some water to drink and saw the moon ripple and shimmer before me.

  I switched on the flashlight again and cut across the camp to where the Acholi farmers were staying. A woman was recovering from a throat infection and I stopped by her tent. Moses Sebana, a farmer in his sixties who always carried around a Bible, came out to greet me.

  “How’s Christina?”

  “Very good, Dr. Cadell. There’s no more fever and she’s sleeping.”

  “Did Mr. McFarland ask you questions today? Was that all right?”

  Moses hesitated, and I felt as if he was considering his next statement. “Mr. McFarland said very little to us, but he spent a long time with Isaac.”

  “Isaac doesn’t speak to anyone.”

  “He sat beside the boy for an hour and said nothing. Then Isaac came out of his tent and looked at him. When I came back, they were talking.”

  I went into Isaac’s tent. It had the pungent odor of sweat and urine. Everyone was asleep, but they woke up when the flashlight beam cut across the canvas wall. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Everything’s all right. Go back to sleep.” I stepped around the bodies to Isaac’s private shelter. The boy came out with his hands raised to shield his eyes from the flashlight. I switched it off and sat down on the dirt beside him. The other people in the tent shifted around and whispered to each other. A man began to snore.

  “Isaac, I hear that you talked with Mr. McFarland today. Was he a nice man?”

  Silence.

  “What did you talk about?”

  Isaac said nothing.

  “Did you talk about Simon Okello and the Lord’s Righteous Army?”

  I decided to wait for his answer. Four or five minutes passed before the boy spoke in a soft voice.

  “I show him where they are.”

  “Okello’s army?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would you do that? It’s very dangerous.”

  Another pause, then the child’s voice. “Wristwatch.”

  “Mr. McFarland is going to give you his wristwatch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s interesting.” I reached out and touched the boy’s shoulder. “Good night, Isaac. See you in the morning.”

  I stepped around the sleeping bodies and pushed through the tent flap. Marching across the camp, I held the flashlight in front of me like a sword. I felt especially angry, not because I liked Daniel McFarland, but because he had made me notice him. There was something about him, some quality of his appearance or personality, that had pushed its way into my thoughts.

  Back at the staff tent, Billy had just won a card game from Erik and Nicky. Richard was still on the phone and Daniel was writing in his notebook. I approached the table and stood next to him.

  “Mr. McFarland, I want you out of this camp by tomorrow morning. You can use our radio to contact Paul Rosen or a member of the staff will drive you over to Kidepo. Do anything you want. I don’t care. But be out of here by nine o’cloc
k.”

  Daniel stared straight at me with a blank expression on his face. He wasn’t intimidated or regretful. I felt like a railway stationmaster who had just told him to take another train. “I understand,” he said quietly. “We’ll leave as soon as we can.”

  “There’s something going on here,” Richard said to the person in London. “Stay at the office. I’ll get back to you.” He switched off the phone and raised his eyebrows. “Is there a problem, darling?”

  “We have a little boy in the camp named Isaac Adupa. He saw his parents killed by the Lord’s Righteous Army, and then they kept him as a recruit until he managed to run away. Isaac is traumatized, of course. But Mr. McFarland doesn’t care about that. He only cares about his bloody story. Mr. McFarland talked to Isaac when I wasn’t there. Tempted him with a wristwatch. And now Isaac has agreed to lead him back into the bush to find Okello.”

  Daniel’s face didn’t change. I realized that he had spent his career being threatened by people who didn’t want him writing articles. Nothing I said was going to bother him; he was a professional acrobat who could fall without injury. I glanced around the tent. Nicky looked surprised. Erik Viltner was grinning as if he was going to tell us that the exact same thing had happened to him a couple of years ago on a safari with two Dutchmen. Billy watched Richard, waiting for a clue about how to react. Richard turned to him and shook his head slightly. It was a small gesture, an acknowledgment that Daniel was a tough journalist and part of the men’s club or something macho and awful like that.

  Daniel got up from the table. His voice was calm and unemotional. “I’m sorry that you’re angry, Dr. Cadell. But I want to make it clear that I didn’t threaten Isaac.”

  “I suppose that’s your idea of ethics.”

  “As far as I know, the boy has stayed in that tent for the last two weeks. He hasn’t gone anywhere or spoken to anyone. The other Acholis act like he has a disease. Maybe the boy is traumatized, but I don’t think you or your staff have done anything about it.”

  “Are you an instant expert about refugee children, Mr. McFarland? How clever of you to walk around the camp for a few hours and talk to a few people, then decide what we should be doing here.”