He pushes these thoughts out of his mind. It’s done now, and only time will tell if he has made the right decision. At least his days will be spent with students, rather than in the dusty laneways of the camp scavenging for food, fighting off attacks or seeking out victims.
Keeping to the routine of regular classes will require determination. Can he do it? He has no choice but to try. He hurries home to tell Maku.
Maku is delighted. ‘You have made the right decision,’ he says. ‘The course provides an opportunity and you are wise to take it.’
Obulejo is glad he has not told Maku about his thieving and bullying activities. He thinks of his family and the difficulties his father has faced throughout his life. What if there were things Baba had been forced to do so his family could survive, wrong things that he now regretted?
Right and wrong seemed so clear once, but the war has changed all that.
Now he must put all his energy into completing the course. A new path has appeared before him. He must follow where it leads.
On day one of the course, Obulejo arrives earlier than the other students. He is nervous. What if one of his victims is here and recognises him? What if his brain can only turn itself to stealing and cheating now, and no longer absorb information?
The first day is exhausting. How can he return, day after day, for eight long weeks, he wonders as he flops down to sleep that night. But he knows he will keep coming back.
No longer does Obulejo have the time or opportunity to scout for extra food. His stomach growls. And some days he is so exhausted after class that he can barely face the day’s chores. The others are skimping on their duties too. Some days Obulejo comes home and finds the person rostered on for cooking absent, and no meal prepared. He must cook for himself then, and some nights he sits alone, churning over the same bitter thoughts, again and again. These people are not my relatives. I am nothing to them. Will I be surrounded by strangers forever? Is this how my life will end, far from family, with only other refugees as companions? Such thoughts sour his temper.
One day Ochan reminds Obulejo that it is his turn to prepare the meal.
‘It’s not,’ Obulejo retorts.
‘Yes it is,’ Ochan replies.
‘Anyway, even if it is my turn,’ Obulejo says, ‘I have cooked many times when it was your turn, or Ochaya’s or Longoya’s.’
‘And now you must cook again,’ Ochan replies.
‘Why can’t you cook for me today? Must I attend to my studies and perform women’s work as well?’
Maku enters the argument then. ‘Your agriculture classes do not begin until school ends at noon, so there is plenty of time to cook and get to the school compound on time.’
‘Mind your own business,’ Obulejo says. ‘These Acholi dogs wish to treat me as their servant.’
The Acholi boys are furious. ‘You insult our tribesmen! Apologise at once.’
‘I will not!’
‘Ma’di hyena!’
‘Acholi snake!’
The boys glare at each other, fists clenched.
It is Maku who defuses the situation. ‘I will cook today,’ he says, ‘and Ochan will assist me.’
All Obulejo’s bluster evaporates.
‘I wasn’t meaning you should do my work,’ he mutters.
Maku says nothing. He simply beckons Ochan and together they start to rinse the maize. The other Acholi boys leave. Obulejo is not sure what to do.
Later, Maku takes Obulejo aside. ‘What is happening with you?’ he asks quietly.
Obulejo does not reply. He cannot explain what it is that brings such bitter words to his lips, what makes him so wild with anger.
‘I know it is hard,’ Maku says, ‘but we must try to live in peace together as best we can.’
Obulejo longs to unburden himself to Maku, to spill out all his fear and confusion, but something makes him hold his tongue. Trust nobody is the first rule of survival in a refugee camp. Besides, it would disappoint Maku to learn that Obulejo has fallen into bullying and stealing and that he cries like a small child for their Musketeer family that is not even family.
That night, in the darkness Obulejo again weeps silently, as he has done so many nights in Kakuma. Everything is such a mess. He will never be able to sort it out.
In the morning he tries to hide the signs of his night’s distress from his housemates.
‘Are you ill?’ they ask him.
‘It is nothing,’ he replies.
He quickly volunteers to go for the water. Anything to get him out of the shelter till he can calm himself again. He plods his way to the resource centre closest to the school compound. The trucks have not yet arrived so Obulejo sinks to the ground, his head bowed. He sits there, unmoving, for a long time. After a while, anger begins to replace sorrow. Anger at the others, at first, but then more strongly towards himself. How could he have acted so badly? Especially to Maku, who is like an older brother. And to Ochan, his old schoolfriend.
Are you a child that you cannot control yourself? he berates himself.
Fear starts to squeeze his heart into a hard knot. You’ll soon see, he tells himself, they will cast you out! ‘Your behaviour is not good. Get out from here.’ That is what they will say. They don’t have to put up with you. You have no claim on them, or they on you.
None of the Musketeers is from the same clan, while Ochan and Longoya and Ochaya are not even from the same tribe. They cannot replace true family – parents, to whom a child is precious beyond price and who love their children their whole lives, older brothers who show the younger ones the right way to live, sisters who care, aunties and uncles who teach and nurture and protect – even though they have promised to stand up for each other.
It was from Uncle Sylvio Obulejo first heard the story of the Three Musketeers and the young d’Artagnan who joined them to fight loyally against evil and injustice. If only his musketeers could be so loyal!
Obulejo remembers Uncle at the fireside after supper, telling that story. He was the best storyteller of all; he made everybody laugh and cry and gasp out loud, and he knew stories from all over the world, as well as the traditional stories of his own people.
In his mind’s eye Obulejo sees his family gathered around the fire, the night sky studded with stars and flames casting pools of light on Uncle’s dark skin and on the faces of the listeners, the elders sipping sweet tea, his little sister Izia sleeping in her mother’s skirts and young Amoli curled up like a puppy next to Obulejo, listening, spellbound, as the big people talk and tell stories.
Amoli loves The Three Musketeers too. Every time Uncle gets to ‘All for one and one for all!’ Amoli shouts it out with him, and the grown-ups laugh loudly. Everyone loves the story about the band of brothers in faraway France, overcoming evil. Perhaps French people aren’t that different from us, Obulejo thinks: ‘all for one and one for all’ is nearly the same as the ‘one door’ – joti alu kaka – for Ma’di families.
But Uncle is gone, killed by the Rebels, and the family is scattered. It’s been a long time since he saw any of them and no word of their fate has come to him, no message. They are lost to him, perhaps forever.
But worse than the absence of his family is the knowledge that his parents would hardly recognise the boy they once knew. They would be ashamed of what he has become.
21
OBULEJO DOESN’T WANT to admit to Maku that he sees no point in anything, so he just keeps on attending his classes. Besides, the course gives him something to do other than fight and steal and attack others, even if some days he just sits in class like a basking alligator, absorbing nothing.
If the older brothers were around they would discuss the course with him, and ask him about the things he is learning. At home, education is what everyone talked about most of the time. For as far back as he can remember Obulejo has enjoyed watching and listening to his father earnestly discussing school and college assignments with the older brothers.
‘Education is the way forwa
rd for our people,’ he has heard his father say a thousand times.
It has always been taken for granted that all nine children in the family would go to school and Moini has worked hard to pay school and college fees for his sons and daughters.
Obulejo remembers how eagerly he waited for it to be his turn to start school. And when the day came at last, he set out in clean new shorts and shirt, with sharpened pencils and a crisp new exercise book, breathless with excitement. He would learn how to read and then all the enticing secrets in his big brothers’ books would be his. He recalls only too well the crushing disappointment of discovering, after struggling for hours all that first day with the twisty Arabic characters, that he still was unable to read. He’d run home weeping and Moini had laughed when he heard the reason.
‘You must have patience, my son. The skill of reading will be yours in time, I promise.’
And it happened just as his father promised. When the older brothers next came home from college and university on vacation how proudly Obulejo demonstrated his new skill to them! The brothers rewarded him with juicy chunks of sugar cane. He can still taste the sweet juice on his lips and tongue.
‘You have made a good start,’ his brothers praised him. ‘Now you must continue to work hard at your studies so that you will become an educated, responsible adult. Remember, if you want a door to open, education is the key.’
Obulejo promises himself that he will complete the agricultural course. It will be difficult, in the harsh conditions of the camp, but he will do it.
One of the worst problems he faces, as a student in Kakuma, is the ferocious daytime heat. He finds it almost impossible to concentrate. At night there’s not enough light in the shelter to read by. His solution is to wait till the late afternoon when the air becomes cooler, and to complete his reading and assignments then.
As he puts all his energies into his studies he starts to feel less burdened. He sets off for the school compound each day feeling that he is shrugging himself back into his own skin for the first time since that day on the hillside above Torit. Little by little, he warms to the course. It’s intriguing to compare what he is learning now with the traditional methods his family and clan have always used to grow their food.
Becoming a student again reawakens his fierce desire to complete his interrupted school studies. He wonders whether Juma has finished high school yet. Perhaps he is already in Cairo with Lino and Jaikondo. Lucky Juma!
Round and round in his mind, Obulejo chases a solution. School is free, in the camp, but there are books and other materials to be purchased, seven subjects to study for the intermediate certificate, assignments to complete and exams to pass. All that and water and rations to collect, wood for the cooking fires to gather, household chores to be done – and this in the unsettled, often dangerous surroundings of the camp.
He’ll have to get a job. It’s the only way, if he wants to continue his schooling. But he can hardly work and study at the same time. There aren’t enough hours in the day.
But he must not go back to his former ways. He wants to be an educated man, a good man, not someone lost in wickedness and crime, like some of the boys in the camp who do not attend school.
Grandfather always used to say, ‘An idle mind is the workshop of the devil.’
Perhaps if he works hard, he can achieve what he desires.
Perhaps he can find a way.
Increasingly Obulejo is spending more time alone in the shelter. Weary from a day of studying, reading and assignment writing, he often comes home to an empty tent. Maku and Ochan are bound up in church and school duties and nearly every evening Santino is out drinking, playing cards and dominoes with his friends, or visiting his girlfriend. Longoya and Ochaya are hardly ever home either. They spend most of their free time with their girlfriends, or other young men in the Ma’di sector. Pretty girls are all they talk about. Obulejo is now nearly seventeen, and he’s interested in girls too, but he tells himself he cannot think of such things yet; first he must find a way to continue his education. Girlfriends can come later.
Every day of the agricultural course he enters the school compound and passes the main office, where enrolments are taken. And every day he thinks, if only I could stay longer than the eight weeks of my course. Being in a school compound feels so familiar, so right. Then one day he comes home hugging a delicious secret, an idea that came to him unexpectedly. Maybe the spirit of his father visited him in his sleep and whispered in his ear. Whatever the reason, the idea is here, firmly lodged in his mind, and now he only has to summon the will to put it into action.
Next day, with barely a week of classes left, he finds himself stepping onto the verandah of the school admin building, pushing open the door of the office and walking in. Whole flocks of butterflies stir frenziedly in his stomach as he waits quietly for the receptionist’s attention.
At last she looks up. ‘Yes?’
Obulejo has gone over and over what he will say, but when it comes to the point his carefully rehearsed speech flies out of his head. He stands, mute.
‘Yes?’ the receptionist says again. She taps the edge of her pen against her teeth, impatiently.
‘Excuse me, madam,’ Obulejo says. ‘May I see one of the principals?’
He feels shame for his tattered clothes, his dusty legs and feet. He fully expects the woman to tell him to stop wasting her time and go away.
‘Wait here,’ she says and disappears. A few minutes later she returns. ‘Principal Kamau will see you now.’
What do you think you are doing? a mocking voice in his head whispers as he makes his way to Principal Kamau’s office. You’re just a boy, and a ragged one at that.
But a second voice is whispering, Take courage.
He decides that this is the one he will heed.
A tall, skinny man with grizzled hair is standing by the window.
‘I’d like to offer my services as a voluntary teacher,’ Obulejo blurts out, lowering his eyes.
He explains breathlessly. ‘I have been able to attend a short course. But I cannot continue because I can’t afford to buy paraffin for reading and studying at night. I completed junior and was in intermediate before I came to Kakuma, and I think I could teach the younger students. I ask no salary, just the opportunity to be part of your school.’
Principal Kamau is silent. Is he surprised? Angry? Obulejo waits anxiously for a response.
‘I commend you for your offer,’ the principal says at last. ‘Never before have I met a person so passionate about education that he would offer to teach others and ask no payment for it.’
The principal looks out of the window for a moment, then goes back to his desk. Obulejo’s heart falls. Is he going to be refused?
After another moment of silence, Principal Kamau says, ‘What subjects do you think you are capable of teaching?’
Obulejo’s heart leaps, but he answers calmly, politely. ‘Science, business education and history were my strongest subjects, sir.’
The principal strokes his chin.
At last he says, ‘I’ll speak to the other teachers.’
Obulejo’s heart is beating so hard he thinks it might burst through his chest wall.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he stammers, and leaves the office.
Will Principal Kamau and the other teachers agree? Who can tell. Whatever happens, he is glad he listened to the inner voice that told him to step up and take courage.
Ten days later Obulejo and his fellow students are presented with their graduation certificates. Having completed the agricultural course with high marks, Obulejo is free now to try his hand at teaching! Principal Kamau and the other teachers have agreed to give him a trial. He can hardly believe his luck.
He is assigned a science topic to prepare and present to one of the junior classes. Principal Kamau and three other teachers will observe from the back of the classroom, and if Obulejo conducts the lesson well, he will be taken on as a voluntary staff member.
&nbs
p; The topic he is assigned is the human digestive system, something he studied at St Xavier’s, and with a bit of effort Obulejo is able to recall most of what he was taught, more than two years ago. But just to make sure, he consults the small collection of textbooks in the makeshift school library and prepares diagrams and a set of quiz questions to test the students with at the end of his presentation.
He enters the crowded classroom nervously. ‘Today we are going to be thinking about food,’ he begins.
Dozens of faces stare back at him.
‘What better topic can there be for a refugee?’ he continues. ‘I am sure you are all interested in food, aren’t you?’
Most grin shyly. A few look hostile.
Step by step Obulejo leads the pupils through the lesson. He draws diagrams on the board so they can picture what goes on inside their own bodies. Sixty wriggling students soon become intrigued. When it is time for the quiz, Obulejo glances round the class to make sure everyone is paying attention, then puts the first question. ‘Where does the process of digestion begin?’
Sixty pairs of eyes stare back at him. Sixty tongues remain mute. He scans the class again. Have they heard? Did they understand? Has he explained the lesson well enough?
‘Look at the diagram on the board,’ he tells them. Then he points to a small boy whose feet barely reach the floor.
‘Can you give me the answer?’
The boy stares at Obulejo, then slowly raises one hand to his lips.
Obulejo nods encouragingly. ‘Correct. The mouth. Digestion begins in the mouth.’
‘What is the scientific word for chewing?’ he asks next.
‘Ma-sti-ca-tion,’ another child ventures hesitantly.
So far so good.
‘What does saliva do?’
One or two raise their hands, offer halting explanations.
‘Explain peristalsis.’
‘What is the function of the stomach acids?’
Trouble Tomorrow Page 12