• • •
I walked for three days in that large group. I knew no one. Most children had parents who helped them with the walking and gave them any little bit of food or water they found. I had no food, no water, and no family. I’d already been starved to a stick, barely able to shuffle my feet along the dusty road. Weakness overtook me. Each step became a huge effort that needed all my focus. I couldn’t keep up with these strangers.
Ahead, a huge mango tree spread its branches. I went into its shade and collapsed on the ground. This was it. I couldn’t go farther.
I looked up. Mangoes grew from a nearby tree, but my arms were too weak to even raise up; I could never climb for those mangoes. I’d come close to dying before, but even then, I’d had hope of finding someone or something. In this mess, adults couldn’t even help themselves. They weren’t going to help a strange boy.
I rolled to my side. Smoke curled up into the leaves from the other side of the tree. Long legs and dark boots came into my view. Someone else was in this place. A man sat near where I’d fallen. He looked at me, and his look told me that he realized I was about to die.
His wife was preparing grain in a small can. When it was cooked, she brought the food to the long-legged man.
He said, “Bring another spoon.”
“This is too small,” she said. “There is no way you can share it with that boy.”
They argued. Their angry words passed over me like a dream. The man said, “If that kid dies, you will be responsible. It won’t change my life to share this little bit of food.”
The wife sobbed. “My five children all died. Why? Why did this kid survive and not my children? Why?”
She threw her utensils down and stomped away.
The man gave her an understanding look and said to me, “Share this grain with me.”
He held out his spoon and gave me small bites. My body shook, and I sweated. After a bit, I felt better. I wasn’t going to die. Not today.
The man who had saved my life packed up his things and moved on with his wife. I rested there in the shade, looking up through the leaves and small green fruit until afternoon, when I had the strength to get up and move on, too.
Before that day, I’d begun to think that all humans were bad, but that man changed my thinking. Now, remembering those events, I also know that his wife suffered, like me. She wasn’t greedy, but she was hurt by the loss of her children. That experience made me see people in a new way. I could see that whether adult or child, man or woman, rich or poor—war changed people.
My journey to America had brought me to an unknown world, where people flew on planes, rode buses and motorbikes, and went to a place called Disneyland. Everything smelled differently, even the air. I might as well have been on the moon.
Exposure to the unknown had its advantages and disadvantages. Coming to a new world was exciting. Who doesn’t like new things? I met interesting human beings with knowledge and understanding about life and the universe. I experienced things I’d never imagined.
A big disadvantage was that I was lost again. I had to cope with being farther away from family. In the refugee camp, we’d never received news about our home, where war still raged. Part of me wanted to forget those hopes that my family might still be alive and move on with my life. I wanted to be humble and do my best to make a new life for myself in my new land, with my new culture and new language.
Here, we had a card that bought food and we knew how to go to the store, but they said the card was only good for three months and then we needed a job. How did we get a job?
People helped us. They donated food, clothes, dishes, and towels and offered guidance. That never happened in the camp.
We were grateful to America because they’d brought us from that most desperate situation. Here we could get our education. Make our life. We appreciated everything. When so much of your life has been just barely surviving, you become grateful for anything.
When my feet touched America, at times I felt I was dreaming. Since the attack on my village, there’d been moments that I could not distinguish between dreaming and reality. I’d lived that violent life while awake; now in America, when I shut my eyes, the displacement, unceasing fierce journey, loss, confusion, sickness, starvation, wild animals, bombs, and those soldiers with bloodshot eyes, eager to fire their guns—it all came to me again when I slept. I woke with my heart pounding my ribs, sometimes lying on the floor where I’d fallen from the bed.
Even small things made me uncomfortable or gave me anxieties. Like not knowing the food. So, we drank sodas and ate chips. Headaches kept me from reading and learning. My stomach gave me pain. This suffering wasn’t as bad as no food, but it kept me from working on my new life. I couldn’t solve everything as soon as I wanted, but I could learn about food.
Daniel brought the pot of asida to the table in front of the couch. We gathered around and in turn dipped our fingers into the gooey warm dough like we had in the camp and on our journey.
I said to Benson, “We will ask Judy to show us about the American food.”
ANTS DISTURBED IN THEIR NEST
Judy
I settled onto the couch with the stack of writing that Benson had handed me in the car on the way to the game. I opened up Benson’s first.
The life of the Dinka changed according to the seasons. We harvested in the autumn and planted at the end of the summer or the middle of spring. When heavy rains came, the brooks filled with water, and the young men took the cattle to graze at the cattle camp, a huge grassy area where all of the villages collected their cows. When the sun shone again, the sky was clear except for the smoke soaring from the village cooks and an outpouring of tiny winged termites. Marabou storks, swallows, glossy starlings, shoebill herons, and the egrets that walk with cows flew in to reap the termite blooming. Indolent birds perched at the tops of the heglig and acacia trees, and ground hornbills waddled lazily along the prairie, howling.
Benson’s distinctive voice sprang from the pages. His lush descriptions of a village life still so dear to him sounded just like the young man I was getting to know in person. He’d once told me how his mom made termite soup in enough detail that if I’d had the ingredients I could have cooked it myself. He was seven when he left home. How does such a young boy remember those things? I imagined that during the terrifying nights and sweltering days of his journey, with no loving parents to rescue him, those were the memories that kept him alive. Yearning for those old times must have etched them into his mind.
His writing voice differed from his speaking voice only in its degree of richness. English was his fourth language after Dinka, Swahili, and some Arabic. Writing gave him the luxury of time to express himself in English. All the young men sprinkled uncommon words into their simple English that often seemed incongruent with their language skills. Perhaps they’d read them or learned them from their Kenyan teachers. I never used the word “indolent” myself, although I knew its meaning. But I had no idea what a heglig tree was, and had never thought of termites blooming, yet that was exactly what they appeared to do when they took flight.
I read Benson’s account of life in the village again and then picked up the page Alepho had written.
The name Lost Boys came to be when our village was attacked by fierce Arab horsemen. We, little boys, spewed out of the blazing village like a colony of ants disturbed in their nest. We ran in different directions, not knowing where we were going. We gathered some fruits for our breakfast and lunch. We, little boys, were so messy, all chaos and cries filling the dark, fiercely lightless night.
I put the pages down. The intensity of his words stunned me. And surprised me. He was so quiet, usually, and reserved when he spoke. These words were on fire. I read on.
Young grown-up boys who survived that disastrous attack directed us. We trekked a thousand miles. I could tell how some of my friends disappeare
d, wild animals devoured them; an ogre snatched another, and his last cry echoed in the darkness.
I can’t forget the deprivation from my home. My lovely village, Juol, full of palm and coconut trees, faded in a way that I can’t understand.
I wondered what he meant by an ogre. Perhaps some human monster the boys had encountered as they fled from the wars. It wasn’t hard to believe that some people behaved monstrously with these children; they did here.
Alepho had been five and still living in his village when Benson disappeared. Benson had been at his sister’s house two hours north when her village was attacked. Two years later, Alepho fled during another attack on his village. Reading Alepho’s experience as a seven-year-old in his vivid poetic words was nothing like reading the news stories. While reports saddened me, they were too soon forgotten. Knowing Alepho and Benson, and hearing of their loss and the journey forced on them, I didn’t even realize I’d stopped breathing. When I finally did take a breath and let it out, I knew I couldn’t read Alepho’s words again. Not right now. I would need to save them to read another time.
That had happened in 1989, the year Cliff was born and the Berlin Wall came down. Europe was moving on from its dark past, but a genocide that would kill two million and displace five million was just getting started—yet it wasn’t even in the news. I wanted to know more. I often heard about Muslims killing Christians, Arabs killing blacks. They’d been living side by side for a thousand years. Why now?
I got up from the couch, grabbed an empty bag, and went outside. Casey and Vader followed me into the orange grove. Even though Cliff was twelve, I still worried about him crossing streets or walking to the store after school. Imagining him in a situation similar to the Lost Boys was too painful. Impossible.
As a mother, I couldn’t stop thinking about their mother. She’d had no choice but to send her sons out into the night in the midst of a battle. They didn’t know if she was alive to this day. She couldn’t know if they’d survived.
I filled the bag with Valencia oranges. What a different world we were fortunate to live in.
SAINT LUKE’S
Judy
Earlier in the week I’d suggested to the guys that we go to the zoo on Sunday, since Paul and Cliff would be at a baseball game. When I arrived to pick them up, Benson said, “There is a meeting at the church. A professor has returned from Sudan. He has videos. Do you want to come with us?”
That sounded interesting. I’d heard about the church several blocks south of the IRC offices where a group of Sudanese had become members. The zoo would always be there. They were teaching me flexibility.
We were the first to arrive at the church. As we waited, Alepho looked irritated, frequently checking his watch, which someone had donated, and asking where everyone was. One month, and he’d become just like an American.
I’d planned to get us all lunch at the zoo, and clearly there was no possibility of food here. A headache was coming on. I popped two Excedrin. Alepho saw the pills. “I have headache.”
He always did. God, I understood how he felt. I’d struggled with them for years. They’d robbed me of joy and productivity so many days. I had to find the cause and a solution for him.
I handed him two Excedrin. “Many boys have headaches,” he said.
“You mean other Lost Boys have headaches?”
“Yes, many.”
Weird. Perhaps they were dehydrated or still not eating enough food. They were all still so thin. “Have you eaten anything yet today?”
“No,” he said.
I gave him a scolding look.
He smiled. “Eating makes my headache worse.”
It didn’t sound like our headaches were from the same cause.
People began to straggle into the basement, mostly young Sudanese men—Lost Boys, I assumed. Each one came directly up to me, hand extended, and introduced himself. What a nice custom. Going right up to the person you do not know and saying hello. Especially when someone like me was such an obvious outsider. I wondered if the same thing would happen if I took one of them to a meeting in my neighborhood. Actually, I didn’t wonder. A few would greet them, but most would not. The baseball game had proved that.
The basement had filled with thirty or more Lost Boys, all of whom had politely greeted me, when Dr. Jok of Loyola University arrived and introduced himself. He’d just returned from Sudan and had a video and news to share. We took seats on folding chairs behind banquet tables.
I didn’t have to look around the room to know I was the only white person there. This was a first for me. Although they’d made every effort to welcome me, the feeling was still awkward. I felt like an interloper.
The video began. A soldier in a smartly tailored, camouflage uniform, orange beret, and mirrored sunglasses was being interviewed by Dr. Jok, who was both the cameraman and interviewer.
Benson, who was seated beside me, explained. “That is captain of SPLA.”
The man was dashing, like a Hollywood mercenary, with his bodyguard standing behind him, holding a large automatic gun of some kind.
“He is rebel fighting to save the Dinka villages in the south.”
“What language is he speaking?” I whispered.
“Arabic.”
“Can you understand him?”
Benson smiled. “Yes. He say he has been shot two times in the chest.”
Damn. He didn’t just look the part, he lived the part. Medical treatment in the field couldn’t be that great and he’d survived twice.
The interview went on for twenty minutes. I didn’t want to interrupt Benson, who was listening intently, to get a translation. They were all eager for news from back home.
The video switched to a village, and then out to a cattle camp. The 60 Minutes clip had just shown brief glimpses of their homeland. This was one of the reasons I had wanted to come.
The land was rich, with rusty-colored earth, beautiful—just like they had described—and flat like our Great Plains, with lush green grasses and occasional acacia trees of that distinctive African variety that has a flat top and spreading limbs. I pictured a giraffe reaching a long black tongue up into their thorny branches. There were no giraffes in the video, or any other wildlife for that matter, only the colorful Dinka cattle with their magnificent horns, which they used to fight off lions.
The camera panned to a large grass-roof structure that was supported by sturdy poles and open on all sides. Benson leaned over. “That is where the old people and the girls rest. The camp can move where the grass is good and they build a new one.” I heard longing in his voice.
The young men in the film were tall, slender, and well nourished. They moved unhurriedly and gracefully, holding a stick and singing to their cows as they drifted among them. Their shirts were as long as dresses and some had a sarong tied over one shoulder. In the center of the camp, where the girls and younger boys milked the cows and did other chores, the boys wore nothing and the girls were bare-breasted and wore short, flaring skirts.
“These are the girls,” Benson said. “Girls not married. Women are married. They wear dress. Only the girls can milk cows. Not women. Men can milk cow if there are no girls. My father had ninety cow.”
Lots of rules about who could and couldn’t milk. Given that Benson left his village at seven years old, how much he knew about his culture amazed me. Although he was never boastful, in keeping with the Dinka tradition of modesty, I sensed a deep pride in his people and his country.
He pointed out the teens standing around. “The young people from many villages go to cattle camp to tend the cows and sometimes that is where they meet the person they will marry.”
No wonder the mood was so cheery. Laughter and talking rang out over the ever-present mooing of the herd.
“I did not go to cattle camp,” Benson said with a definite sadness in his voice. “I left bef
ore that time.”
I felt for his loss. What an ideal environment for teens. Working together in a structured situation with plenty of social contact and teamwork, all thrown together, much like our college years.
The video shifted from the cattle camp to scenes of schools and hospitals that had been demolished in the war.
“They always bomb these things the most,” Benson said. “They don’t build them anymore because the government bomb them. Kids go to school under the trees now.”
Throughout the video presentation, more people arrived. Women in brightly colored long dresses and matching head wraps. Some had babies and young children and brought food they placed in the kitchen behind the hall. A little boy nearby kept staring at me from behind his mother’s skirts. I smiled and waved. He smiled and ducked back behind his mom.
The video skipped to another village with a celebration in progress. “A bull is killed,” said Benson.
“What is a cow worth?” I whispered.
“You can buy a big bull for seven thousand shillings. That is one hundred dollar US. To buy a wife costs seventy-five cows.”
Seventy-five cows. Substantial dent in the family net worth. Nice to hear their culture placed such a high value on women.
“Do people hope for a baby girl or a baby boy?” I asked, wanting to hear how valued girls were.
“Either one is good if it is healthy. Many of the babies die.”
“Yes, just healthy, of course.” Nice that both genders were valued.
In the celebrating village, the huts were large and circular with red mud-brick walls and roofs made of fronds or grass, laid in impossibly tight, neat, symmetrical patterns. The huts seemed to be clustered into smaller compounds within the village, and in the background tidy rows of corn and some kind of grain grew.
Benson anticipated my question. “These are sorghum, millet, and wheat.”
I asked about the huts clustered in groups behind walls.
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