PIECING IT TOGETHER
Judy
Never knowing what to expect, I settled on the couch with the most recent pages Benson and Alepho had given me. Their stories came to me in bits and not in any particular order. Sometimes computer generated, sometimes handwritten, they produced them double- and triple-folded from their pockets. Trying to piece together their lives, from their village through twelve or more years in exile, was like assembling a jigsaw puzzle without a picture as a guide. No references to dates, much less years, and they recounted incidents in towns and regions I couldn’t locate on any map. The few maps I did find of Sudan were in Arabic or English and maybe they were referring to the Dinka names of places.
The most confusing part for me, and what was emerging as the most difficult for them, was hardly mentioned in the 60 Minutes segment. After they were driven at gunpoint from the refugee camp in Ethiopia and forced to swim the Gilo River, they spent another year fleeing bombing raids by the government, two rebel armies who wanted to train them as future soldiers in various camps like Palataka and Natinga, ubiquitous hungry predators, and ever-present hunger and thirst. No wonder that what sounded like a hellhole to me, Kakuma Refugee Camp, had been a sanctuary for them.
So far, they hadn’t written anything about being in America.
I’d never journaled or kept a diary of any kind in my life. I began to write. I didn’t know what it would lead to, but my recent experiences had been so unique, I had to put them on paper.
CAT SCAN
Alepho
Judy said that a CAT scan was good and explained that it could look inside my head and see what was wrong. I was still confused.
She took me to the UCSD medical center. A nurse led me into a room and told me to take off my clothes and put on a shirt. The shirt had no back.
She led me to a room with a huge machine with a round hole. “Lie here,” she said and put her hand on a narrow cot. I laid back and she put pillows beside my head. Then she strapped my head to the table.
“Now, lie very still,” she said.
What could I do?
The cot began to move backward into the round hole of that big machine. That day my headache pounded inside, so I hoped the machine could see it.
Once my head was completely inside, the machine growled and clicked like teeth.
I’d been so stupid. Why had I agreed to go into that machine? Back in the refugee camp a guy had told me that some Americans were strange and ate people. When he’d been in the Pinyudo Refugee Camp in Ethiopia, the UN had brought them cans that said fish. But when they opened the cans they found pieces of fingernails. Someone told him it was human meat put into the cans and fish was written on it so that Africans wouldn’t know. I didn’t believe his story, but as I headed into that machine, I wondered if I would be ground up and put in the can and sent back to the refugee camps in Africa for people to feed on me. I almost changed my mind, but part of me thought the guy’s story was not true. The Americans had traveled to the moon. They had amazing machines that could do almost anything. I hoped this one could look inside and find out why my head did not stop hurting. With this pain, I couldn’t read. How could I go to school? I had to take this risk.
The machine whirred and clicked for a long time. My headache pain increased. I wanted to get out, so I thought about things to make the time pass. Some memories made me more unsure, like cautions the elders had given us about American men marrying only a single wife. That left many women who were not married and looking for husbands. Could my sponsor be selling me to one of those women? What did I know? I was an uneducated African. She could trick me into believing things I didn’t understand.
All these things went through my mind in that machine.
The next day the doctor said the CAT scan showed nothing. I was disappointed. I wanted to find out why my head felt like it was going to explode.
SMILING
Alepho
I had begun my job at Ralphs. Learning about my new environment gave me some skills about food. I needed to know more. I’d received training, but I could not remember many things.
I stood at the check stand and said, “Paper or plastic?” but the customers did not hear me well.
The job trainer said that we must smile at the customer when we ask, “Paper or plastic?” In my culture, one does not smile unless one is happy. I practiced showing my teeth in the mirror.
I was told that soap could not be bagged with food, but many things were in boxes or bottles. How could I know what they were? I tried to memorize their names and what they looked like. The difficulties came when the customers brought things like Oreos or Ajax to the register that I was not familiar with yet. Were they soap or food? Customers became upset when I put the wrong things together so if I didn’t know, I put them in a bag alone.
People sometimes asked where they could find an item. I liked helping people and these were good opportunities for me to learn where to find things, also. I led the customers on a search up and down the aisles. Some asked, “Are we getting close?” I couldn’t answer them. I didn’t know, unless it was soap they wanted, that aisle smelled nice. Some customers did not complete the journey and said, “Oh, never mind, I will find it.” Most people were kind and thanked me for the assistance.
Ralphs was not a refugee camp. Customer satisfaction meant everything. If the customer was not pleased, I could lose my job.
One customer asked Daniel to find Kleenex. Daniel took the man outside and pointed across the parking lot. “The clinics might be over there in those tall buildings.”
The customer became upset. Mr. Sullivan explained to Daniel and me that the man wanted Kleenex, not clinics. We didn’t know it was tissue. Mr. Sullivan was always patient and kind to us.
Mr. Bob Sullivan’s compassion saved me. If it were not for Mr. Sullivan, I would have been fired the first day.
NEGATIVE
Judy
Joseph explained the stool test to Alepho, and I picked up the container in its little white bag and took it to a lab. The results came back negative. Disappointing. I’d hoped they’d find something treatable and it would help the others as well. Word had gotten out that I’d taken a few guys to the doctor, so over the next weeks I began hearing from their friends with the same symptoms. Some worse.
What could it be? They’d been tested for the big stuff before they even left the camp, the things that could spread to us, AIDS, TB, etc. Who knew what they’d picked up in twenty years of not seeing a doctor and living in the conditions they had.
Alepho emailed me. I’m very tired at work. I have a stomach paining. I want to delay my studying.
For how long? He’d just started his ESL, English as a Second Language, classes. If he wanted to postpone his schooling, he really was feeling bad. So many times he’d said that education was the thing he wanted most. All of the Lost Boys did.
He said he’d had headaches in the camp, but he felt much worse here. How could that be? Stress? He had so many things to juggle: job, shopping, food preparation, sleep, laundry, and transportation to work. No wonder it seemed like he had little time for school, especially not feeling well. He also must have missed aspects of life in Africa, such as companionship and camaraderie. Benson had started working the day shift at the Ralphs in Hillcrest and Benjamin had just been hired as well.
From their writing, I’d learned that life had been difficult, hopeless, and cruel on their journey; they’d never known when they might starve to death or just get killed, but they were always together—thousands of boys. Together. Once they made it to Kakuma, they went to school and ate together once a day from a shared pot. They built their houses together. They played soccer with balls made from clothes wrapped around balloons, or grew vegetables together at the water tap. In the evening, without electricity, they sat outside, told stories, joked, played a five-string guitar, and sang. Whether it was w
orking, having fun, or suffering, the experience was shared. America must have felt lonely.
PIRATES!
Judy
I’d had big plans for their first Thanksgiving, but when the schedules came out, all three were working Thanksgiving Day. New guys, made sense. Thank God they had jobs. I looked forward to celebrating their first Christmas in America.
We managed to organize a trip to Disneyland during the last week in November. I let Cliff skip school and he came along. A day with the guys would have more impact on him than a day in a classroom; he’d have plenty of those in his future. I was glad he still enjoyed palling around with them.
Even though the guys had been in America over three months now, the fun of discovering my world through their eyes hadn’t diminished. Before coming, they may never have heard of McDonald’s or Disneyland but knew our important presidents, states and their capitals, and appreciated the fundamental importance of things in our Constitution—like separation of church and state. The scads of stuff in our stores didn’t interest or impress them. But they sure appreciated our educational opportunities and freedom. We’d see what they thought of Disneyland.
I’d assumed a weekday would mean the place would be empty. It wasn’t. I asked Cliff, “Where shall we start?”
“Matterhorn!”
“Okay, let’s do it.”
When we came off the mountain, Benjamin and Lino said they’d liked it, but Alepho said the speed made him feel a bit dizzy.
“Hmm,” I told Cliff, “maybe that wasn’t the best choice for the first ride in their lives. How about something slower next?” I should have remembered that they’d asked me about some of the fast, dangerous sports they’d seen on TV, as though they’d been completely dumbfounded that people would do something like that for enjoyment. Or, they’d wondered why I liked to ski. Surely if I’d had adrenaline rushes from too many horrible experiences, I’d feel the same. “How about Pirates? Line is usually short. I think they’ll like all the colorful animatronic figures.”
“Sure.”
I knew Cliff wouldn’t say no to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. After watching the Peter Pan movie when he was two, he’d become obsessed with pirates and spent his twos and threes running around in a bandanna with a sword.
We headed through Adventureland. “Oh,” I laughed, “the Jungle Cruise. What would they think of that?”
“And Indiana Jones,” Cliff said.
“Yea, that would be good too.” Jeeps on a safari. Hadn’t the search for the ark been somewhere in Ethiopia? Right next door to Sudan.
As I’d hoped, the line was short for Pirates of the Caribbean. They liked the talking mechanical parrot in front. Wait until they saw what was inside.
“First we go on a boat,” I explained.
Alepho looked concerned.
“Don’t worry, it’s on a track.”
“Track?”
“Totally safe. But don’t be surprised when we go down two small waterfalls. That takes us to a river underground.”
Benjamin and Lino leapt on board. Alepho, a bit hesitant, climbed in too. I loaded into the row behind them with Cliff and Benson, and we floated along past the restaurant to croaking frogs, banjo music, and fireflies. “I know those insects,” Benson said.
Above the entrance to the underground cavern, a skull in a pirate hat told us to keep our limbs inside. “Here come the water drops,” I said.
Enough other passengers screamed that I didn’t know if the guys had, but we survived the falls and headed smoothly along to the cheerful “Yo-Ho” music.
Downriver the music slowed and morphed into a darker melody. A deep voice out of nowhere chanted, “Dead men tell no tales.” I’d forgotten about that morbid warning.
Around the bend, a partially clothed pirate skeleton sprawled across the sand. Another skeleton had a sword run through his torso that pinned him to the wall. An animated giant crab fed on a third body.
Oh, my God. Dead people. Stop the boat. Please let me jump off right here and now and take my friends with me. How could I have forgotten about all the skeletons?
The boat didn’t stop, of course. The ominous music played on and the voice that sounded like God kept chanting, “Dead men tell no tales.” I hadn’t forgotten. The aftermath of violence had just never meant anything to me before. Skeletons lying in sand. Could there be a worse image? Benson had given me a story he called “The Skeleton Tree” about a tree in the middle of a terrible desert crossing where so many people who couldn’t go farther had stopped and never gotten up again. The ground was strewn with their bones.
I tensed. What would their reactions be? The three in front of us were talking amongst themselves in Dinka. I couldn’t see Benson’s expression, but if ever I’d felt vibrations of discomfort, it was then. I wanted the ride to be over.
But that was just the beginning. More skeletons, singing, steering a ship, drinking rum. At least the cute part was ahead with jolly pirates singing to cats, the dog with the jail key and the happy “Yo-Ho” song playing through it all.
Real-sounding explosions startled me. Cannonballs seemed to fly across our boat and strike the water. Oh, get us out of here.
When we got to the cute part, it wasn’t cute. Pirates were ransacking a town, threatening to chop off a townsman’s head, drowning someone else in a well, and capturing and selling women. Alepho had given me a story about his cousin who had been made a slave. A real slave trade still existed in Sudan. Their villages had been marauded by men on horseback, pirates of the desert. Such alive-looking figures made the whole thing worse. Skeletons were better.
What were my guests making of this whole experience? Americans had re-created some animatronic version of their childhood nightmare for entertainment? The ride seemed to go on forever.
Finally, the boat jerked, we climbed a water ladder, and emerged into the light of day. If they were shocked by it all, they were too polite to show it or comment. I was too afraid to ask.
We went on more rides with more benign themes, except the pile of skulls and hundred-foot python in Indiana Jones that also hadn’t stuck in my mind from previous rides. Benjamin and Lino loved the fast ones like Space Mountain, but Alepho didn’t. Benson enjoyed the music and creative aspect of it all the most. We ended the day with A Small World.
I couldn’t tell what they’d made of it all. Overwhelmed? Just wondering why? Too many fast rides and too much fast food?
Maybe I’d reacted to the skeletons and violence more than they had. But it had been a jolting reminder I was thankful for. I needed to be aware of things from their perspective as much as I could.
It had also made me wonder. Since it was a child’s ride and represented the aftermath of so much violence, did some parents react the way I did when they took their children? And, what if there had been a bare breast somewhere in there? Would that symbol of life and sustenance have generated more outrage than all that depiction of death and destruction?
All in all, it had been a memorable day and Cliff had fun showing them around, but I doubted it had been near the adventure of our first day together at Walmart.
The next morning, I received an email from Benson:
Thank you for making me aware and awake in the world we are in and taking me to the land created by man wonder of brain technology. It gave me a lesson that man can do anything. Those Wonders of Disneyland will make me think for a week of the man who made such fun of real life excitement.
Had Walt Disney ever received a better compliment?
MORE GRANDER
Alepho
One day that we didn’t work, Judy and Cliff took Benson, Lino, Benjamin, and me to a place called Disneyland. Judy put the car in a huge building and we rode a small train to the entrance.
We walked through a town with stores and different kinds of vehicles, even a bus pulled by a horse. E
verything smelled so fresh, fresher than the American smell, so different, like another world I’d never experienced before. Judy and Cliff talked a lot about going on rides and which one. I was eager to find out what were these rides.
We came to a mountain and stood in a line. Judy said she was sorry for the large crowd, but the line was only a few minutes, not like the water line in the camp for hours or the ration line for a whole day.
Our turn came and we sat in these things that took off and went fast around the mountain and in the mountain. My belly jumped, like on the plane, but the plane only bumped a few times, this bumped and raced around the whole time.
Afterward, I sweated and was a little bit sick. Why did people want to subject their emotions to that?
We walked through the crowd. Cliff told us about the rides we passed. Things like small, fat elephants with wings that flew and coffee cups that spun around.
“Look,” I said to Benson. “Adults and kids enjoy the same things together. That makes a family bond.” I’d never experienced that in my life.
We went on a ride called Pirates of the Caribbean. This ride was slow and cool inside. We came to an area with skeletons wearing clothing and moving and doing things like they were alive. “Look,” I told Benjamin, “dead people are a part of the culture here. The people are dead, but the bones are living.” It was like a nightmare that I’d had on my journey where skulls talked to each other.
The boat floated through a town with large moving toy people and dogs and even a donkey. I wanted the boat to go slower. I couldn’t see it all. This was something I could never imagine.
After that we went on a jeep ride and then a place for food. After the lunch, Cliff bought this giant colorful flower thing. He tried to get us to have one, but I’d never seen anything like that before. Cliff pulled off big pieces and put them in his mouth. “It’s cotton candy,” he said and offered me some.
Disturbed in Their Nests Page 25