Boy Soldier

by Cola Bilkuei

  Now I was more angry than ever – at my father, but mostly at the Arab government and their militias. Why did they have to burn down grass huts and kill blind old ladies? What threat did she ever pose to them?

  Perhaps my indoctrination at Pinyudo and Marakus was meant to kick in now, and make the death of my grandmother spur me to rejoin the army. But I was changed now, I was growing up, and I had never been a natural soldier. I didn’t rush off to find the nearest SPLA unit. Instead I buried my anger inside myself. I didn’t show my feelings to anyone, not even Wour. All I thought was that I had to keep going forward and get out of Nimule.

  In early 1993, Nimule started to be bombed again by the Sudanese government, a new escalation in the overall bombing campaign that went from 1990 to 1995. There was a bridge outside Nimule which was bombed, cutting us off. Within days, the bombings intensified, as if they were trying to wipe us out altogether. Still, Nimule was well guarded by the SPLA and the government infantry didn’t actually try to invade. They just wanted to make our lives unbearable. Father Leo and the sisters soon began to pack up the mission in case they had to leave in a hurry. Up to thirty bombs a day were falling around the mission, and I could see that, as foreigners, they were beginning to think that the risk to their lives was becoming too high. We were lucky that none of the bombs fell within the church compound, but it always felt as though it was only a matter of time before we would be hit.

  The tension never stopped. We would hear the hum of the plane before the bombs came, and when the bombs were being dropped, we wouldn’t know where they’d fall. The plane being overhead didn’t mean we were where the bombs would fall, and the plane having moved on didn’t mean we were safe. The explosions would deafen us for fifteen or thirty minutes afterwards. I slept normally, but was always half-ready for aeroplane noise. Even when humanitarian planes came from the UN, people would run everywhere. I adjusted to it, but was always on my toes. The sisters put tarpaulins over their house with grass over the top of it to hide their roof, but that was all they could do other than pray.

  Father Leo suggested that we go to Uganda to seek assistance from the Catholic Church there. The mission’s territory straddled the border, so we hoped it would be just like Nimule but without the bombing. We held high hopes for Uganda. Even though it was only a few kilometres away, on the other side of a simple bridge, it seemed like a promised land.

  For Father and the sisters, crossing the border in to Uganda would be possible, but for us Sudanese boys living with them, leaving Nimule would be extremely difficult. The SPLA were all around the mission and the town, and they would want us to fight with them, not go to Uganda. When I had left Pinyudo, I had been impatient to fight. But the school and the sisters in Nimule had changed me. Now, education was everything to me. I thought back to our family life, and how I had never been to school, and how education was held in low regard. In my mind, it seemed that all of our problems – as a family, as a tribe, as a people – resulted from not being educated. I had heard that John Garang’s children, and the children of the other SPLA leaders, had been sent to school in countries like Cuba. We asked ourselves: if the point of our life is to fight a war to defend our country, why are our leaders’ children, boys the same age as us, spending all their time in schools overseas?

  Father Leo and his superiors gave us – myself, Kuot, Garang, Wour and two other boys – the message that they would help to get us to Uganda. We were the only boys in the mission then, and Father Leo and the sisters felt obliged to protect us, so they said they would send us ahead of them to Uganda. I waited as patiently as I could for this promise to become a reality, but the reality never seemed to eventuate. With the bombings growing worse than ever and the delays getting the better of us, we six boys got together and decided to make the journey on our own. We thought that in Uganda we would be safe. I thought I could continue my education and life might improve.

  I didn’t know it, but I was about to leave my homeland for the last time.

  CHAPTER 4

  Uganda

  SIX OF US LEFT THE MISSION TOGETHER: Angelo Kuot, his brother Garang, Thomas Wour Kuol, Kuot’s friend Matouh, a boy named James Arop, and me. We left on market day – the day the markets were held in Uganda. A lot of people were allowed to walk the three hours from Nimule across the border into Uganda on market day, to buy and sell food and other goods.

  The church had packed our meagre possessions into bags and taken them ahead. As we walked, we talked constantly about the new life we imagined for ourselves in Uganda. We talked it up into a utopia: a land where the clamour of guns, bombs and screaming people would be replaced with the gentle sounds of birds singing and wind blowing through savannah grasslands.

  I felt as though the war had taken a great toll on me. I felt like an old man, worn down by the life that had been handed to me since I had left my village. Already I had experienced what men twice or three times my age should not have had to endure. The weight of all my memories wearied me, like a heavy blanket over my head and shoulders, hampering my ability to move, to think, to stay alert. Yet I needed these faculties in order to stay alive. I was about sixteen years old now, and this was to be a most dangerous time.

  As we had no goods to sell, and no adults accompanying us, and no papers, we couldn’t pass through the official border crossing on the bridge. It would be obvious that we were trying to try to escape permanently to the other side. There were people smugglers you could pay on both sides of the border, but we didn’t have enough money. We knew that there would be SPLA soldiers, complete with guns, on the Sudanese side, and on the Ugandan side there would be government soldiers in full military uniform.

  So we decided that to be safe we had to walk fifteen kilometres – all of us in bare feet – to find an unpatrolled place to cross.

  We planned to cross the river, a tributary of the Albert Nile, that divided Sudan and Uganda at Nimule. When we arrived at a narrow point in the river, even though it was only about fifty metres across we could see how difficult the crossing would be, due to the strong current and the thick bamboo and reeds that grew from its banks, not to mention the tsetse flies buzzing everywhere and the crocodiles that infested the waters. But we were also paranoid about the SPLA, waiting for someone to sneak up behind us and interrogate us. As much as the river scared us, staying in Sudan scared us more.

  As we entered the water and found that it was rising to our chests, we realised there was another complication – only two of us, Angelo and I, could swim.

  Thank goodness for all those days in my childhood when I had learnt to swim in the River Nile. I could do freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke – we had spent a lot of time swimming to the little islands in the middle of the river to join the fishermen who were eating. I was one of the better swimmers in my village.

  The water was deeper than we first thought and the current was stronger. Thinking quickly, we sent Angelo to the other side with a long rope, which he tied to a tree. We tied the other end to a tree on our side. One by one, clinging desperately to the rope, we all made it safely to the other side – to Uganda.

  After we crossed, we were making our way through a banana plantation, which was also thick with pawpaw trees and bamboo, when we were attacked by bees. Arop and Wour went to cut down some bananas and accidentally cut down a bee hive. We all ran in different directions, some back towards the water, some into the bush. Twenty minutes later, the bees all seemed to have disappeared and we came back together to compare stings. Wour’s whole body was covered in stings, and some of the others had badly stung faces. I got a few stings on my arms and torso. They hurt big-time and swelled up, but nothing as bad as Wour, whose whole face swelled up painfully. Angelo was laughing.

  We would have to walk another twenty-four hours into Uganda to the town where we had been told the church was. It was very green, with villages farming sugar cane, maize, potatoes, tomatoes, bananas and mangoes. As it was the rainy season, it was very humid and tiring. One thing
I noticed was how there was no UN presence: Uganda, being relatively peaceful, was not reliant on the UN as Ethiopia had been.

  As we made our way deeper into Ugandan territory, worrying about being arrested, we tried to fit in with the people we came across. It was almost impossible. We looked like refugees: our bodies had become thin as rails, and we looked and felt as tired as elderly men. Yet instead of people taking pity on us on those rural dirt roads, they more often targeted us.

  The biggest threat was the Ugandan rebels, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), who were hiding in the bushes everywhere, waiting to leap out and rob people coming to and from the markets. The LRA, we heard, would steal the goods, shoot and kill the men and sometimes rape the women. The LRA was a separatist guerrilla movement in northern Uganda, and their conflict was not with us but with the government in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. But we Sudanese were fair targets if we came into their sights. When they wanted to rob civilians, they didn’t discriminate. They came up to us in disguise, wearing the SPLA uniform. They chatted in a friendly way with us, speaking our language and talking about shared tribal history. Then they pulled their guns and told us to give them our money.

  Thankfully, though, they weren’t thorough in their robbery. Some of us had managed to hide money in our clothes, and when we made our way up to the main road we were able to buy some sugar cane from a roadside stall. Eventually we arrived at an open market. There were people lined up for all different kinds of goods: lines for dried fish, clothes, vegetables and even some lines for accommodation. Each of us lined up for our choice of food. I chose fish. I stood in line for about twenty minutes, ordered my fish and waited another ten minutes to eat it. It tasted good, and had become cheaper because by now it was about 3 pm and the markets would close at 4 pm. We bought some extra to take with us. I lined up for sweet potato and mangoes to eat along the way. Our plan was to walk now until six the following morning.

  There was a moon casting enough light to see. As we walked along the road, traffic would come and we’d jump into the bushes to hide. We were also scared of wild animals in the bushes, but getting caught by soldiers or police was a bigger threat. Along the way we became separated several times. Some of us stopped because we were tired, while the others had enough energy to carry on. Then the leading group would stop and the slower ones would catch up. Halfway through the night we came to a small village. We could hear talking in the distance. They were speaking the language of the Acholi people, supporters of the LRA and tribal enemies of the Dinka. The Acholi blamed the Dinka for the war in Sudan, because John Garang was Dinka, and the SPLA was so closely identified with him. The Acholi perceived the war as a tribal conflict between the Dinka and the Arabs. So we, in turn, were taught to mistrust the Acholi.

  When we heard these men speaking, we were frightened that they were LRA guerrillas. Kuot, Garang and Matouh spoke fluent Acholi but Matouh’s bottom teeth had been removed, a Dinka tradition, which was a sure givaway.

  Suddenly a soldier surged at us from the bushes, yelling in Acholi. We all ran in fright, dispersing into the bushes and running until we lost him. After scattering into the bush on both sides of the road, once the soldiers had passed, we continued walking in the same direction, not on the road but beside it. I met up with one and then two of the others. On the far side of the road the other three were doing the same thing. We walked in the bush beside the road like this for two hours before hearing each other’s voices and meeting up. This was how we found each other again.

  We arrived at the Catholic mission, at a place called Kichwa, at night-time. Kichwa, which was a seminary, was a part of the Torit Diocese and was connected to the mission we had left in Nimule. Our instincts told us that the missions were safe havens. Sister Shaun and Sister Rita had come here ahead of us, with our clothes and some food. Having escaped the bombing across the border, Sister Sophia was going to work here as an administrator.

  We sat under a tree and it was lovely to see Sister Sophia. But her initial warmth wasn’t a sign of things to come. When we first arrived under the tree, the sisters came to us with some maize and beans, but even though we were the only people sleeping outside, it was immediately apparent that there wasn’t enough for the six of us. We took this as a signal that we weren’t welcome to stay. Our relationship with the sisters seemed suddenly to have changed since Nimule. They had looked after us in Sudan, but now, when we were more helpless than ever, in a foreign country, they didn’t seem to want to know us. We thought they had limitless goodwill and resources, and, because of their faith, they were going to solve all of our problems. Faith had its limits, clearly. It wasn’t their fault that they disappointed us. It was that our expectations were too high. We’d thought they would always be our saviours. We’d thought they were perfect, because they were close to God, but clearly they were human, like the rest of us.

  We weren’t given accommodation inside the mission buildings, so we slept outside. When it rained we would shift our belongings onto a veranda. It was obvious that we were only allowed to stay here temporarily until they could find us a space in a refugee camp.

  We thought we were guaranteed help at Kichwa, but eventually we were turned away. A watchman was called to get us off the property. But we hadn’t come this far to give up easily. Instead of leaving as we were told, we decided to stay and sleep on the termite-infested grass outside the church doors.

  After a long time of pleading and waiting, the bishop finally came to see us. He told us he would send us to a camp, Allara, that was holding more than 30,000 refugees. We had heard about Allara, and knew that many of the tribespeople there were enemies of the Dinka and might not welcome us. We told the bishop of our concerns, but he didn’t seem to listen or care. He told us that the only other alternative was to return to Sudan, which we knew we couldn’t do.

  Unable to stay or go, we decided to make some kind of protest. We started a four-day hunger strike, which we spent praying in front of the bishop’s church. We prayed loudly and constantly, hoping that the bishop would return with a changed mind and a desire to help us. We still ate a little bit, a few biscuits in our pockets, so that we could make our point without suffering too much!

  He didn’t. Nor did the sisters, who weren’t available when we needed them most. After being hopeful for the first day or so, we became extremely angry and began muttering how the sisters were hypocrites. There were so many contradictions in the Bible, and this behaviour embodied them – how could they be so generous one day and so mean the next? We were angry, but we were terribly confused.

  The four days came and went; eventually we gave up and accepted that we had to move on to the transit camp at Allara.

  A white engineer drove us in his Land Cruiser. He was a quiet man, but it was all very exciting to us. We all fought over who got the front seat. Kuot eventually won. The engineer just smiled quietly. We gave in to our instinct for hope. I had been in cars a few times in Nimule and in a truck in Pinyudo, but this was the first time sitting with my friends, talking, happy together, in a nice car, going to a better place.

  Allara was a UN camp, but the UN officials didn’t sleep there. They slept in the neighbouring town of Par Kela.

  As we pulled up outside Allara we saw about forty people rush towards the Land Cruiser. The engineer got out and started talking to the head of the camp. As they conferred, a crowd of people surrounded the car. They were talking in the Acholi language. They were saying that we had nice clothes and nice bags – but not in a nice way. Kuot, Matouh and Garang could hear them saying they were going to rob us as soon as we got out of the car. The engineer assured us that we would be okay, but we pleaded with him not to leave us there.

  By now people were reaching into the car, wrenching the windows open, literally trying to pull the clothes off our back. The engineer, finally seeing the danger of the situation, started the car and began to pull away. As he did, the crowd started to throw rocks at us.

  He decided to take us to Ogujebe
, a much larger camp of tens of thousands of refugees. We knew that we would face the same situation as at Allara, but worse, given the size of Ogujebe. The houses were made of brick, one storey, with grass or zinc roofs, standing out amid thousands and thousands of white canvas tents. The River Nile ran alongside the camp, with some cultivation between the tents and the riverbank. There were no trees at all.

  In the camp we were taken to a big reception room for new arrivals. There was a black woman there who spoke fluent Arabic. She was welcoming and wanted to know all about us. She asked about our families and seemed genuinely upset when we told her that none of us had our parents with us. She understood our story and kept repeating the words, ‘We are all the same, we all the same.’