by Cola Bilkuei
For the first time in a long time, I felt that things were going my way. Finally I was in an affluent country where I would be free to work hard and make something of my life. The threat of being attacked or robbed, which had hung over me perpetually for so many years, seemed to have been lifted. Instead of just battling to stand still, I could move forward – or so I thought.
But I hadn’t come on this long journey to spend the rest of my life coaxing mothers to buy pretend cell phones for their kids. Jing Thomas asked me what I really wanted to do. I told him I wanted to go to school. He said he knew a white man, a human rights lawyer called Jacob Van Garderen, who had helped another Sudanese guy get into school.
After an introduction from Jing, I went to Jacob’s office in Pretoria. He asked what he could do for me. I said that life was hard for me in Johannesburg, and I wanted to go to Australia. I was keen to get in touch with my cousin Mayoum Mijok again, and to try to restart the resettlement application that had got lost in Zimbabwe.
Jacob said: ‘If I give you a place to live, and a school, would you still want to go to Australia?’
I said I’d see if life improved. To be honest, I just needed some hope to hold onto. Jacob said he knew a priest who could accommodate me and send me to school. That priest was Father Dominic Baldwin, the man who would change my life more than any other.
I told Jacob: ‘There’s another young Sudanese guy called Bol Bol, a similar age as me. Can you help him too?’
He said: ‘Cola, that would be a little bit hard.’
I said: ‘If you helped me alone, I’d feel too bad. I’d rather suffer in the street with Bol Bol than go to school alone.’
So when Jacob told Father Dominic about me, he also said that I had a cousin. Father Dominic agreed to help both of us.
Jacob said he’d put us up at his house for one week before sending us to Father Dominic. Jacob’s house was in a very good suburb in the hills of Pretoria near the university. He had views over the whole city and he drove a BMW. He was living with his new wife, Karin, and had a young Sudanese man called Peter Deng living there. Peter was a refugee too and had met Jacob through the JRS, and now Jacob had as good as adopted him. (When Jacob and Karin later had a son, Simon, Peter became his adoptive brother.) Peter could use a computer, and Jacob told us we could cook whatever we wanted. We started relaxing, and I was beginning to feel confident about life. From Garankuwa to one of the best houses in Pretoria – things were on the up! Jacob worked in human rights, and was a Christian who had been brought up to respect all people, but I think the main reason he helped people like Peter and me was simple: Jacob had a good heart. I have never worked out why some people have it and others don’t, but I have been grateful with all my soul when my path has crossed with these fine human hearts.
Then a week later, we went to Springs in the east of Johannesburg, where Father Dominic lived. He was a Catholic priest and had a house for young boys. He was seventy-six years old. An elderly lady, our gogo (or grandmother), lived there as the house mama, and there was another woman, Mama Anna, who did the washing. She and Gogo Jane lived in two rooms out the back. The house was not part of the church, which was a kilometre away, but was owned by the Dominican Trust, which would sponsor children and young people from needy backgrounds to come and learn how to live independently. If you were a resident, you had an obligation to look after the house and do jobs in return for the right to stay there.
Father Dominic was a white South African who had been a priest all his adult life. His parents were South African and German, and he had studied for the priesthood in Tanzania. As an old man, he was still tall, with thinning white hair. He joked all the time and had smiling, kind green eyes. He said that as a young man he had received a vision of helping the poor, and he had devoted his life to that since the 1950s. Some of those he had lifted out of the gutter were now lawyers and doctors in South Africa, and this gave him the greatest pride
The main house had four bedrooms. Father Dominic lived in one, and I shared a room with my friend Emmanuel Hubbi. Bol Bol and another guy, Kabelo, shared the third bedroom, and a South African guy called Ryan lived in a small single room. He had finished school and was working as an undercover policeman, or so we believed. Even Father didn’t know exactly what he did!
Father was an excellent cook, and he taught us how to make good meals. We cooked mashed potatoes, pies, all sorts of European food like steaks and sausages which took me a while to get used to. Holding a knife and fork, rather than eating with my fingers, was another new skill for me. But it was heavenly to get used to having a full belly. On Friday nights when school closed we’d cook a delicious dinner. On Saturday mornings we’d drink tea. In the evening we could buy chips, and different types of sausage. In the house we’d cook as a team. If you cooked you didn’t have to wash the dishes. The house was always spotless, and the sheets were freshly laundered. We had total freedom, but everything had to be clean and tidy.
On Sunday mornings we’d go to church and pray. Then we’d have a big Sunday lunch that Father would have cooked. Every fortnight we had to take turns cutting the lawn. There was a set weekly routine of chores, activities and duties. We all helped willingly, both because we loved Father Dominic and knew that it was our obligation. I must also say that the routine of knowing what each day of the week would bring slowly transformed me from a boy who lived to survive the present day into someone who could make plans for the future. The security of knowing what the week would bring could give me not only the gift of a week, but of a life ahead.
I had been to church back in Sudan, but we believed in our ancestors more than a Christian God. I found it easy to go to church in Springs, even though Father never forced us to go. I liked it because it made him happy, not because I was becoming a serious Catholic. Sometimes I’d miss a day, though. Father would say: ‘Cola, come to church.’ I’d say: ‘Father, I’ll pray at home, can you pray for me at church?’ He always said he did. He was pretty soft on us. But there were times when we lied about having been to church, and Father would test us by asking us what he’d said in his sermon. It was all done in good humour.
We attended Veritas Christian College, where I started in Year Seven with Benjamin Bol Bol. There were two hundred and ninety kids, boys and girls, at the school. Lots of them didn’t know the first thing about Sudan. They’d say: ‘Sweden?’ I’d ask them: ‘What’s the biggest country in Africa?’ They’d say: ‘South Africa.’ I’d say: ‘No, Sudan.’
People were surprised to see someone as dark as we were. On the second day of school, a kid teased me about walking from Sudan to South Africa. They all laughed, as if it was a joke. I didn’t take it well. What did they know of suffering, of losing their family and home to war, of walking thousands of miles to find somewhere safe? How dare they laugh at me! I had walked a continent, and they, from their complacent safety, treated my suffering as a joke. I wanted to fight with the kid. Then I thought, who cares? They were young; they hadn’t seen the things I’d seen. I couldn’t help it if they saw a lot of the world as a joke.
The teachers were very kind to me, though. They took the teasing seriously and stood on my side. They said: ‘If anybody says anything to you that you don’t like, never ever fight. Come and report it.’ That made me feel strong, as though I could trust them.
We were in the school, going well, until 2001 when I started having some trouble. It began when I told Father Dominic I wanted to contact my younger brother Thonager, who I believed was still in Sudan. I had been in touch with a cousin, Bol Tambul, who had settled in Canada. He knew a guy in Khartoum who said he knew where Thonager was.
Since I had left my village, I had never spoken to or heard of my little brother. I was desperate now to find out if he was in the army, or back in the village, or indeed anywhere. Now I knew about resettlement plans, I started to think that maybe I could get Thonager out of Sudan to Egypt, and then to South Africa with me, or maybe somewhere in the West.
Fa
ther let me use the telephone. I called Khartoum and the guy told me where Thonager had been living. I eventually got in touch with some people and asked if my brother was there. A man said: ‘You’re big enough to understand this. Your brother was killed one week ago. He was shot during the fighting.’
My voice shaking, my face screwed up in disbelief, I asked more questions. What fighting? Where had he been? This man told me that Thonager had been going to school in Khartoum for a while, but the government had been recruiting southerners into the army to go back down south. Fearing he would be conscripted, Thonager fled to Panrieng – where he was recruited by the SPLA. He had been shot in a skirmish with government troops. I would later discover that my other brother, Monyleck, had been with Thonager and had carried him from the battlefield to hospital, where he died.
I was gutted. I couldn’t talk to anyone except Father Dominic. We prayed together, and the next day I didn’t go to school. I went to church and prayed. I was devastated. All that was left of my family now was my father, me and Monyleck. I clung to the hope that my young sister Athien was still alive, but I hadn’t heard any news of her in years. I couldn’t stop thinking about Thonager, that little boy who’d cried too much to join the army. The last time I’d seen him he was about seven. I still imagined him that way. How could a boy that little be shot in fighting? I couldn’t get over it.
I couldn’t concentrate in school. I just wanted to go home. What was the point of going on here if my family was dying? Father Dominic kept encouraging me to study, but I just couldn’t see the point.
Wishing to give me a new direction, Father Dominic moved me from Veritas to Johannesburg Central College, where I started studying music. I was in love with music – it was the only thing that gave me peace. I was learning how to play the piano, and listened to every kind of music I could get my hands on: hip-hop, blues, reggae, rock, even classical. I excluded nothing. If it made sense to me, I liked it. At the school I began to learn about how music is composed, and there were so many students with different tastes coming from different places, I was exposed to every type of music there is. It seemed to be the only cure for my sadness.
***
Every three months I still had to get my permit renewed. I still have a copy of the permit – I hate that thing. It has been stamped so many times that it’s worn out. Every time I look at it I am reminded of how I had to keep going to be recertified, joining those long queues in that office. Aside from the tedium, it continually reminded me that I was not a permanent resident, only a visitor, in South Africa.
One day Benjamin Bol Bol and I were sitting on the kerb in front of Father Dominic’s house when police detectives came up and asked to see our papers. Two of the police were white guys, two black. The black guys were unfriendly and said our documents were fake. I said: ‘No, they’re real.’ One of them said: ‘I’ll fucking shoot you in the face, I’ll fucking arrest you.’ I got angry, stood up and said: ‘Shoot me, go on, I don’t care.’ At that moment, it was true: I didn’t care. The frustration was overwhelming, and then, so soon after I’d heard of Thonager’s death, life had no great value to me. I’d tried so hard to stay alive, and to steer away from trouble, and here it was, following me around. Yes, let them shoot me.
Father Dominic ran outside and asked what was happening. As soon as he appeared, the police stood up straight and acted friendly. Father Dominic said we were from Sudan. They said, ‘Yes, yes, okay, we know,’ and drove away.
After that I became too nervous to go out on the street. I was teased at school by the black South Africans. They called me makwere-kwere, a nonsense term of abuse that I think meant ‘foreigner’ or ‘animal’. They wanted to provoke my temper, calling me many insulting names, saying, ‘You took our land, you’re selling drugs, you’re a thief.’ I became frustrated and isolated. And I was devastated about Thonager. I was becoming an angry, argumentative young man.
***
I studied at the college for nine months before I heard about the resettlement program in Australia. I contacted Mayoum Mijok again and asked if he could send me another form. He said: ‘Yes, but who’s going to pay for your flight if they accept you?’ He wasn’t in a position to be responsible for me.
I told him: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of my ticket.’
When I’d left Sudan, the only country outside Africa that I knew about was America. It was America I wanted to get to. I’d tried to get into resettlement programs in Kenya. For me, it was never going to be as easy as it was for the famous Lost Boys, who were turned into celebrities in America. They should have been called the Lucky Boys, compared to me and the guys I knew! Everybody wanted to go to America. I’d discovered in the camps in Kenya and Uganda that I was never on the inside track for that, so I’d lost hope.
But since I’d made contact with Mayoum Mijok, I’d started thinking more and more of Australia. It seemed not too far away on the map, and I thought perhaps I could stow away on a boat across the Indian Ocean. When people asked me where I was going to move to next, I was now saying, ‘Australia, Australia.’ But when they asked how, I didn’t say anything.
In South Africa I started hearing of Sudanese who’d undergone interviews for resettlement in Australia and even been taken there. I didn’t believe it. I spoke to Mayoum again and he sent me another form. I thought – but didn’t let myself get carried away with hope – that maybe I had an outside chance.
Father Dominic didn’t really want me to leave, because the other boys and I were his family. He’d have liked us all to live with him in South Africa forever, but he wasn’t going to stand in my way – more than that, he was going to support me if I really wanted to go.
I filled in the form without telling him, though. I didn’t want him worrying about something that might turn out to be a mirage. Benjamin Bol Bol filled in a form too. He was asked for a medical check. I went to the Australian Embassy in Pretoria and put in the form at 10 am. At 3 pm that same day they asked me to come back the next day for an interview. I had the interview with a woman called Paula, and it only took about fifteen minutes. She had interviewed Lost Boys in Kakuma and had resettled them in Australia. She knew the environment I’d been in. She asked me why I hadn’t got resettlement in Kenya, and how had I moved so far through Africa. Where was my family? Why had I left Sudan? I gave her a rough outline – but not the whole thing in detail! To be honest, I was scared of the interview. I didn’t want to prolong it and jeopardise my chances by talking about the SPLA or some of the worst things I’d seen. I didn’t want her to be afraid of me, or dislike me, or think I was a political person. I think instead she was touched by the extent of everything I’d been through, and I was still only a young man. At the end, she told me to go out and get a medical check.
Benjamin and I thought we’d better talk to Father now. At first he didn’t believe us. A lot of people were leaving South Africa and it wasn’t easy to get into Australia. We didn’t even have passports.
We said: ‘It’s real.’
He said: ‘Are you happy to go to Australia?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I can’t handle South Africa any more.’
That was enough for him. He gave us the money for our medical checks. We had to wait for the approval for three months. Then we were free to go to Australia – if we had the money for our flights. Father went and booked our tickets and paid for them out of his own money.
Father had never given us money. This was such a big thing. Even now I am touched and grateful that he would do this for us. Normally he would buy what we needed – food, clothes – but not give us money except for a little pocket money. We had a lot of good times with him, and he introduced us to customs like eating with knives and forks rather than our hands. He told us to say thank you, which we weren’t used to saying. In Dinka culture, you never say thank you for food, it looks suspicious. The cook would ask: ‘Why are you thanking me for food?’ In Dinka culture, if you do something good for me, I’ll do something good for so
meone else. That is my way of showing gratitude. Father Dominic taught us Western manners. Sometimes it felt as though we were doing nothing but saying thank you. Eventually we got it, though. We had to do more than simply say ‘thank you’ to Father Dominic for all he had done for us. I hoped to express my gratitude the Dinka way, by passing his kindness on to other people. In that way I could honour the great debt I owed him, and the great man he was.
One reason we were so keen to go to Australia was that there would be more opportunities there to help our families back in Sudan. In South Africa we were being helped – we were the recipients. But we wanted to be the ones helping; we wanted to do something for our families.
Bol Bol and I were still close to Jacob. When we told him the news, he and his whole family – mother, brothers and sister, wife, two little sons – were very sad to hear that we were leaving. We’d been camping together, we’d lived in their house, we’d babysat their children, and in a way we were like their own sons.
It was a great wrench to say goodbye. Jacob held a party for us and brought in some fine musicians. We danced and laughed and talked about the things that had happened to us together. Once we’d been to a restaurant where they let Jacob in, because he was Afrikaner, but kept us out, because we were black. Jacob was so mad he vowed never to go there again. Once we took Simon, Jacob’s son, out in the street and played with him in the park. Police stopped us, asking if we’d stolen a white kid. Even though Simon was calling our names, they phoned Jacob at home to check on us.
When it came time to say goodbye, we didn’t want to let go of Jacob’s hand. Benjamin and I felt as though we were farewelling our own family, and leaving him was as painful as having a part of ourselves torn out.