A Long Way Gone_ Memoirs of a Boy Soldier - Ishmael Beah [103]
On the other side were a lot of buses. I was confused about which one to take to Conakry. Everyone I tried to ask for directions didn’t understand what I was saying. The only word I knew in French was bonjour, which did me no good.
I was confusedly looking for a bus to the capital when I bumped into a passerby.
“Watch wussai you dae go,” the passerby grumbled in Krio.
“Me na sorry, sir,” I replied. “How de body,” I continued, shaking hands with the stranger.
“Me body fine en waitin you dae do na ya so me pekin?” the man asked me.
I told him that I was looking for the right bus to Conakry. He told me that he was heading there as well. The bus was overcrowded, so I stood for most of the trip. In over fifty miles to the capital there were more than fifteen checkpoints and the soldiers were unmerciful. All of the roadblocks looked the same. Jeeps with mounted guns were parked along the road. Two soldiers stood by the metal pole stretched across the road from one gutter to another. On the right, more soldiers sat under a shack covered with tarp. There were a few compartments of the shack, where the soldiers searched people. They had set a fixed price for all Sierra Leoneans; those who couldn’t pay were kicked off the bus. I wondered if they sent the people back to the other side of the border. Under the auspices of the man I had boarded the bus with, I was able to pass some of the roadblocks for free. Most of the soldiers thought I was the man’s son, so they checked his documents and not mine and charged him for both of us. I don’t think he noticed; he just wanted to get to Conakry, and it seemed money wasn’t a problem for him. At one of the roadblocks the soldiers took me into a room and made me undress. At first I didn’t want to take off my clothes, but I saw them kick a man to the floor and rip his shirt and pants. One of the soldiers took my belt. The belt buckle had the head of a lion on it and it was my favorite. I held my pants with one hand and ran back to the bus. I pressed my teeth hard together and folded my fist, holding back my anger.
At the last roadblock a soldier asked me to put my hands on my head so that he could search me. When I raised my hands, my pants fell down and some of the passengers laughed. The soldier picked up my pants and tied them with a shoelace that he had in his pocket. After he was done, he put his hands in my pocket and took out my passport. He flipped the pages and gave it back to me. I followed behind the people who waited in line to get their entry stamps. I was shaking with anger, but I knew I had to calm myself down if I wanted to make it into Conakry. I overheard people saying that the cost of the entry fee was the equivalent of three hundred leones. I had only a hundred leones and needed it for the rest of my journey. What am I going to do? I thought. I had come all this way for nothing. I couldn’t even afford to return to Freetown if I wanted to. Tears had begun to form in my eyes. I was nervous and couldn’t see a way out of this. I was beginning to feel anxious when a man whose passport had just been stamped accidentally dropped two of the many bags he carried as he was going around the checkpoint to reboard the bus. I hesitated for a bit but decided to take the chance. I left the line and picked up his bags, following him to the bus. I sat in the backseat, slouching in my seat, and peeked to see if the soldiers were looking in my direction. I sat on the bus until everyone had reboarded it; the soldiers didn’t come looking for me. The bus began to pull away slowly and then gathered speed. I had entered the country illegally, which I knew would later become a problem.
As the bus headed for Conakry, I began to worry, since I didn’t actually know what to do once I got there. I had heard that the Sierra Leonean ambassador let refugees sleep temporarily in the compound of the embassy, but I had no idea where the embassy itself was located. I was sitting