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“There is nothing wrong. Everything is okay.”

I can see it in Maurice’s discomfort. They are unwilling to talk.

Around the next bend, I spot a familiar old woman: the grandmother. She’s heading towards her compound. I call out, “Jambo, Mama!”

She sizes up the group, unimpressed with the lurking armed security. As Maurice approaches, she turns and walks away. I follow her and say, “Mama, I wish you would talk to me.”

“I’m too hungry to talk!” she calls behind her. Maurice and I follow with the guards running to stay in position in front and behind.

“But I met you last year,” I say. “Do you recognize me?”

She ignores us, continuing on. I chase her. “I’ve been worried about you all year. I’ve traveled all the way from America to make sure you and your family are okay.”

She slows down and turns around to size me up.

“Here is your photo. Do you remember?”

She looks at the fuzzy photo of herself, baffled. “I can’t think of anything but hunger.”

She caves and agrees to talk for a few minutes. One of the guards searches the compound for any lurking evil-doers on the roofs or in the hedges and huts. The grandmother perches on a little wooden bench and laughs. “Can you give me clothes, so I can be beautiful?”

She wears a tattered gray sweater and has calloused, cracked bare feet. “You already are beautiful. I wish I had clothes to give you,” I tell her.

“It is difficult for a woman like me,” she says. “I am alone. I’ve already lost my husband and relatives. I live only with my grandchildren. I don’t have a hen, a goat, nothing for myself. Not even clothes.”

She introduces us to one of the five puffy-cheeked kids who have been watching from a distance; it’s her granddaughter, who’s maybe five years old. Both the girl’s parents died four years ago, when she was still an infant. She curls in towards her grandmother, who keeps a hand on the child’s arm.

“If you have nothing, no money to feed yourself, why did you take in this little girl?”

“She had nowhere else to go.”

On the way out, I slip her ten dollars.

We trek along the last ridgeline on the far outskirts of the village. The clusters of huts and cabbage patches are unchanged from last year. But then we approach the soccer field. It’s become a small Congolese Army camp. Temporary straw shelters, something like tents, with ditches dug in front of them, dot the field that is otherwise overgrown with grass. The hilltop is windy, which adds a haunting feeling to this outpost at the edge of civilization.

A plainclothes Congolese soldier sees us and calls out, “Commandant! Commandant!”

A clean-shaven young man, with the fresh face of a virgin soldier, emerges from one of the huts. He’s wearing a tracksuit jacket and fashion jeans. Embarrassed to be caught out of uniform, he disappears and greets us again in full, crisp uniform, complete with creases and a green beret. He gives a formal salute for the benefit of the UN major. He straps on his gun, trying to impress the UN, desperate to prove himself. He has just been transferred from the west; this is his fourth day in Eastern Congo. His first assignment is this last ridgeline in Kaniola. Their unit is split, with five soldiers at this camp and four on a neighboring hillside. He’s heard the stories. He points to the hills, the forest. “This place is attacked; they come from over there.”

The UN commander cuts him short. “But there has been no such incident since last May.”

“That’s what they said,” I comment, thinking of the edited information we may have gotten, given our guns. “Have you had any attacks since you’ve been here?”

“The day before yesterday, I saw four flashlights during the night, right there, coming down the mountain from the forest. I fired three shots,” he says, pointing to a spot on the opposite hill. “Then I saw the flashlights climb back up the mountain.”

Three shots and they ran way? Wow. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

He talks discreetly, confiding in the major. “Our commander left us up here with no supplies. No food. We