One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [20]
Gibbon could have been describing the drawing that Keto, a fifteen-year-old Congolese orphan, made for me under a thatched roof in Lugufu Refugee Camp in Tanzania, where he had lived for three years. As he drew, others came over to look at his drawing and he shooed them away so he could concentrate. I watched him gaze up at the roof while he drew, playing out the picture in his mind.
He labeled his picture, “The War in the Congo,” and in it he depicts his escape from the war zone (Figure 4). At the top of the page, in the mountains, a road begins. This road crisscrosses the page all the way to the bottom, taking a circuitous route past a helicopter that is dropping bombs on the fleeing civilians. The road opens out at the end of the page, wide and full of possibilities. Keto has made the road to that point as long as it could be on a piece of drawing paper, zigzagging from one side to the other. People bearing loads on their heads are rushing down towards a flag from which a boat is leaving, also packed full of people. Along the road, there is a dead stick figure, his head X-ed out in blue. A blue X also crosses his knee at a point where it bends off at a sharp angle. Next to the figure is the dropped load he was carrying; I wonder if Keto is depicting the actual wounds of a man he saw.
“She’s died by the side of the road,” Keto told me. “She was killed by the Mayi Mayi.” The figure had no gender markings—I assumed it was a man—nor any distinguishing features of any kind save the blue X’s, yet Keto seemed to be thinking of someone specific. In his mind, the wounds were the most distinguishing features of this woman, all he chose to depict, perhaps all that he remembered.
He seemed frustrated at our discussion of his drawing. I’d only known him for about an hour. Keto was the first boy I met in the refugee camp, the first Congolese child I was meeting in my life, the first person I’d interviewed about his experiences of war. I was nervous and did not want to frustrate him. I wanted him to like me. My mind raced. He was very quiet. He said something quiet to the translator. I worried that he might be traumatized from his experiences, and I did not want to open up wounds in his mind and then leave him to suffer the consequences of them while I got back in the white UN jeep and drove away. I decided to change the subject, to talk to him about soccer, because he had also drawn a picture of a soccer ball.
“I like football,” he said, “though there are not enough balls here in the camp.”
I began to ask another question, neglecting whatever connection may have formed had I allowed soccer to take center stage. In my eagerness in this interview, I wanted to ask some revealing question, questions that would get to the core of Keto’s being. I had not yet realized that soccer could be the key, that play could reveal the secrets of Keto that words would not. His answer about the number of soccer balls contained a universe of information about how he felt, what he wanted, what he hoped to get from me. I plowed on, oblivious.
“Keto, can you tell me—”
My translator stopped me mid-sentence and paused for a moment. He turned to me. Keto was not going to let me get by that easy, not going to let me miss the connection his answer about soccer balls demanded.
“Before you go on, Keto would like to ask you a question, if it is all right.”
“Of course,” I said. “He can say or ask anything he likes.” I smiled to show without words that I was very happy to answer his questions. The interview still felt more formal than I had wanted my interviews to be. It would take a bit of practice, letting a conversation flow between a child, a translator, and me.
Keto sat up straight and looked me right in the eyes to ask his question.
“How will talking to you about the war help me to get shoes or more food or a blanket?” Or more soccer balls, his