One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [52]
The sun had already started its brutal arc into the sky and shade was scarce. It was the rainy season and so allegedly cooler, but it was above ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. It was above ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit the day before. It would be again tomorrow. Because of the rains, there was less dust than usual. At certain times of year, I am told, the dust blots out the sky. There was some vegetation on the ground: scattered patches of what looked like dandelions bursting from the dirt, the first blossoms of what would become brambles of two-inch thorns.
A small cress-type leaf that starving Sudanese youths and Somali livestock eat has found its way into the crowded graveyard at the entrance to the camp, near where the boys are building their car. Sometimes violence erupts over who gets to eat the vegetation first, the goats or the Sudanese children. A few acacia trees stand in defiance of the hot and cracking ground, each by itself with no clear relationship to the others. Each tree is precious, because shade makes the best place to sit. Light, heat, and breeze dictate the real estate market in the desert. Leave the shade of one tree and who knows when you will encounter the next. The landscape is merciless. There isn’t enough water. Or rather, there is just enough for the few gnarled trees and no more. Each tree burns alone in the sun, defying the most human of desires: to gather together.
My translator, Simon, and I walked down a dirt path coming from the schoolhouse where we had hoped to speak with Charity. Simon is one of the famous Lost Boys of Sudan, who traveled on foot to Ethiopia and then from Ethiopia back to Sudan and then to Kenya, suffering bombings, starvation, and crocodile attacks. He was goaded forward by rebel soldiers who wanted to control the food aid coming to the parentless youths and by the bombs from the government in Khartoum that continues its campaign against the black Africans as I write this, now focusing on the Darfur region.
Simon has lived in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya for the past ten years, since he was fifteen. Boys are especially vulnerable because they are considered potential soldiers and because they tend the herds of cattle, and to destroy them is to destroy the southern Sudanese way of life. Simon is about six and half feet tall and walks with the loping gate of one who is used to walking everywhere. He has a warm smile, which does not betray the horrors he has seen in his twenty-five years of life.
We walked quickly, pouring sweat, and arrived at a gate made from oil tins donated by the World Food Program. Someone had pounded the tins flat and stuck them together to make a door. The gate was surrounded by thorn bushes to mark off the compound. Stagnant pools of water shimmered in the sun. We slipped through the door into the compound of low mud houses clustered together. No vegetation grew here. A group of small children leaned against one of the houses talking excitedly. When they saw me, one of them shouted: “Khawaja! Khawaja!” This is the Dinka word for white person. In the Tanzanian camps, the word was mzungu, and I had gotten used to hearing it chanted by flocks of children with bright and embarrassed smiles on their faces. The other young children joined in the khawaja chant and I waved, which resulted in an explosion of laughter. An older woman came out to see what the commotion was about.
“Hello, Mama,” I said, the “Mama” a term of respect. She nodded, but appeared skeptical. The usual conversation that I had with countless strangers throughout East Africa about her family and mine, our health on this day, whether or not it was my first time here, did not occur. It was too hot, I suppose. She just looked Simon and me up and down.
I tried to make an introduction, but she showed