One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [68]
Adolescence is a complex series of navigations, even in the easiest of circumstances. People start treating you differently because you look like an adult but you still feel like yourself, and then your hormones go crazy and you aren’t sure what you feel half the time. You have to redefine yourself constantly, in your family, in society, even in your own mind. For adolescents affected by war and displacement, a range of complex choices and definitions is added to this mixture. The Lost Boys of Sudan had to learn to cook and clean for themselves when they lived on their own, which was unheard of in their culture. Keto, in Lugufu camp, had to choose with whom he should go after his mother died, where he should stay, where his chances were best. He had to earn money to pay for secondary school, which he could just as easily not have done, sitting around in boredom like many young men or working and not returning to school like many others. For him, school was the option that would give him the most chance for survival.
I heard the phrase “Education is my mother and father” over and over throughout East Africa and have read it in several reports by other researchers. Keto’s regard for the future (he wanted to be a driver or a mechanic), his decision to value education as a goal worth striving for, kept him going in the present, just as Jeanine’s hope to go back to her parents’ farm kept her going. Their hopes might be unrealistic, even futile in the face of continuing wars and insecurity, but having those hopes for the future helps them to survive in the present.
It was the children I met who had hopes and plans who did not fall into the depression that life in the camp can bring. Claudia, the young Sudanese mother, had no hopes or plans. She did not play an active role in her survival, beyond passing the time with beadwork. She was waiting for someone else to help her, to rescue her and take her away from the suffering. She became depressed because her chances of being rescued were slim to none. She had fallen into a despair common to people stuck in refugee camps but truly terrible when it afflicts someone who is still young. Not all young people are capable of great acts of will, of harnessing their survival instincts into creative energy.
Lepaix, a gangly young teenager, told me he was five years old. My translator had trouble understanding him, told me that the boy was having trouble communicating. He looked closer to fifteen years old than to five.
“Do you remember when you got here?” I asked.
“Last year.”
“Do you remember how you got here?”
“There was a war.” He paused. He looked around. His head moved slowly, floating on his neck. He did not seem agitated, engaged in our conversation, or interested in being anywhere else. He seemed to be elsewhere already.
“And you came here because of the war?”
“I heard war, guns. I saw others running. I ran too.”
“How did you cross the lake?”
“A crowded boat.”
“Did you know anyone on the boat?”
“No.”
“Do you know where you parents are?” This question was always hard to ask. It seems insensitive and foolish when speaking to war-affected children living in a camp on their own, but much of the work done by non-government organizations, in association with UNICEF and the Red Cross, is tracing unaccompanied minors to family members in the hope of reuniting them. Sometimes, I have been told by Red Cross employees working on tracing, a child says both his parents are dead though it turns out one is alive somewhere and the child can be reunited with family. The search is not always successful, but any information can help, so, after some time with the child, I ask the question. I worried when I asked Lepaix that it was too soon, that I asked only because I was frustrated that our conversation wasn’t going anywhere, that I wasn’t getting enough material. I was projecting my frustration onto him, deciding he was a bad subject to be interviewing. I wanted to