His family already has been torn apart by the war. Now the bonds are fraying further. Will they ever be able to get back together again?
Torit is much bigger and busier than the Lotuko village they have come from. Obulejo has never seen so many buildings crowded together.
The air smells different too – stickier and warmer than the spicy coolness of the mountains. The river washes lazily across the western road, slow and tepid. No rushing torrents here, tumbling over rocks, just languid spillages, easy for washing and bathing. Here and there are pools deep enough for fishing.
Moini finds shelter for the family in a compound with other mill workers, and life in the new town begins to assume a routine. Obulejo likes to explore the bustling markets with his friend Riti, and to watch soccer matches, marches and military parades in the Midran Huria. The marshalling of police and troops each morning in the barracks always draws a small crowd of onlookers too.
One morning Riti comes to say goodbye. ‘We are going south,’ he says.
Obulejo stares at him in horror. ‘We have been friends our whole lives. You can’t go.’
But they both know there is nothing they can do, so they clasp each other’s hands and promise they’ll be together again one day. And then Riti is gone.
Without his best friend, the days seem to stretch on forever.
Obulejo is angry. He tells Amoli, ‘The war has stolen my friend.’ Amoli looks at him with big round eyes. ‘Just like Mr Hare stole everyone’s seri?’ But Obulejo has no patience with stories. When he tells his brother to leave him alone, Mama Josephina scolds him for being unkind to the little ones.
Everyone is edgy. Moini tells Obulejo to stay close to home, it is not safe for him to wander about on his own, and a few days later secures a place for Obulejo in a good school, close to the church and the main market square.
‘You will be safe in Torit,’ he tells Obulejo. ‘The police and soldiers guard the town well, but it is different for me and your uncle. We must move on and look for safety in Juba, or cross the border into Uganda.’
Obulejo’s heart contracts with dread. ‘Mama Natalina and Mama Josephina and the little ones too?’
Moini nods. ‘I cannot stay here and let my family go hungry. I have no local rights or land to grow crops and no real chance of a job here. And it is dangerous for me to remain. There are many who envied my position at the mill and claimed it was unfairly given to a Ma’di “foreigner”. Now that I am no longer under the protection of the owners, these people will look for any opportunity to harm me, to get revenge.’
Obulejo’s cheeks flush with rage. If people are so jealous why don’t they go to school and study like his father and get themselves a good job? And now all this fighting has taken his friend Riti away and it’s spoiling his family’s life.
Later, when Obulejo brings water to Mama Josephina, he finds her weeping. ‘I curse the day we must leave another of the sons behind,’ she wails. ‘Too many of the family already are far out of reach.’
‘Hush, Mama,’ he tells her. ‘Weeping will not change my father’s mind.’
‘Your father says all our sons are to be educated men,’ Mama Josephina says, ‘and truly I respect my husband’s wishes, but —’
She spreads her hands out in a gesture of despair. Obulejo goes off to fetch her a second kere of water and when he returns with the overflowing gourd she has dried her tears, and is busy again about her chores with Mama Natalina, the senior wife.
Mama Natalina tries to explain Moini’s decision. ‘The old days, when school was not considered necessary, are gone.’
‘But I myself went straight from my father’s to my husband’s compound before I was full-grown,’ Mama Josephina says. ‘No school for me.’
‘These are new ways,’ Mama Natalina reminds her, ‘and it must be as our husband says.’
‘Please God the priests will keep Obulejo safe, then,’ Mama Josephina cries.
Mama Natalina nods. Up to now the Rebels have respected the sanctuary of the church.
Obulejo feels torn. Everybody is disappearing. His best friend Riti, the older brothers and sisters; and now Baba and the rest of the family. If only he could go too. He dreads remaining in Torit on his own. But his father’s wishes are law. Boarding school it must be.
Amoli and Izia cling to him, and Obulejo tries to be especially kind to them, that final day. He piggybacks Izia around tirelessly and tells Amoli at least a dozen Mr Hare stories, making his brother laugh at the escapades of wily Ito – Mr Hare – and his wife Emozia.
The mamas pat and hug him. ‘We will miss you, our son,’ they whisper, as huge fat tears roll down their cheeks.
Next day, Moini bids his son farewell. It is a solemn moment.
‘It is very important not to break your education. You must study hard and bring honour to your family, my son.’
‘I will,’ Obulejo promises.
‘The day will come when by God’s grace we will be brought back together again.’
‘Yes, Baba.’
But even as Obulejo says this he is seized by an unreasoning dread that this is the last time he will ever see his father or his mothers or Amoli or Izia.
3
ST XAVIER’S IS much larger than Obulejo’s old village school, but the teachers and students are welcoming. His Acholi friend Ochan has just started at St Xavier’s as well, and within days they become firm friends with two Lotuko boys, Lolika and Ohisa, who tell them the teachers’ nicknames and show them the choicest fishing spots and the market stalls that have the best bargains.
The new routine begins to absorb Obulejo. Lessons and prayers fill each school day, and there’s study and preparation in the evening, till the paraffin in the lamp runs out or his eyes get too heavy to keep reading. Then he folds his shirt, places it beside his sandals and lowers himself onto his sleeping mat. That’s when the images crowd in, the memories of the night in the plantation, the panic as the news of the Rebels’ approach swept through the village, the hurried escape and bumpy bus ride and the stricken look on his parents’ faces when they left him in Torit.
The night air is closer, thicker, down here on the plains, making it harder for Obulejo to sleep. An owl calls, ‘Ooh-OOH, ooh-OOH,’ and he immediately wakes and stares into the thick darkness. Everything seems wrong: no cricket-chirp, no rat-scuttle in the thatch, no firefly-glow. Then he remembers – he is at St Xavier’s, and somewhere to the north-west his family is searching for a safe place to hide. ‘Merciful Father, please protect them,’ he prays, and sleeps again.
And wakes to the unbelievable din. Armoured vehicles roar, machine guns jackhammer, the rapid fire of the Rebels’ Kalashnikovs punctuates the slower and heavier boom of the army MGs.
Rebel anthems swell; the defending government soldiers yell defiance.
People scream in terror.
Obulejo does the only thing he can do – he runs for his life. Out of the dormitory and into the road, where the panicked, struggling crowd hurtles him past the Midran Huria and out towards the town boundaries. ‘Torit is burning!’ someone yells and the crowd screams even more wildly. Bullets sing and thwack. People collide and stumble.
Above the din, police are bellowing, ‘Come out of your houses!’ ‘Leave the house at once!’ ‘Go! Now!’
Along with everyone else Obulejo rushes out of the burning town and across the fields of sorghum stubble into the concealing thickness of the tall savannah grass. People press forward, close packed and panting, as they fight through the endless grasslands, nostrils choked with dust, parched stems smacking against their bodies, and scramble up into the hills. For over an hour they run without pause from the town, surging up the final hillside into the rays of the blood-red rising sun. Only when the highest slope is gained do the frantic runners at last begin to slacken their pace.
Gasping and panting, Obulejo flops down behind a sheltering tussock as others crawl under bushes. Mothers draw their wide-eyed children close. Older folk hobble up last
and drop to the ground, wheezing as they try to catch their breath.
Silence descends – silence broken intermittently by brutal bursts of gunfire on the plain. Dense plumes of smoke rise from huts and buildings in the distance.
No one speaks. All are held by the same terror.
Obulejo is struggling to make sense of things. His mind hurtles crazily about, unreeling furiously like the string of a kite as it strains for the freedom of the skies, bobbing and spiralling in agitated curves. His ears still ring from the crack of weaponry, the roar of tanks and trucks, the Rebels’ patriotic songs and slogans, the defiant shouts of the government troops. Townspeople screaming, crying, calling for relatives and neighbours. The police bellowing orders: ‘Leave your houses!’
Before his eyes, images of the surging crowd still dance: frantic parents clutching bundles, dragging their children, babies slung onto backs, old people hobbling, stumbling, falling behind – left to the mercy of God or the Rebels.
Obulejo’s muscles continue to pump as he mentally gallops the miles from the town to the temporary sanctuary of the foothills again and again – swifter than any school sports race he ever ran, faster than he’d need to move to evade a cobra’s strike.
Outrunning death.
A maelstrom has torn everything familiar and normal from his grasp, and flung him into a waking nightmare.
Blood thumps through his veins and arteries, his chest heaves, his hands clench and unclench. He is covered in cold sweat.
Smoke from the besieged town spirals upward. Vultures wheel low in the smudgy air. Around him, terrified townsfolk are concealed in the underbrush. Below, the sacked town and the Rebel soldiers: broken and abandoned dwellings, soldiers with guns.
A few hours ago he was part of another existence; a world of lessons, studies, sports, church, bustling markets, tribesfolk who tended their gardens and herds and called to each other from their compounds. A world in which fathers set off to work early each morning and mothers sang as they slapped the clothes clean, or ground sim-sim into fura – flour – and stirred pans over the fire. A world of bird call and sunshine, orderly and predictable. That world is gone. In its place is a new, alien world of turmoil and panic.
Obulejo buries his face in the damp soil. For several minutes he feels nothing but the rhythm of his own beating blood.
Run! it pulses.
Go! the torn soles of his feet echo.
Now! throb his aching lungs. Move! Go!
But he cannot. Impaled on the hillside, breath sobbing in his throat, he crouches, like a small soft animal run to ground by hunters, waiting for the coup de grâce to fall.
4
CLACK-CLACK! Clack-clack!
Obulejo starts, sick with fright at the sudden sound, then almost sobs with relief. It’s only the long, dry seedpods of the rattling mimosas overhead.
As he lets out a long breath, he observes with dull surprise that his legs and feet are cut to ribbons. He felt nothing while he was running. Now the lacerations begin to throb.
His throat burns too. It is hours since his headlong flight and the sun is getting higher, but he dare not venture out to search for water. He has no food either. He has only the shorts he is wearing, his school shirt and sandals dangling from one wrist.
He licks his dry lips. What now? If only he could think clearly. One thing he knows; there is no way to get word to his family, to let them know what has happened or where he is. He is on his own. Until now there have been others to guide and steady him – Baba and the mamas and uncles, older brothers, the clan, the tribe. Never has he been just a boy alone.
His mind reels at the idea. A boy without family, without joti alu kaka, the one door through which all family members enter and claim the safety of the hut. Alone is unthinkable to a Ma’di boy. Alone is unsafe, like a tethered goat in lions’ territory. Alone means death.
Suddenly, he feels a light touch on his wrist. He swings around. It is Auntie Juan, a Kuku woman, a friend of his parents, her eyes peeping through the leaves and her skinny arm extending from the depths of a spreading bush. She is holding out a kere of water. Her other arm follows, a small handful of godo on her open palm. Obulejo smiles his thanks and takes a sip from the kere and a small mouthful of sorghum paste.
The water feels cool on his tongue, loosens his parched throat. The porridge soothes his empty belly. But it is Auntie Juan’s kindness that eases his heart.
Obulejo parts the branches of the bush cautiously. Auntie’s children are huddled around her. They stare at Obulejo with big eyes. Obulejo smiles at them. Auntie Juan whispers her children’s names. The baby, Keji, buries her face in her mother’s shoulder. Auntie Juan nods to Obulejo. He nods back. This small woman and her children must be his family for now. Her kindness has made her a mother to him, and he a son to her.
He wriggles close and shows the older children a silent game with fallen leaves, leaving Auntie Juan free to attend to her fretting baby. Keji settles at her mother’s breast and for a moment, in their insecure hiding place, a little peace reigns.
Soon they must leave the hillside, Obulejo knows, get further away. But where to?
If only he could wake to the morning prayer bell, and rise and file in to chapel with the rest of his classmates. But the town Obulejo has called home for the last three months is probably a smouldering ruin now.
He cannot stay and take his chances here; he must get further into the hills. But although he aches to be up and away, his limbs will not obey. Is he to die here on this hillside?
The decision is taken out of his hands.
From his hiding place he begins to notice subtle movement along the hillside. Leaves waver tremulously and almost imperceptibly, tall grass stems are being parted by half-hidden hands, and branches are briefly and silently pulled aside. Then comes a series of soft, low sounds: susurrations of grass stalks gently rubbed together, subdued imitations of bird calls, whispered names of mothers, aunties, children, grandchildren.
Should he reveal his position? It might be a trap. More and more signals are passed surreptitiously along, from person to invisible person. Few dare show themselves. Everybody is edgy.
Then, ‘Psst,’ comes a sibilant whisper, close to Obulejo’s ear. It is Auntie Juan. The decision has been made, she tells him. They are to push on further into the mountains and try to find a way through the dense jungle to the east. Make their way to Kenya if they can. Although it will be more than one hundred and fifty miles to walk, it’s the only possible escape route.
At the prospect of entering the jungle, Obulejo’s bowels contract with dread. There will be animals far more fierce than the lore there. But they can’t just perch on this hillside waiting for the Rebels to pluck them off like ripe mangoes.
One by one, people start to crawl out of their hiding places, keeping low to the ground. The adults gather in a tight huddle and begin to talk in urgent whispers. Obulejo strains to hear what they are saying. There is not much time. They dare not remain so close to the besieged town. Patrols may already be on the way.
A tall, long-limbed older man seems to be the main spokesman.
‘Do you know him?’ Obulejo whispers to Auntie Juan.
‘Kuku man,’ she whispers back. ‘His name is Lege. He knows the Lotuko lands well.’
‘How deep are the rivers? Are there rapids?’ one woman asks Lege, clutching her two small children.
‘Is the bush passable?’ asks another.
As Lege answers each question, more are flung at him.
‘Can we get through?’
‘How will we find food?’
‘Must we climb many mountains?’
The sun creeps higher into the sky and Obulejo burns with impatience. Are people going to just sit and yabber all day long, while the Rebels catch up with them?
Still more questions come.
‘Surely we are too many to go undetected?’
‘Dare we risk breaking cover?’
‘Will the soldiers come after u
s and capture us?’
‘How long will the fighting continue?’
Eventually, Lege holds up his hand. ‘We must act quickly. Cover is scant here and we may be set upon at any moment. We need to get away into the mountains where the bush is dense and tangled, where no one can track us easily.’
Then how will we be able to make our way? Obulejo thinks. But they must.
Crouched close to Auntie Juan and her children, Obulejo wonders how long they will have to keep walking and what will happen to the children. Will they be strong enough to keep going? Will Auntie be able to find food in the bush or will her children die of hunger? And Obulejo himself, a boy on his own, travelling further and further away from his family – how will he fare?
Have my parents heard what has happened yet? he wonders. There is no way they will be able to come and look for me. Even if word has reached them. If they are still alive.
He quickly pushes this last thought away. He cannot afford to think such things. He must not let his mind go beyond this moment. The only thing that matters right now is to get moving.
People start to get to their feet, gather their bundles, hoist babies onto their backs. A few, like Obulejo, have sandals to put on, but many must go barefoot.
Obulejo sees heads bowed in prayer and catches whispers of ancestor invocations. Obulejo remembers his father speaking about the crossed spears and water spilled on the ground, the old rituals the chief followed to invoke good hunting for the tribe. Now what they must hunt for is safety – and what they need to find is a place of protection.
An image of his father’s face pierces Obulejo with sharp longing: with Baba by his side he would walk to the ends of the earth unafraid. Desolation sweeps over him. He turns away, gathering himself to set off alone, but then he sees Auntie gesturing to him. Come, her beckoning hand seems to say, you are part of our family now. Obulejo hesitates, then reaches for the two little girls, Jokudu and Kiden, and lifts them to their feet. They gaze at him shyly. The boys, Duku and Ladu, jump up to join their mother and sisters and their new big brother. Together they start up the hill, hurrying close behind Lege and the rest.
Trouble Tomorrow Page 2
