Mama Koko and the Hundred Gunmen

by Lisa J Shannon

  Francisca explained, “Roger’s wife was active in the church.”

  I interrupted. “He died in the attack. Did you know him?”

  “I performed Roger and Marie’s wedding celebration that August, in 2008,” Ferruccio said. It was only a month before the attacks began.

  I was surprised to hear that their wedding was so recent. Roger and Marie had lived together for around twenty years. I thought they were legally married, and had grown children.

  “Was Marie a second wife or something?”

  Marie was a woman of God, Father Ferruccio explained. She wanted to administer the sacrament of communion during Mass—an honor that required the priests to bless her hands, which could happen only if she had a proper church wedding. So they put on a celebration, as though Marie was still a young bride. The whole village of Duru was invited. People traveled from as far as Dungu and Sudan to attend. Roger bought a new suit and tie. Marie wore a new traditional wax-print gown. Ferruccio performed the ceremony. The party lasted two days.

  Can I Take Him for a Little While?

  • • • •

  Some days, we went to see Aunt Harriet, bringing her a basket of food or a bottle of ibuprofen, which, she reported, didn’t do much to take the edge off aching bullet wounds to the chest.

  One day, as we ducked into Aunt Harriet’s yapu, I found Heritier sitting inside, much to my delight. He was home from the hospital, sitting next to his younger auntie, who was lying on a straw mat on the floor, too ill to sit up. (Her HIV was raging, I later found out.) Heritier’s two older brothers would be coming later that day to resettle with Modeste and Harriet. Their dad would not be taking them on.

  I picked him up and set him on my lap. He smiled—a revolution since our last visit at the hospital. Does he recognize me? He still had the green and yellow rattle, shaking it back and forth with vigor. The plastic had broken, so the rattling ball popped out. We stuffed it back in and he went on rattling. I pulled out more butterfly and heart stickers, tickled him, and touched his hair. Every time a giant UN truck drove by, he gasped with excitement.

  He fixated on grabbing my fingers, pushing them away, pulling them back, smiling. Sometimes he would reach up to my mouth and move my jaw up and down. Up and down. The night his mom had stopped moving, he must have tried for hours to move her stiffening hands, her jaw, to wake her up. Moving my hands, shaking them, moving my mouth seemed to reassure him. I was alive.

  Aunt Harriet watched us play. “Take him and me with you when you go back to America!”

  After a couple of hours, it felt like time to leave. I set him down next to his young aunt. He collapsed, crying. It was time to make an exit, but I picked him up again. He hushed and rested his head on my shoulder.

  As he calmed, Aunt Harriet reached out to take him, and he lost it—not with the fussy protest of most babies but with a trauma-infused, desperate squeak. He dug his baby nails into my arm and buried his little head in my neck, sobbing.

  “He’s wasting your time,” his young aunt said. After several attempts to soothe him and slip out, I had to set him down and walk away, down the street, with his howls trailing behind us.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about him. It was February 6, my thirty-fifth birthday. We were planning a little family party. I was to cook. On our way to the market, Francisca said, “Children sense who loves them.”

  The market was barren, most of the aisles sketched out but empty, so many vendors with just a few piles of beans, salt, small red onions, and a bit of garlic. Yet Dungu just happened to be well stocked with ingredients to make one of the only dishes I knew how to cook: noodles with peanut sauce.

  Francisca and I roamed the market, looking through scant piles for the garlic, ginger, peanuts, and onions needed for my specialty. Someone called out to us.

  It was Father Ferruccio, who pulled up to us on his motorbike, waving us down. “I have something for you! I’ll drop it by … .”

  Back at Mama Koko’s parcel, I chopped piles of onions, eyes watering, unable to stop thinking about Heritier. Hovering over bubbling peanut sauce on the brick stove stuffed with charcoal, a swarm of what-ifs circled. Every adopt-an-orphan thought I’d ever had was in full bloom. I dreamed of trick-or-treating and school pageants. I mapped out a daily schedule that would still allow time for me to be a writer and activist.

  The peanut noodles were a big hit (soon to become a family regular, Francisca later told me). We all enjoyed orange sodas and cookies after the meal, with enough smiles to feel like much-needed fresh air. Still, something was missing.

  I took some of the noodles and peanut sauce over to Aunt Harriet’s. Francisca sent me with a note in Lingala: I made it. I offered Harriet and Heritier my peanut noodles. He loved it, which I interpreted as confirmation that I might, in secret fact, be capable of mothering. This time I got out the door and into the street before he started to cry.

  The next day I had Francisca write out a request in Lingala for Heritier to come to Mama Koko’s for a visit: Can I take him for a little while? I’ll bring him back.

  His sick younger auntie read the note and looked at me, sizing up the situation. She picked Heritier up, washed him, dressed him in one of his new outfits, and sent us on our way.

  At Mama Koko’s, sisters and cousins laughed to themselves. “Doesn’t she know he doesn’t have a diaper on? He’ll pee all over her lap!” But we had a grand time, watching home videos on my Blackberry of my cats, and of birds in the snow. Heritier liked postcards of Mt. Hood, stickers, pineapple, and more of my peanut noodles. The payoff for the day? An uptick in his smile frequency.

  I’d already bonded with Francisca’s little nieces and nephews. Two-year-old Narcissis was so terrified of my white skin during our whole first week in Congo that she screamed and ran away at the sight of me. We’ve since become the best of friends, sharing rounds of campfire songs about making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, translated into Lingala.

  But Heritier was different. Everybody could see that. “Look around,” Francisca said. “Children love you. You already have children everywhere.”

  One day, inside Mama Koko’s, I fed Heritier his favorite super-sweet pineapple at the dining table. A young mother, one of Francisca’s cousins, spotted us and crouched down to him. “Is this your new Mama?”

  I died inside. What the hell was I doing? I wondered if I was setting up Heritier to lose someone else.

  He nodded at her, raising his eyebrows, and said one of his few words: “Yeah.”

  Papa Alexander: The Second Sitting

  • • • •

  We settled back into Mama Koko’s cement living room with Papa Alexander. He seemed less anxious to talk to us than on our first day. Francisca wasn’t clear why. Based on the deep and sometimes bewildering questions I had asked others (“What did it smell like that morning, after the thunderstorm?”), Francisca sensed that we might be on the verge of trampling into raw and unwelcome terrain.

  Still, we picked up where we had left off.

  After the family buried Roger, they split up. Mama Cecelia and Papa Alexander grabbed their nine-year-old grandson Dieu Merci (“Thank God”) and slipped into the forest for cover, hoping to make their way to safety like the rest of their neighbors, either to Dungu in the south or to Sudan in the north. They walked silently through the bush.

  Until they saw the LRA.

  And the LRA saw them.

  They ran.

  The gunmen followed.

  Papa Alexander was ahead, beating back bushes, until he noticed there were no footsteps behind him. He looked back. Dieu Merci and Mama Cecelia were surrounded by gunmen. They were already under orders, peeling off their clothes.

  Dieu Merci stood naked while the gunmen rubbed down his small, nine-year-old body with special oils, anointing him a new boy soldier. Dieu Merci stared at Mama Cecelia, unable to stop the tears from spilling down his stony face, paralyzed with fear.

  One of the gunmen noticed Dieu Merci’s heavy st
ares at Mama Cecelia. He coached the boy, “Forget about them.”

  Mama Cecelia locked eyes with Dieu Merci, giving him a piercing look. She said, “You will be okay.” As if willing it to be true.

  Papa Alexander could have kept running. He could have escaped. But the gunmen had Mama Cecelia and Dieu Merci. All the fight drained out of him. He turned and walked straight back to them—and the militia.

  As oil dripped down Dieu Merci’s body and Mama Cecelia stood naked, prepped for execution, waiting, Papa Alexander walked straight up to the gunmen, with one request. “Kill me, too.”

  Bewildered, the gunmen said, “Old man, do you even understand what you are asking?”

  “I can’t live without her,” Alexander said of Cecelia.

  They told Papa Alexander to strip.

  Once he was naked, they hit him. Kicked him. Knocked him to the ground with painful blows against his bony frame. They beat him until all the dignity he’d spent a lifetime building—wealthy farmer, patriarch, man with four wives—had drained from him and all that was left was his raw and broken body, shriveled up in pain on the forest floor.

  “Get up,” they commended. Papa Alexander struggled to stand beside Mama Cecelia, their bare flesh sagging with age.

  The LRA cocked their guns.

  One said, “Run.”

  Is this a hunting game? Alexander and Cecelia wondered. Or a freak wave of empathy? Whatever it was, they did run, as fast as their bare, elder feet could go, over sharp twigs, stones, roots, their skin naked and flopping, bruises and blood still coming on, with gunshots piercing trees and the ground, their grandson Dieu Merci left behind.

  They ran until the crackling bullets faded, and they were both still alive. They ran until, in a clearing, they saw a crowd of just-released hostages. The crowd welcomed them and wrapped them in clothes.

  But a lumbering, injured crowd was far too likely to attract the gunmen, so they scattered. Alexander and Cecelia limped behind until they were alone.

  They never saw Dieu Merci again.

  Who All Died

  • • • •

  What happened to the rest of the family? I wondered.

  I pictured them splitting up. I didn’t think about all the things Papa Alexander had to revisit in the telling of this story, the guilt that must be eating him up: Why did they have to stay to bury Roger? Why didn’t they run? How could he have left his nine-year-old grandson to people who would devour his soul? What if they had all gone together, some other way?

  I asked Alexander, “So, who all died that day?”

  He snapped back into the present when Francisca translated. He paused before responding. The long silence should have told us Alexander had gone as far as he could. He was teetering on the edge, across the chasm of emotions that someone who hasn’t been to that hinterland couldn’t possibly grasp.

  “André,” he said.

  André was Alexander’s son, named after Francisca’s father.

  We had already spent a long time mapping out the family tree. Alexander had already told me the names of the children and grandchildren Francisca had forgotten to note. At the time, he mentioned who had been killed by LRA, but I didn’t know much more about their deaths.

  “How did André die?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Ask Bingo.”

  Bingo was a cousin, adopted by Papa Alexander about forty years before, after he was orphaned. Bingo stayed behind for Roger’s burial, and he was with André when he was killed. He saw it happen. I had met him the other day, when he visited from out of town, but he had since left. We wouldn’t see him again. Papa Alexander was quiet for a long while. Eventually, he said, “They chopped him up with an axe.”

  Francisca was reeling. She didn’t know we would ask so many questions, hear so many details, go so deep, planting images in her head that she wouldn’t be able to shake for years. She pictured André’s last moments, and those of Roger’s son Fulabako, who was with him. She wondered if they begged for their lives.

  Axes. Francisca wouldn’t even kill a chicken with an axe.

  I asked, “Who else died?”

  Francisca didn’t want to translate, but she didn’t want to lie.

  Alexander was shutting down. “You’ll have to check your list.”

  He started to crack. It was in his eyes.

  I saw it. “Is he okay? We can stop.”

  Francisca didn’t translate.

  “It’s okay. We’ll stop.”

  I pretended to turn off the camera, but I let the videotape roll. I don’t know why. His pain radiated, filling the room.

  Trying to infuse something human back into the moment, I said, “It’s so many people to lose in one day.”

  I waited for Francisca to pass on my sympathies.

  Papa Alexander stayed transfixed on the wall, trying to hold it all back. Francisca knew better, but she translated anyway: It’s so many people to lose in one day. Papa Alexander’s face tightened and creased, as if hit by high-voltage electricity, or having taken a hard bite down on aluminum foil. He folded into a gasping sob, way beyond words or even sound.

  Father Ferruccio

  • • • •

  With our time in Dungu wearing on, we returned to the Bamokandi mission. We sensed there was more to Father Ferruccio’s story than he originally shared. Another Italian priest greeted us. He looked like the sort of slender, aging hippie you might see at the local Portland co-op, with trimmed white hair, deep wrinkles, and tufts of fuzz like cotton balls sticking out of his ears. He sent someone to get Father Ferruccio while we waited on the mission’s front porch, chatting as best we could through the language barrier.

  I mentioned Kony.

  “Kony,” he said, swinging his arm like an axe. “Cut him down.” Not what I’d typically expect from a peacenik priest, but the sentiment seemed universal in Orientale.

  Father Ferruccio appeared and ushered us inside the mission, into a dim dining room with all the shades drawn. He placed fruit and coffee between us on the wooden table, an offering for our meeting. As he poured himself a cup, Ferruccio explained: The morning of the attacks an LRA defector showed up at the mission. Residents brought the defector to the church first, hoping the priests could help turn the LRA over to the UN. It hadn’t gone well before. As a result of several slip-ups and UN no-shows, two, six, ten LRA returned to the bush, instead of repatriating. Two plus six plus ten LRA who would be home, doing no harm.

  The morning of the attack, Roger and the area chief, Raphael, showed up at the mission along with an LRA soldier seeking asylum. But the UN and even the local authorities weren’t able to oblige. If UN authorities had come, of course, they would have been on the ground just before the attacks. They could have protected villagers.

  But they were busy.

  Father Ferruccio asked Roger and Raphael to take the defector into Dungu. Roger had a motorbike and had taken defectors in before. The last time, only a week prior, the UN didn’t even reimburse his gas money. Roger didn’t want to do it again. But he understood community service, and Father Ferruccio had asked. He agreed to be the driver.

  I asked if Father Ferruccio held the United Nations responsible for the deaths in his parish and village. He said without hedging or qualifiers, “Yes.” If Roger hadn’t agreed to deliver the LRA to the UN, he might have lived. His entire family might have made it out whole.

  I wanted to say something, but any gesture—a hug, or a canned phrase like “It’s not your fault”—felt too sterile.

  Father Ferruccio pulled out his computer and offered to copy some of his photos onto a thumb drive for me. The computers were slow and the photos took a long time to copy. As the clock ticked beyond 5:30 p.m., Francisca and I were keenly aware that it was well past a good hour to be in the outskirts of Bamokandi.

  Back at Mama Koko’s parcel, the family was getting worried. The sky was already tinged with pink and orange; the sun would be going down before long. Mama Koko stood out in front of the house
and stared at the road.

  Back at the mission, the other Italian priest, the Father with the ear tufts, opened the front door with force, interrupting us. “Congolese army have just come back from Gilima. They’re drunk.”

  Drunk Congolese soldiers anywhere in Congo meant trouble, from petty theft to gang rape to trigger-happy fingers, never mind those freshly returned from the Red Triangle. We grabbed our stuff and rushed onto the mission’s porch. The Fathers followed us. Congolese army soldiers had parked their truck in the mission courtyard. Piles of soldiers dangled drunkenly from the truck bed.

  Mamba hopped to attention and revved up the Runner. True to fussy form, the Runner sputtered to a halt. Several soldiers were already down from the truck and headed squarely toward us. Their drunk wobbling seemed to temper them to almost slow motion. Some were armed. One had a spear.

  Both priests and our push-start guys got behind the Runner and pushed as Francisca and I ran alongside the SUV’s open door, ready to jump in, with purses and camera bags flopping.

  The Runner puttered to a halt, again. The priests and push-start crew went at it again. Again, putter putter. As the Congolese soldiers got closer, now about ten feet away, the Runner finally chug, chug, chugged to life. Francisca and I jumped in, slammed the doors, and we sped off, waving our thanks to the priests left in the dust plumes to deal with their unwelcome guests.

  Mama Koko was still waiting out front in the fading light when we pulled up to her parcel.

  Blood and Sunrise

  • • • •

  “What is this?” Mama Koko said over dinner at the Procure. She stared forward and didn’t gesture behind her, but we knew what she was getting at. Serge was a sexy Congolese aid worker from Kinshasa. His room was next to mine at the Procure and he was presently chatting up a striking young nun over beers. We’d seen them around together. They were both working a mission to deliver aid to remote areas. The other morning she came by just after breakfast in a sweatsuit rather than her nun’s habit. When she passed Serge, he said, “It’s dangerous to dress like that. I’m going to forget you are a sister.”