Boy Soldier

by Cola Bilkuei

  Finally he said, ‘If you want to go, go.’

  I walked around saying to people in broken English: ‘Zimbabwe – car – go?’

  It was all the language I had. I spent a couple of hours doing this. Either they couldn’t understand me, or they didn’t want to help such a suspicious-looking guy. Finally a man told me that there was a place I could stand to get a lift to Zimbabwe. I gave him some money to buy a Coke, and he pointed out where to stand – there was no actual bus station, just places where people would congregate. I listened to people speak and when I heard some of them talking about Zimbabwe I attached myself to them, trying to look as if I was part of their group.

  We waited there for a while, until a pick-up truck arrived and everyone started moving towards it. I said to the driver: ‘Zimbabwe?’

  He nodded. I gave him some money and jumped into the tray of the pick-up with the other passengers. There were five of us sitting on each edge – I took a corner, a little precariously – while a couple of elderly people and children were sitting in the middle, by our feet.

  The driver wanted one of the girls to sit in the front with him. But then he said she would have to pay more for the ‘special seat’. The girl said no. The driver kept insisting, but the girl refused. He ended up leaving her there. Their little quarrel might have saved her life.

  We drove off. The driver had a woman and a man in the front with him. They had a jerry can and I thought I could see them drinking together. The driving was soon a little erratic. We’d seen signs saying Landmines, still left over from Mozambique’s war of independence, so we didn’t want the driver swerving off the road. I grew anxious about landmines. One of the other passengers in the tray wanted to change places with me, so I moved to sit near the cab, holding onto the bar. This day was full of small decisions that had great consequences later.

  We were about thirty minutes from the border when I heard a noise. It sounded as though a wheel had come off. The car started weaving violently, then it went off the highway into the scrub. It hurtled out of control, bumping over the ground through the low trees and bushes. I couldn’t see anything – I had my eyes closed, I was hunched down behind the cab, terrified. Despite all the things that had happened to me, I had never experienced such sudden and intense fear as I felt at that moment.

  I thought a landmine must have blown up. But later I figured out that the driver had been drinking and speeding, and the pick-up had hit a pothole which exploded a tyre.

  We smashed into a big tree and stopped. The engine hissed and ticked. When I opened my eyes there was no one in the tray. I didn’t know what had happened.

  I sat there, breathing hard. I’d hurt my ribs and stomach. The driver got out of the cab. He was crying wildly, and fell to the ground. I jumped out and sat for a while, then walked back towards the road.

  People had been hit by trees or had been thrown out of the car. There were bodies everywhere, covered with blood. Some had bad cuts, and some were obviously dead. Some of the children and the old people were lying dead in the dirt. The driver got up and looked for his assistant. His assistant, when he found him, had been decapitated by a tree. The driver just sat there and cried with his head in his hands.

  It was the first time I’d been in or even seen a car accident. I was in shock. Some children were crying, crying, crying. I was saying to myself, ‘Oh my God, Oh my God.’ I thought I was going to die with them in the middle of nowhere in Mozambique.

  I made my way back to the highway to look for help. Another of the survivors, a young Mozambican man, came with me. Trucks were coming. I waved at them to stop. They sped past. Finally a South African bus stopped and the driver opened his window to talk to us. It was a modern bus with computerised doors, and well-off people sitting in the plush seats.

  The Mozambican guy and I stammered: ‘There was an accident, an accident!’ We pointed over into the scrub where we knew there were children crying and badly injured people lying amongst the bodies. The driver and another man got out and looked, then walked back to the bus. They did nothing. ‘We can’t do anything,’ they said. ‘We’ll tell the police at the border, and they’ll come back and bring an ambulance.’

  Then the bus drove off.

  I was sitting by the side of the highway with the Mozambican boy. We tried to flag down another vehicle, and finally a big truck stopped for us. We showed the driver – he walked with us into the bush. Other survivors were either crying or lying around, holding their wounds. The driver couldn’t do anything, but he brought some water. I asked if he could take me to the border. I was afraid of the police coming and asking where I was from. I did want to help the injured people, but I was in a terrible situation. Helping them could create a huge problem for me.

  The driver said, ‘No problem, get in with me.’

  I sat with him in his cab. He had his bed behind his seat. He offered me something to drink. I kept asking about the Zimbabwean border, and the South African border. He said he’d take me into Zimbabwe if I could make my way across the border by myself.

  ‘If you can get across, I will meet you on the other side,’ he said. I asked if he could smuggle me over the border.

  He shook his head. ‘No, there are guards who will check everywhere, and if they find you, I am in trouble.’

  More than ever I felt like a fugitive. I had done nothing wrong other than having no official papers, but having no papers led me to make other decisions that I wish I didn’t have to make – like leaving the scene of a terrible accident. Yet I felt I had no choice. Stopping there in Mozambique would have been the same as giving myself up to the police and asking them to throw me in jail and send me back to Sudan. I had to keep going forward.

  The border was an open, dry place, with houses scattered about. There was no big government building, just a checkpoint with people standing around drinking and eating and a few policemen not doing very much. I thought it looked easy to cross. They did not seem to be paying attention to who was coming or going.

  The driver dropped me at a small hotel on the border where he said I could get help crossing. I went into the restaurant on the ground floor. I didn’t want to rush into trusting someone to smuggle me across the border, and I had other priorities: I was very hungry and I needed to exchange my money.

  On the menu was a picture of plates of rice with different meats and vegetables, with prices in dollars. I was getting confused about the money I had in my pocket. I didn’t know if these prices on the menu were Zimbabwe dollars or US dollars. I asked the worker in the hotel if they accepted Malawian kwachas for a plate of food, and he said, ‘Yes, you can exchange it here. What do you want?’

  I changed my remaining fortune of twelve hundred kwacha for four hundred Zimbabwe dollars, which at the time were much more powerful than they are now. I thought he wasn’t giving me enough, but I wasn’t going to argue. I didn’t want to create a problem.

  I ordered a plate of chicken – properly cooked in a stew with rice this time! – and a bottle of Coke. Once I had eaten I felt better, and the hotel guy and I became friendly. He said, ‘Sit in a corner, don’t go anywhere.’ He didn’t want anybody talking to me.

  After a while, I told him about the accident. I said there were people in a critical condition. He said he would tell the police, and left me.

  I sat and waited, trusting him not to bring police back with him. Soon he came back and said a report had been made to the police but nobody, not even an ambulance, had gone out there yet. I thought about those children and the injured survivors who were in a terrible situation out in the bush. But I was scared to talk too much about it. I wondered how I could make the police more urgent without attracting attention to myself, but I couldn’t see a way.

  I kept asking myself why I didn’t get hurt in the accident. A part of me thought the witch doctor was controlling my fate, and he had caused the accident because we had quarrelled. I told the hotel guy about my misgivings, and he said that maybe it was true, those witch d
octors were powerful men.

  The hotel guy was reassuring me, though, and being as helpful as he could. He kept saying I was ‘the best man’. He made me eat until my stomach felt like it would blow up. I found out later that he should have given me six hundred Zimbabwe dollars, instead of four hundred. No wonder he was happy with me! But I didn’t find out the correct exchange rate until I got to Harare.

  He did help me across the border though, and if I’d been arrested the police would have taken all my money anyway, so I guess the ‘bargain’ was worthwhile.

  He outlined the plan for me. ‘You have to wait until 10 pm. I’m going out to get someone who will help you.’

  A little time later he returned with a Zimbabwean man. He was about my height and age, wearing black leather shoes, jeans and a white T-shirt. He looked flashy, like an African-American, with very red eyes. He was extremely friendly, which should have put me on my toes, but appearances are often deceptive, one way or the other. He said, ‘You want to go to Zimbabwe?’

  ‘How much do you want?’ I said.

  He gave my clothes a long look. ‘Just give me that jacket.’

  Taking it off, I said, ‘Have my jacket, that’s simple!’

  He said he’d take it later on.

  He said he’d show me a safe way around the border. About a kilometre away, he explained, was a place where people had cut the fence. I wanted him to take me over. He said he couldn’t, because he’d committed a crime in Zimbabwe and couldn’t go back.

  ‘So where do I go when I’m on the other side?’ I asked.

  He said: ‘You will find a main road that continues from here through a Zimbabwean town. Walk straight along the road to the bus station and ask for buses going to Harare.’

  It was now ten o’clock at night, and he said the bus driver would let me sleep inside if I paid for my ticket upfront. ‘The buses leave at four o’clock in the morning when the police are still snoring,’ he said, ‘so you will be safe.’

  The last thing I did was give the man my rain jacket. He was leaving me here, as he didn’t want to get caught bringing me across the border.

  I left Mozambique with my three T-shirts, my jeans, my shoes, my Bible, my toothbrush, a few hundred Zimbabwean dollars, and some haunting memories of the day.

  CHAPTER 9

  Zimbabwe

  FOLLOWING THE ZIMBABWEAN MAN’S INSTRUCTIONS to the letter, I left the hotel, walked for ten or fifteen minutes through the outskirts of the town, and found the hole in the fence where he had said it would be. I went through the hole and kept walking. It was dark by then, almost midnight, but there were still people about on the Zimbabwean side. When they greeted me, I wouldn’t reply. They could speak English and I couldn’t. I felt that by opening my mouth I would be giving myself away.

  I found the Harare bus, as directed, and spoke to the driver.

  ‘I want to go to Harare,’ I said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘You want to pay now?’

  ‘Yeah!’ I said, relieved and excited. The plan was working out! ‘Can I sleep in the bus?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, yes, get in the back.’

  I climbed in. I had a full stomach, I didn’t need anything to drink, and I had made it into Zimbabwe without being arrested. I was happy.

  For a while I looked out of the bus window for police Land Rovers patrolling around. Compared with police in all the other countries I had been in, the Zimbabweans looked well dressed and organised. I’d have to be careful of them. I kept spying on them through the window. After a while I said to the driver, ‘Can I go and pee?’

  ‘Just go through the window,’ he said. ‘If you go off looking for a toilet you might find problems.’

  Eventually I went to sleep. By four in the morning people were coming in from the villages with their vegetables to go to Harare market, three hours away. I woke up as the farm people were getting in. The driver gave me some water to clean my face, which I did hanging out of the window.

  The moment the bus started to move off, I relaxed. I was relieved, big-time. I felt as though an oppressive weight had been lifted from me; maybe I could get through this challenge, and make it to a better life in this country which had given me so much hope. Along the way, the bus kept stopping for passengers to get out and buy and sell vegetables. With two Zimbabwean dollars I bought a Coke. The highest notes they had were a fifty and a hundred. They also had fives and tens. I could work it out. No more of these millions – they scared me. It is a sign of how badly things have gone in Zimbabwe in the last ten years that their money is now as worthless as the Mozambican currency.

  We drove for about three hours and arrived in Harare at a place called Mbare, a thirty-minute walk from the centre of the city. It was a bright, busy morning. Mbare was an overcrowded ghetto, with people everywhere, cooking alongside the road, living and working in little improvised shanties. Buses were stopping to take people to all parts of Harare. Markets were selling cheap food – tomatoes, meat and fish. It was very noisy, with people arguing and shouting at each other. I decided to walk to Harare. I didn’t want to wait around this place any longer than necessary.

  As I walked, I could see the skyscrapers. Harare was easily the cleanest, most modern city I had been in. If I had gone straight from my village in Panaruu to a city like this, I might have fainted with shock. Now, though, after my years in other countries and my time in big cities like Nairobi, I was better prepared. Still, Harare was impressive.

  When I got to the city centre, I wanted to go to the United Nations office. At first I was afraid, because there were security guards everywhere. When I saw them I hid, not knowing the difference between security guards and police, thinking that any man or woman in a uniform was likely to lock me up. Eventually I asked a man where the UN office was, and walked until I came to Harare central police station. I started walking very fast. Some policemen outside greeted me, and I greeted them back, not wishing to appear suspicious. They asked me where I was going and I had no choice but to tell them. Besides, I was lost. To my surprise, they told me where the UN office was without asking me for papers. All of a sudden I had a surge of confidence. Simply not being arrested felt like a huge step forward.

  When I got to the UN office, they handed me a form to fill in and gave me cups of tea. It was now two o’clock in the afternoon and there were other people there who’d waited outside all night, but the kind UN officers, seeing that I was in a desperate situation, let me jump the queue.

  After I had filled in my form, some officers came out and said they would take me to a transit place for new migrants. They were helpful people at the UN in Harare, compared with some of my past experiences with that organisation.

  While I was sitting there, a Sudanese man popped into the office from nowhere and greeted me. It was Albino Garang, a young guy I’d last seen in Ifo!

  I was ready to jump up and laugh and cry and hug him, but Garang motioned me to sit still and be quiet. If they knew we were friends, they’d throw us both out. But a lady at the desk had seen my reaction. She asked if we knew each other. Garang said: ‘We’re just greeting each other because we’re both Sudanese, we Sudanese are always like this.’

  Garang and I went outside and got something to eat. He had arrived here from Kenya the same way as I had – sneaking across borders, always heading south in the hope of something better. But although we had much to talk about and a lot in common, he told me that recognising Sudanese friends might get us all into trouble, because it would look like we were banding together to bring other Sudanese into Zimbabwe.

  Garang said: ‘When you go to the transit camp, there will be other Sudanese, but pretend you don’t recognise them. It’s a sure way to all of us being rejected.’

  I went back into the UN office and sat quiet as a mouse until they called me in. I was happy and excited to go to the transit camp finally. I was thinking, I’ve made it, I’m in Zimbabwe!

  At the centre of the tra
nsit camp was a big circular building with a very high wall around it. There was a school in there, and a hospital with a doctor. On the other side of the building was some land on which the residents could grow tomatoes. There were also pens with poultry, which the residents could farm.

  There were other Sudanese who had been in the camp for months. They came and looked at me curiously. I knew some of them from Uganda and Kenya, but pretended not to. They were trying to talk to me, but I acted coolly. From the UN staff I received four blankets and a cooking pot, with oil, sugar, tea leaves, dried whitebait and five kilos of maize. Everything was given to me at the one time, enough food to last fifteen days until the next handout. And I received my accommodation: a brand new one-man tent. And soap! I started laughing. I’d been to so many places and never been given a fraction of this.

  The camp was divided into blocks by the different nationalities: there were Congolese, Rwandan and Liberians as well as Sudanese. Soon my fellow Sudanese were helping me put up my tent. They brought electricity cables from the central barracks room for our area and connected up my tent with electric light! They also gave me a small electric stove and a green T-shirt with a hood. It felt like the height of luxury.

  Soon I was chatting with the Sudanese boys, feeling right at home. They said that the next morning there would be English classes. It sounded good to me. That first night I lay down in my tent, safe and comfortable, and thought about all the problems and challenges I had faced. I felt as if I had reached the summit of a great mountain and had the luxury to look down behind me at the troubles I had overcome. It had been a long, long time since I had felt this satisfied.

  I stayed at that camp for about six months. We could choose to go to school or do some business. I chose school. I was granted a temporary permit into Zimbabwe which I had to have renewed every three months at an office in Harare. The purpose of the transit camp was to assess us and work out what to do with us next.