Boy Soldier

by Cola Bilkuei

  There were farmers cultivating cabbages and farm workers around, but I avoided them. I kept walking and grew very tired. I walked for hours, sweating in the afternoon heat, still not finding any town. I reached the stage where I was too tired to hide from cars.

  Finally I came to a sign that said: Messina 10km.

  I kept going. Only ten kilometres! That gave me great hope. But my mind was addled by heat, hunger, stress and fatigue. I saw a car coming, an army car. It went past me, about one hundred metres, then stopped and reversed. Was it reversing back to get me? I ran and hid next to a big tree and threw my identification, my hard-won Zimbabwean national ID, into the bushes. My status card might let me walk free in Zimbabwe, but it would get me deported here.

  Sure enough, the army car came back. Sitting inside were some white soldiers. They jumped out and said in English, ‘Eh, where you going?’

  I told them I was going to Messina.

  They said, ‘Jump in.’ They seemed good-natured. There were about seven of them in the car, holding guns. I wasn’t going to argue.

  We drove along the main road, but instead of continuing to Messina they took a turn-off before the town. My stomach was flying around with nerves. We arrived at a big military base, and they said, ‘Come out, come out.’

  I got out and sat down, waiting for the interrogation. I couldn’t say I was South African. They’d ask me where I came from and I wouldn’t know anything about South Africa. So I thought it would be better to say I was from Sudan than Zimbabwe. Sending me back to Sudan would pose a much greater problem for them. Maybe they would give up and let me stay.

  There were more than a thousand soldiers in this barracks. One of the men who’d been in the car asked me how long since I’d eaten.

  I just wanted them to leave me alone. ‘Two days,’ I said.

  ‘Huh? Two days?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Another soldier came over. ‘How long did it take you to come across from the Zimbabwe side?’

  There was no point lying about where I’d just come from, but I could make the most of my story, and they seemed sympathetic. ‘Two days,’ I said, ‘and I’ve been sleeping in the forest.’

  They brought me some good food and drink. I tried to eat, but I was so scared I couldn’t. I didn’t know where they were going to send me.

  One of the soldiers, a sergeant, asked me how long it had been since I’d left Sudan. I told him how I’d walked and caught buses from country to country for years. The soldiers who were listening were amazed. Some of them felt sorry for me, others less so. I said I’d been a child soldier, and they asked me if I knew how to use their guns. I said I even knew how to drive a tank. Soon I had them laughing.

  The captain came and said they’d take me to Messina for the night, and then the next day a car would come and take me to Johannesburg. I was very happy – they wanted to help me!

  They put me into a car and the next thing we were arriving at a police station in Messina. The soldiers said, ‘Jump out here, and you can sleep at the police station.’

  I didn’t believe them. I sensed a trap and refused to get out. They said: ‘There’s no problem, tomorrow the police will put you on a bus to Johannesburg.’

  I got out of the army car. The minute the soldiers left, a policeman came up and said: ‘Remove your shoelaces!’ He shoved me and repeated the order. I was confused, and stumbled about.

  They searched me, fingerprinted me and pushed me around very roughly. They wrote a report saying I had illegally crossed the border from Zimbabwe. They took my belt out, and my pants started to fall down.

  A policeman grabbed me by the waistband of my jeans and threw me in a cell where there were about twenty men lying down. Seven of them were from the Congo. There was a Malawian guy, and a Kenyan, and two Mozambicans. I started to feel a little bit better, because I was the furthest from home and would be the hardest to deport.

  A policeman brought us a slice of bread and a little bit of meat, throwing the plates wildly into the cell. I looked at the walls, which had been written on. One line said Williams Awang from Sudan had been arrested here on such and such a day. Another said Bol Bol, from southern Sudan, was arrested and held here. I wondered if he was my old friend Bol. I found a space and drew a small map of Africa showing where I was from. I went and lay in a corner, in my clothes, without a blanket, on the concrete floor and tried to sleep.

  I woke up to a great clamour. They had arrested another hundred Zimbabweans crossing the border and were throwing them all in with us. The police knew them well: the day they let them go, they’d be arresting them again the next night. It was a big routine.

  I was in the prison for eighteen days. There was one room with an open toilet, no door between the toilet and the other prisoners. If you wanted to go, you had to do it in front of everyone. Outside this room was a small courtyard where we’d sit during the day. The sun and rain would come down through the bars.

  I was afraid here, because the police were so powerful and I was just a defenceless detainee on my own. Being ex-SPLA, I wondered if I might be able to claim political asylum. The big danger was that they would just throw me into prison for five years and forget about me. I had no way of knowing what they would do.

  The prison was so overcrowded that I only had room to sleep huddled on the ground. Soon there was fighting. The food was distributed according to what country you were from, and the Zimbabweans got nothing, so they would sit there watching us eating our bread and drinking our tea. The guards wanted to give the Zimbabweans maximum disincentive to try to cross again, so they would punish them by not letting them eat a thing for two days. One Zimbabwean man was given no food for three days. He sat there, an old man, about to cry with anger, and watched me eating some meat. I asked some of the Congolese if we could all contribute a little bit of meat for this old man. They all said no. A Malawian guy said okay, and we pitched in together. I felt so sorry for that old man. The Congolese got angry, saying, ‘If you want to give your food away, give it to us!’ When I gave the old man the food, he was shaking and sweating. Next morning he was taken out and released, and he thanked us for sharing our food.

  We joked about the meat, which was quite tender but strange-tasting. We’d say, ‘They are cooking donkeys!’

  I had my money hidden in a little slit I’d cut in the tongue of my left shoe. The police kept asking me, ‘Where is your money?’ I only had about a hundred rand (twenty-five Australian dollars), but I guarded it as if it was a king’s ransom.

  Eighteen days passed, and nothing happened. Then a man from the South African Department of Home Affairs came and said we’d be taken to court in the town of Louis Trichardt, about a hundred kilometres away.

  We were put into a van and driven there, not knowing anything about what was going to happen, but hoping that in some miraculous way it might end with our release.

  We arrived late in the day at a big prison building. Inside, everyone was locked into their cells. There were TV monitors showing the corridors and cells. The officers wrote down our names. While they were talking, I watched the surveillance monitors. In every cell there were things happening: people walking around naked and raving like maniacs. This was not like the Messina prison I’d just come from, this was a hardcore prison with inmates who had been in jail for ten, twenty or thirty years! I thought I was a dead man. I was just a skinny young boy. They would eat me for breakfast. My stomach started fluttering like crazy and I wanted to start crying.

  Seeing our reactions, an officer said: ‘No, we won’t mix you with those guys; they’ve killed people and raped children and committed robberies. You’ll be taken to cells for minor crimes and people on remand.’

  I still didn’t know whether to believe him. I was shaking with nerves as we were taken to a cell and pushed inside. There were about twenty of us from different parts of Africa, including a woman and her baby son from Congo. He was only about three months old.

  We showered and were given foo
d. We stayed in this jail for another seven days. On the eighth day they drove us to the court, but we couldn’t see the magistrate yet. We just waited, waited, waited, for hours. Then we were given papers that said we were free to leave the court and go out on the streets, but had to leave South Africa within forty-eight hours. If we didn’t leave, we’d be arrested and given big jail sentences.

  I had only one plan: I would go to Johannesburg and declare myself as an asylum seeker. A Kenyan guy from the jail came with me. I bought a ticket and we got onto a train, which was the first time I’d been on one. I sat on the seat, my Kenyan friend hiding under my seat because he didn’t have a ticket.

  It was September, late winter in South Africa. The train went overnight and became cold, cold, cold. We arrived in Johannesburg about six o’clock in the morning, but disastrously for him, my Kenyan friend was caught without a ticket and arrested. I never found out what happened to him.

  I walked outside the station. If I had been in big cities before, they were nothing compared to this. This city was too big, there were people everywhere. What could I do now? I didn’t know. I found a street where there were lots of Senegalese and Nigerians doing business. I found a guy who was very black, and approached him, thinking he was from Sudan, but he was Senegalese. I asked him if he knew where the Sudanese were. He told me to go to Doornfontein, which apparently was a suburb in the centre of Johannesburg.

  I kept walking, asking people the direction of Doornfontein. When I got there, I found a lot of Congolese and Burundians. I asked for Sudanese but there didn’t seem to be any around. Some Burundian men bought me something to eat, and while I was with them I met a guy called Pombe, who asked me if I wanted to start a job the next day.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked.

  ‘Can you sell sweets for me? You can come to my house and sleep and eat for free, plus I’ll give you seven rand a day.’

  It sounded like a great deal to me, at least while I applied for asylum. If I was going to stay beyond my forty-eight hours, I would need a job.

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  I slept in his house, and the next day he took me to work. Pombe had a little stall selling sweets, and on that first morning I sold three hundred rand worth of goods. He gave me seven. Towards the middle of the day I told him I wanted to go to the Department of Home Affairs to declare myself as an asylum seeker. Pombe said I could go. I don’t know if he expected to see me again.

  At the Department of Home Affairs they told me to go to the Jesuit Refugee Service office, where I would have to prove I was from Sudan.

  At the JRS, an official sat me down for an interview.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Sudan.’

  ‘Huh?’ he said sceptically.

  He brought out a map and asked me what was the capital city, who was the president, and which province did I come from?

  After I answered his questions (correctly), and told him my story, he sent me back to the Department of Home Affairs, where they gave me a temporary permit which I would have to renew every three months. Getting the permit was a great relief, because in South Africa being without a permit meant that you could go to prison any day. I looked at this permit as the first step in my official freedom: at last I had a piece of paper certifying who I was, and shielding me, I hoped, from deportation, arbitrary arrest or bad treatment by police.

  I lived and worked with Pombe for two months. I wanted to start my own business, but couldn’t save anything on a wage of seven rand a day. I’d heard about another Sudanese guy doing business in Pretoria. His name was Gakwich. He’d come from Pretoria to buy stock, and when we met he asked me about my history. Now I called him, and he said he’d pay me one hundred and fifty rand a week working for him. It was a big pay rise on what I was getting from Pombe.

  I went to a suburb of Pretoria called Garankuwa, where I found Gakwich living in a big house with three bedrooms and his own backyard. At Pombe’s house I had been in one room sharing with seven men. Here I had a bedroom all to myself. It felt a little strange lying awake at night, listening for the sound of other people breathing. I had shared everything, beds and rooms, for my whole life. But I quickly got over the strangeness; after a week or so I began to relax with the idea that nobody was going to creep up and steal my things. Later, I would share the room with a Sudanese guy called James Tut. He had been living in Cape Town but was attacked there by some Sudanese Arabs. He had a big knife wound in his left arm. For some Sudanese, our troubles at home were impossible to escape; they followed us around Africa.

  Gakwich showed me how the business worked. Near the Pretoria North Train Station he was selling umbrellas, Chinese-made shoes and second-hand clothes. He wanted to start a new business selling umbrellas on the train. He needed a salesman. It was the rainy season and there was a demand for umbrellas.

  When I worked for Gakwich I would wake early, about five o’clock, and travel around on the trains. ‘Umbrella, umbrella, umbrella!’ I’d have two boxes on me with fifty umbrellas in each. Sometimes they’d all go and we’d make fifteen hundred rand before midday. Before long I was also selling toy telephones for kids, belts and other stuff. Gakwich was very happy with me for selling so much, and would race off to Johannesburg to buy more stock. I had no special gift for salesmanship or any other business skills, but I had an instinct for targeting the people who were ready to buy.

  One morning I woke very early as usual, got onto the train, and was sitting in a carriage with my umbrellas. Two men came and sat next to me. One of them had given me a hand getting on the train. I said, ‘Christmas is coming’; I was just making small talk because I knew they intended me harm. I said, ‘Tomorrow, why don’t you come to my house!’ Maybe I thought they’d change their mind and not rob me today, rob me tomorrow instead.

  The first man put his hand in my pocket. I grabbed his arm to stop him. The other man stood over me and said, ‘You be quiet.’ They spoke Zulu between themselves. Then the first man removed my wallet. I stood up to fight back, and suddenly there were seven of them holding me, with knives pushed against my body. They took everything I had, including my umbrellas. They got the train doors open and looked as though they were going to push me out. I grabbed the bar and pleaded with them not to. The carriage was full and the passengers all just sat there watching me being robbed.

  Finally the leader said, ‘No, we won’t push him out.’ As we slowed down for the next station they got the doors open while the train was moving, threw the umbrellas out onto the platform, and managed to jump out without falling over. They obviously knew what they were doing!

  At Pretoria station I was worried about what I’d say to Gakwich. I talked to a few other vendors I knew, and soon James Tut came along. I was sitting there at the station, upset and confused and afraid.

  ‘Cola, what happened?’ James said. ‘Why is your jacket torn?’

  I told him I’d been robbed.

  He’d already heard the story – people were talking about the guy who’d been mugged and had his umbrellas stolen.

  We got a train home, and I told Gakwich the whole story. He didn’t believe me. He accused me of making it all up so I could steal the umbrellas. I said he could keep my wages to replace the loss. I’d worked hard for that money, but I didn’t want it if he didn’t believe me. After his reaction, I didn’t want to work for him any more anyway. ‘Are you going to believe me when you find me dead?’ I asked angrily.

  So now I was unemployed. I decided to go with James Tut to Sister Louise, a Catholic sister working for the JRS in Pretoria. He said if I explained my situation the church would help me.

  In the JRS office there was a man from Sierra Leone called Jing Thomas. He was a very intelligent guy who used to be a journalist in his home country. He talked to Sister Louise, came back to me and said she would help me – the JRS would give me two hundred and thirty rand a month to tide me over during my unemployment.

  I wasn’t going back to live with Gakwich
, but I knew some other Sudanese boys in the Garankuwa area. One was called Williams and another was Malual Madut. I’d known both of them in the transit camp in Zimbabwe, and they had come to South Africa before me. They lived in a small house and were paying ninety rand a month in rent. They were also selling sweets but were only grossing about fifty rand a day. I said I’d pay the rent out of the money Sister Louise had given me.

  Another man, also called William, came from Zimbabwe and we welcomed him to come and live with us.

  I still wanted to start my own business. I was making more and more contacts around Pretoria with other African migrants. A Congolese guy called Geepepe said we could work together and he’d pay me commission instead of a wage. He traded in leather belts. He said, ‘If I buy a belt for ten rand and you sell it for twenty rand, you take five and I take five of the profit. So if you work hard and advertise the business, the more you make. You could make two hundred and fifty or three hundred a day in commission!’

  I said: ‘That sounds good, brother.’

  Geepepe specialised in belts, toy guns and toy cell phones. He’d give me a hundred belts which I put on my back, walking around the trains calling, ‘Belts! Belts! Belts!’ Sometimes I’d target children, going up to them with the plastic phones and playing their fake ring tones. The kids would cry and pester their mothers to buy these toys. If I did my job well, the mothers didn’t have any option.

  Before long, business was going really well. I’d come home having made two hundred rand in a day. Geepepe became my best friend, and we worked very well together.

  At this time I also met my old friend, Benjamin Bol Bol, who had followed me from Zimbabwe. Together we pooled our money from the JRS to rent a house. Typical of my friends on this journey, Bol Bol had bobbed up in different countries: Kenya, Zimbabwe, now here. He came from the Bahr-el-Ghazal region in Sudan, west of Panaruu, and was a short, lightly built guy like me. In the SPLA, he had driven tanks. We always had a lot to talk about. He loved chess and was an extremely gifted soccer player – if there hadn’t been a war in Sudan, who knows how far he might have gone?