CHAPTER TWO

Bahr el Ghazal State, Sudan

Bazia, Bahr el Ghazal, South Sudan - c.1972

Arketa lay stunned and dizzy, fairly sure her eight-year-old body was dead. Her long fall through a web of branches left torturous music in her mind—bump, bump, bump,thud. The sounds resembled the bouncing beat of the Ganza, the dance of the dead, off a drum tautly topped with a stretched elephant’s-ear. 

 

° ° ° 

 

After the close of her school day, Arketa ran through the central market politely excusing herself as she dodged through throngs people. She held tight to her  book bag, kept a cautious eye out for armed government troops and cut around the corner of a small garden. Once she sighted the Zambakari compound she began hopping and reaching to untie her boots. Inside the girls’ tukul, shedding her boots and school uniform quickly, she slipped into play clothes and raced to the enclosed pit latrine. 

  

She washed her hands in the small calabash reservoir, ran barefoot past the boys’ tukul and past the veranda where dried legumes, groundnuts and grains were stored in woven baskets and calabash gourds perched high in the loft. She whipped through the freestanding kitchen, grabbed the lunch laid out for her then shot down a village footpath to the community gardens, kicking up a cloud of dust along the way. Good,she thought, noticing that only birds were at the garden. Dah neighbor girls is already swinging. 

 

It fell to young village girls to guard Bazia village gardens against birds and rodents. Arketa loved the assignment. Truth was, she loved charging across the three-meter clearing that separated the gardens and the tropical forest. She loved shimmying barefoot high into the tree to straddle the stick tied to a vine stronger than a father’s back, thicker than a mother’s arm. She loved flying in an arc over the swampy pond. Eight-year-old Arketa loved life. 

 

 No teak or mahogany grew where the children played but towering acacias with the big leaves ruled over a crowd of strong trees—wild Passion fruit, Star fruit, Mango, and the treasured Lulu nut tree that sheltered grass so great and heavy a small child could get lost in it. Vines and calabash rope seized the whole forest in an unforgiving grip. 

 

Arketa tossed her lunch aside, greeted her friends, and fell into line to wait her turn at Dangalia. Skinny and agile, small but fierce, at her turn she climbed the tree and reached for the forest rope called bambiyo. She straddled the stick. Oh good! The tall girl is doing dah pushing.” 

 

“One! Go!”Arketa screamed. The first pass thrilled her.“Two!”she shouted. This reminded her of being on a plane. She had been once, flying with her parents to London when she was three. She didn’t remember much about it, only that it was high. “Wheee! Higher!” 

 

“Ohh-unnn!”At the top of the arc, she felt the break. She flew, briefly free-floating before bashing against tree branches and drumming her way to the ground. If she was alive, she didn’t know it. She knew she was in trouble. 

 

For a few shocked moments, no one moved. Then a few girls ran toward her, screaming her familiar home name, “Seria!”Others ran away, fearing the wrath of parents should they be caught in the forest when guarding the garden was ignored. Arketa didn’t remember being pulled up from the forest floor, or friends urging her toward the nearby stream, but she submitted to the assurances that cool water would wash away rising bruises and the swelling of her head. “Don’t tell your mom,” her friends cautioned, lifting her from the stream. She could not get up by herself. God help her, God help them all, if she should confess this venture to her mother.

 

Arketa limped home with one thing occupying her woozy mind: how to explain her condition to her mom. 

 

Ah! Good. Mom’s not home. 

The Mercedes was not in its usual place outside the main tukul, the large mud-walled structure with a bolt-locked teak door and tin-shuttered windows used for family meals and frequent entertainment of visiting churchmen, governmental officials, or visiting foreigners. Arketa had time to think . . . if only she could. She limped into the tukul shared with five sisters and slowly lowered herself to her bed.  

°  °  °

Arketa’s mother, Lucia Tabia, was a daughter of the Chief of the Balanda Viri in Nagero, some ninety miles from Bazia. Like her husband, her advanced studies were completed in London. As a professional midwife, she served as the Regional Health Official, teaching hygiene, tending pregnant women, delivering babies, overseeing and supplying village clinics. She was of the Balanda Viri tribe, a non-Nilotic tribe with language quite distinct from that of the Balanda Bor. From a very young age she lived with her future husband’s family, learning their language and traditions.

 

Arketa’s paternal grandfather, Chief Bazia, was leader of the Balanda Bor. Within that tribe was the Fuzuga clan—town dwellers, educated, Christian, and Arabic-literate—the Zambakari clan. This group was noted for producing administrators, professionals, and tradesmen. Arketa’s father, John Zambakari, was the London educated Minister of Forestry overseeing vast groves of mahogany and teak.

 

Centuries earlier, groves such as these in regions of the massive African tropical rainforest sheltered Arketa’s ancestors under jungle canopies so high that looking for a rumored bright sun outside the leaf barrier, monkeys climbed for hours to break through the top. At least that was the rumor. Vines, grasses, and brush crowding the trunks of giant mangos, teaks, thorny acacias, and other native woods created a barrier dense enough to trap wild game. 

 

Giant Pythons lay in wait ready to eat village dogs, while slender but deadly green snakes slithered along branches. Lazy lions, swift leopards, gangly giraffe, and fierce African buffalo ruled, and still do, well-defined territories. The Nile, and the many rivers rushing into it hosted hippos and crocodiles. Smaller rivers and clean, sand-bedded streams provided fish and clear, cold water. 

 

In the rainforest, equatorial warmth and a nine-month rainy season supported the growth of fruits, vegetables and grains. The goodness of the earth encouraged early inhabitants to clear land, plant gardens, build communities, perfect ironworks, shape spears, hunt, fish, and develop cultures. Tradition and hospitality, community and cooperation, rumors and arguments ran side by side along earthen paths between family compounds, toward gardens, rivers, and streams. Decades, then generations, passed. In some areas, primitive life surrendered to progress and towns developed. 

 

In the 19thcentury Wau town was established as a zariba, a slave-trading base by northern invaders. Later, when Great Britain and Egypt shared rule in Sudan, Wau became the administrative center of Bahr al Ghazal state. Unlike towns like Bazia, with a single tribal identity, Wau attracted thousands from various tribes—Dinka, Ndogo, Golloo, Bal, Bongo, Feroge, Binga, Yulu, Aja, Shatt, Kreish, Balanda. Large though it was, the town functioned like a village: mud-walled and grass-roofed huts clustered along intersecting footpaths that led like interactive jazz to central markets, the church, hospital, garden plots, river or streams. There was no electrical power in Wau. No pipes for water. No guarantee the green snake wasn’t waiting to drop from the roof in dark pit latrines. There were no security systems but the beating of drums. Kerosene lamps and wood fires provided light and heat. The Arabic language and three major landmarks drew townspeople together: a massive central market, a majestic Catholic Cathedral, and a major hospital—major in this respect: the generator usually worked and a few foreign doctors were sometimes in residence.

 

In 1964, at in the midpoint of Sudan’s first civil war, Arketa was born in Wau Hospital, the sixth of eight children to parents with a strong Roman Catholic faith and a measure of privilege—as near to privilege as could be defined in one of the world’s poorest and most underdeveloped countries. Eight years later and seven miles away in Bazia, Arketa fell from the vine.

 

°  °  °

 

“What do you mean, a headache?” Lucia asked. From her feet to her schoolgirl’s shaved head, Arketa was bruised, scraped, and swollen. By the time her mother saw her, Arketa was ready with her first lie. A second lie was at hand if needed: the other kids beat her up. But that wouldn’t work, she was sure. A headache seemed good enough to explain her condition. She heard grownups talk about headaches.

“A headache is causing these bruises?” Lucia, a medical professional, carefully examined her daughter’s body before stepping back, hands on hips, scowl forming.

            

“I fall down,” came a third attempt. 

 

“Really?” 

 

Lucia reminded Arketa of the beating that could follow once that little body had healed. “You are a girl with playing as your first priority,” she said. “This is not good. You will be beaten nicely if you follow the swing of the vine ever again.” 

            

Arketa knew the next day her mother would go into the jungle and cut the offending vine. She also knew that in a matter of weeks, after she healed and the vine grew, she and the other girls would all do it again. 

°  °  °

From November to March Bazia sweltered under oppressive heat. Adults minimized exertion while children maximized it. Arketa, the girl labeled as“made for play” ran barefoot with friends through the village, from shady spot to shady spot, squealing and bouncing her burning feet fast, like the flicking of a frog’s tongue. She waited impatiently for the day Balanda families trekked deep into the forest to collect nuts from the Lulu trees, the Nilotic variety of Shea trees. Sometimes, while everyone was bending to pick the yellow-skinned fruit off the ground, elders pointed spears or walking sticks to particular trees and told gathered children treasured tales passed from generation to generation. Warned against frequent trips to the pit latrine if she didn’t watch her consumption, Arketa peeled back the thin skin like she would a mango and sucked out the soft fruit, sticky and satisfying. The kernel, the precious gift of the lulu fruit, was saved for extracting oil.

When Lulu kernels were sufficiently dry, Arketa volunteered to pound them with an elephant’s tusk against a large hollowed stone. She squealed with pleasure when the nut split and oil splattered on her dark, bare skin. She rubbed it into her skin, she rubbed it onto her closely shorn hair. She admired the sheen. She licked her fingers. The lulu nut oil was nutritious, delicious off the tips of fingers or spread over porridge.  

            

 From April to November, there was relief from the heat. Temperatures cooled into the mid-to-high 70° range, the work of planting intensified, the rains fell and fell—and kept falling. Chilled adults ducked the deluge. Children celebrated. On those rare occasions when hail hammered the waterproof grass-roofed tukuls, villagers grumbled, knowing the work of repair. 

 

“Come with me,” Arketa yelled to friends. “Let’s cawcht dah frozen rain in cupsto eat it!”Hail wasn’t good for the gardens. She knew that. Everyone knew that. Mongoose, rats, monkeys, snakes, elephants . . . so many things were not good for the gardens. But Arketa celebrated hail. 

°  °  °

June 2009

On that warm Phoenix day when Arketa and I first met, some hours after our quick breakfast conversation, Arketa took the stairs to the second floor to meet me. She wasn’t sure why she spoke as openly as she did or why she agreed to talk during her afternoon break. She was still thinking it over as she knocked softly on my mother’s apartment door. Hoping not to wake my napping mom, I quietly stepped out of the apartment and into Arketa’s story. 

 

After an initial greeting I asked, “Are the scars on your cheeks tribal? They are beautiful.”  The three twine-like scars stretched diagonally across each of her cheeks from under her eyes nearly to her ears. 

 

Arketa gave herself time. She studied me, the woman visiting from some cold city, a place of rain not close to Phoenix. She appreciated my relationship with my mom and she was pleased by my familiarity with the situation of Lost Boys. She was as curious about my curiosity as I was curious about the walk she “made like dem.”

 

Arketa studied me then said, “I’ve been in dah states since 2001 and you are dah first person to ask to hear my story. No. Dah Balanda don’t cut,” she said. “Dez are scars of torture.”

 

Ignorance danced in my head. So, after a genuinely polite “Sorry,” I asked a more comfortable question.

“Do you have children?” 

“I have five. Three in Arizona with me, two in Uganda.”

“Uganda? By choice?”

“No. Because of my mom’s death in Kampala, my children live without dah head of family which is dah problem.” My problem was knowing I didn’t know what she was alluding to. 

“No adult?” Flummoxed, I was. 

“No. Dah DNA test is next. 

“DNA?”

Without a head of family in country, proof of relationship was required between Arketa and her 19-year-old son, Timothy, who lived as an undocumented refugee in Kampala.  $470.00 was the obstacle to getting the required DNA test. After that, he needed documents, immigration filings, trips to an American Embassy in Nairobi, medical exams, bribe money, transportation in country, and transportation costs for a trip across the world. It all came down to money—of which, Arketa had little. In the eight years since she arrived in America, Arketa twice filed to open Timothy’s immigration case and twice the time allotted to pay fees expired. But, I didn’t know anything about all that.

            

“Where does that kind of money come from?” Arketa asked matter-of-factly.

 

I wondered, too. Where does an extra $470.00 come for a single mother earning minimum wage without benefits by the design of her employer while supporting eight family members divided first by violence and war and now by continents and legal complications? Her question was rhetorical but legitimate.

 

“I don’t know how we are going to do it,” I heard myself say, “but we’re going to get Timothy to America.” The truth was, I had no idea what I was saying.

°  °  °

I knew about poverty. Generally. I had read Barbara Ehrenreich’s, “Nickel and Dimed.” I didn’t knowthe power of poverty, specifically, but Arketa was introducing me to it. Her situation worked against my heart and mind like an elephant’s tusk against a dry lulu nut. I was crushed. Stunned. I had no idea what I was getting into. “Can you bring me the paperwork you have about this?” I asked.

 

My education in all things Zambakari began in that corridor. I flew to Seattle early the next morning with documents directing payment for the necessary DNA tests. I was determined to bring Timothy to his mom after an eleven-year separation; to bring him out of the Kampala slum where he lived with two slightly older cousins after a long journey by foot from Central African Republic; where he lived between stealth and starvation and the occasional money from his mom in America. But what did I know except a DNA test was needed. 

 

In complete and blissful innocence, I took step one. I paid the DNA clinic, and then I emailed friends, asking whether anyone wanted to help me help an African woman I recently met. Dollars poured in as the story poured out. Arketa purchased an African phone card. She tapped in the multi-digit number for Kampala, waited for the connection, then in her own language said, “Tim-o-tee, you are coming to America.”

“Mum, really? This time, really?”

“This time, really. God has sent an American woman to help us.”

°  °  °

September 2009

Arketa and I sat at a small hotel table, our conversation about her family fortified by bottled water, pretzels, dried fruit, and chocolates. Many conversations had by this time passed between us and now we meant to have a marathon of my learning about her life. After several hours, I said, “One more question then let’s go have dinner.”

 

“It’s good,” Arketa said, lifting water to her lips. She planted her elbows on the table’s edge, ready. She began laughing, remembering that after my first meeting her, Christopher, Arketa’s  second son then living in New York and working on his Ph.D. warned her against being hasty about telling her story. 

 

“Mom, be careful what you say. You don’t know what this white woman wants,” he cautioned. 

 

But,” she reasoned, so far the white woman had kept her end of the bargain to bring Timothy to America. The DNA tests had been done and his immigration file was now active. 

“What is dah question,” she asked. 

“Why is your name Zambakari rather than Bazia? I mean I know why your middle name is Bazia. I don’t know why your last name is Zambakari.”

 

Arketa marveled at how little I knew. She pointed her right index finger in my direction. Her next sentence came in parcels, delivered in a manner meant to be kind, but final.

 

“Barbara, listen. Hear me plainly.” It was time to stop fooling around. 

“In Africa,” she said with emphasis, “we have only two names. I am Arketa Zambakari. I took dah family name, Bazia, when I was registered by dah United Nations in dah refugees camp. From Geneva, dah United Nations need three names. So, I give dem Arketa. Bazia. Zambakari.

 You see?” 

  I saw. At least I saw from ‘A’ Arketa to ‘B’ Bazia. But Zambakari,‘Z’ had me baffled.

“Ahhh!Where did Zambakari come from!” Arketa laughed. It took a while but finally she said, “When my Daddy was a little boy, very little, he was running around all dah time saying, ‘Kari, Kari, Kari!’  

The melody in her voice floated like Mozart. It was not the flat American “Daddy,” hard D, clipped E. The ‘Y’ of the American ‘Daddy’ surrenders to its first syllable. The syllables of Arketa’s Daa-dee, share value and skip softly into the air. She carried on.

“You know dah stick for walking, like your mother has?”

“The cane?” 

“Dah cane; dah walking stick. Dat is dah word for it in my language. ‘Kari.’ As a little boy he always was crying for dah walking stick. Because of dat, he was called ‘Kari.’” Cah-deewas her pronunciation.

“And, ‘Zamba’?” I ask.

“In the Zande language, Zamba means red. Zamba. Kari. Dah red stick for walking.”

            

“But,” I said cautiously, leaning hard into my growing knowledge, “Isn’t Zande the language of Central African Republic?” 

“You are right! It is dah language of Central African Republic. Yes, Barbara.” Arketa meant for me to hear her clearly. 

“Dah story of Africans is not so easy to tell to people of America. The fadder of my fadder, Chief Bazia, was working with dah men of Central African Republic buying and selling hard red trees.

“Did I show you on dah map how great are dah forests in doz countries? Mahogany trees grow dehr. You know dat wood? Dat was dah color of dah walking stick my Daddie wanted as a child. Dah men of CAR were all dah time laughing at little ‘Kari, Kari boy.’ Dey are dah ones who added ‘Zamba’ to ‘Kari.’ 

“You see,” she said, drawing out the second word, “Dat name became attached to him a-l-l his life. He was Zamba-kari. Everyone knows, his daddy is ‘Bazia.’ For sure. Dat is a common thing in Africa. Dah name you get has something to do with something nearby, something dat happened when you were born or when you were little; something dat happens to you; something like dat. My daddy’s baptized name was John. His fadder’s name was Bazia. But from dah time he was very little, he was Zamba-kari. 

 

Arketa paused, pulled a pretzel from the bag, took a bite and said, “My mother was not Balanda Bor but Balanda Viri . Doz tribes are close but dah languages are different. One is Nilotic, one is not. When my mom married my daddy, she used his language.

“Nilotic?”

“Dah Nile River. You know it? People close to it.”

“And the children? What . . .”

“Children take dah father’s name, yeah. My daddy was John Bazia but he became Zambakari before we all was born so we became Zambakari children.”

            

Arketa shifted in her chair. She held out the partially nibbled pretzel, using it as a teacher’s pointer. I lifted my hands from the computer keyboard, shook them and flexed my fingers, preparing for more. 

            

“Do you remember dah paper I showed you from my immigration? Dah one listing all my family members still in Africa? Did you see dat my name is ‘Arketa Bazia Zambakari’?” I nodded.

 

“When we was registered as refugees by dah United Nations, they required from us three names. I added my daddy’s family name: Bazia. I made it middle, between Arketa and Zambakari.” She started laughing, pointing the pretzel over and over in my direction to keep me quiet. 

            

“My children say . . . ,” she laughed and laughed. I waited. “’Mom! Why not Zambakari in the middle? We are always last in every line, dah last to be called in class.’” 

 

Four of those five “last-in-line” children have completed university with honors. Three have completed graduate work. “Last in dah lines.” Arketa laughed with tears.

°  °  °

In Sudan, the Zambakari family was very well known, “The example,” people of strong faith, good jobs, obedient children, and admirable tribal linage. The Zambakari girls were close to their mom, learning the essential skills of being a wife. From their father, the boys learned the history of their tribe, the skills of hunting and all means of providing food. All the children attended the Camboni Catholic School in Bazia. Six girls. Two boys. 

 

Arketa’s eldest sister, Anna, was in their tradition, a gift.She was given to Lucia and John shortly after their marriage by a relative whose wife and one baby died when twins were delivered. The man could not keep the surviving baby and so she became a gift. Anna was quickly followed by the births of nine babies with seven surviving—for a time.

 

It is not an easy story, I realized. My head was spinning and I knew I was far from family savvy. I knew this:

In March 1984, Arketa’s husband was slaughtered.            

 

In the late 1980’s her sister, Maria and her husband were shot down as they ran from ethnic militia. “Murdered by dah gun of government-sponsored crazy people, shooting, shooting,” said Arketa.

            

In November of 1990, Anna, (the gift child) and her husband sat in their Wau home listening as planes flew overhead. Her husband was killed in that room by the falling bombs. Anna ran.

 

In 2012, after twenty-two years in refugee camp, Anna journeyed with other refugees across mountains, rope footbridges over rivers, through the jungle, across the border of Central African Republic and into South Sudan. She wanted to die in her homeland. She did die, on her way to Wau. In Phoenix, half a world away, Arketa shaved her head according to tradition, and for more than a year wore black in her sister’s honor.

 

It was November 1990, when that the bombs tore away Arketa’s six-year-old first-born, Elario. As Anna had in 1990, Arketa and her surviving family ran from bombs and rebels “like rats from the fox.” 

 

A few miles from the safety of Central African Republic, Arketa’s strongly Christian father, her brothers, Tabia and Puuke, her sister, Teresa, Teresa’s husband, Julio, and their ten-year-old son, Borundo were murdered with the knife by Muslim militia. The Zambakari orphans walked on with Arketa, her surviving sister, Angelina and their mother, Lucia.        

 

Arketa, remembered these things on my behalf. As she finished speaking, her breath slipped out slowly, like a cello’s bow drawn low across strings. She closed her eyes but could not stem the tears.

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PREVIEW: CHAPTER THREE

Bahr al Ghazal—1970-80s

A Child’s Sudan, mid-1970’s

The menace of Sudan’s war remained intermittent during Arketa’s childhood. She wasn’t dead from bullets or from a fall in the forest of Bazia, no. Bruised and subdued, yes, but she had survived. Her siblings continued to shake their heads at her playful spirit while her mother corralled it. 

            

When Arketa was eight or nine years old, she doesn’t remember exactly, her father’s work shifted to Western Equatoria, the state directly south of Bahr al Ghazal. His new base was Yambio town, the state’s administrative center and home of South Sudan’s third largest nationality, the Zande. Zandeland stretched across the fertile rainforests of three countries, including a narrow band of South Sudan. And now, they were going to it. Not easily.