CHAPTER FIVE  --  Between What Was and What Will Be 

November 1990 

 “You are on dah boat?” Arketa asked over the phone.

“I am. We are docked at a harbor in British Columbia,” I said.

“In Canada? Ummm, up from dah water in Seattle but now dah boat is parked?”

“Right. We’re parked.” A strong northeastern wind twisted in the cloudy September sky, turned tail, and shot through the boat’s windows from the west, scattering manuscript pages. I slid a nearby window closed.

 

“Arketa,” I asked, “Can we talk about your family’s movement from Sudan into Central African Republic? Especially, can you help me picture the forest?”

 

Arketa’s nephew, Angelo, told me that “Between Source Yubu (Sudan) and Bomboti (Central African Republic), beams of sunshine penetrated like flashing torches, but much forest was dense, “like you don’t know light exists.”
 

 “Angelo remembers good,” Arketa said.  Then, like the Canadian wind, the tone of her voice and the subject of the call shifted.            

 

° °  °

            

West Equatoria, South Sudan

In the deep forest, everyone knew the enemy was among them, disguised, and bold, knowing citizens of the south feared them. “Dahr bodies was different. A white person cannot tell but dah African? Oh, instantly, we know. South Sudanese can recognize even dah sound of dah voice. People are afraid of being killed right now so dey will answer when someone asks, like, ‘Have you seen John Zambakari?’”

 

Everyone knows better but because they were afraid they told themselves that these men who seem a bit different were probably from Maridi, or from the Buckeye tribe, but really they knew these Muslim men looking for certain people were Nuba. Arab. Black, yes, but not as black as southern Sudanese. Arabic speakers—but then, nearly everyone in Sudan spoke some Arabic. These men of the north moved like the thousands of displaced southerners except they knew where they were going, and they knew why. They knew of the slit in the jellabiya that led their hand to the pants pocket that held a knife or gun. 

 

“I think dah Muslim caught up with my family near Source Yubu, before. Den, dey followed us step by step to dah place for killing.” 

 

 Between Yambio and Source Yubu, like so many other families, the Zambakaris “did not move in one bunch, no. Not just us but a-l-l dah people was moving in parts.” Reason dictated—if the Muslim militia came to kill, at least they would only get “dis one, or dat. Not all.” 

 

A mile and a half past Source Yubu in upper West Equatoria state, South Sudan, a mile and a half short of Bomboti, Central African Republic, members of the Zambakari family closed ranks–families were doing that–feeling safer, beginning to move together. 

 

The forest where the Zambakaris took rest was deeply shadowed but not the deep, dense dark like so much had been before Source Yubu. The family stopped in a small clearing, a place of an old settlement.  It was a good place. Fruit trees, banana trees, even a bog where water was found. It was a good place to rejoice in being reunited.

             

Once together, they talked options. The road north, up to family in Wau and Bazia lay nearby. But even as they considered it, people fromWau and Bazia passed by carrying rumors and word of killings, and warned against any movement north. M’boki it was, then. M’boki refugee camp in the Central African Republic. Settling there for few weeks, or even a few months, made sense. At the least, they thought, M’boki will have a market, a church, and school.

 

°  °  °

 

The Zambakari rest was short. The attack was sudden. Swift. Silent. Dark-skinned Akhdar rushed toward the Zambakari group. Arketa leapt to her feet, her mind ricocheted between the approaching mayhem and strong memory. She recognized men who come only to rape and kill.  She noticed their soft, coffee colored hair tucked under headscarves. “Not like African hair which is hard to touch.”Her heart rate rose and her breathing quickened. Death was right there. She could see it but she couldn’t run. She couldn’t open her mouth. She could only think, This is the end of me. 

 

Arketa’s oldest brother, Puuke, leapt from his haunches, running toward the men. He fought first, and fought hard. Arketa grabbed for children and as she did, one of the attackers grabbed her and knocked the children out of the way before he raped her. 

 

“Dis is why I don’t know how many men was coming. But, I know dey come especially for my daddy and my brothers because of education and respect. My daddy was dah man with dah teak and mahogany poles in South Sudan. He was—how do you say it—dah boss. His wood is going to India, England, and Italy. He is sending it all over dah world. And?” 

 

I waited. Listened. 

            

“After dah priest, my daddy was dah boss in church, very important to dah people. He traveled to Rome with dah bishop. What he says, everybody listen. Dis is why dah name Zambakari was already marked. Dah Muslim think, ‘Kill him, kill his sons. Stop dah family.’” 

 

 Lucia, Arketa’s mother was seized and thrown to the ground. With a knife held to his neck, with a threat of “do what we say or she dies,” Arketa’s father, the eminent Zambakari patriarch; the man of great courage, braced the legs of his wife while she was raped. Humiliate. Rape. Then kill—as her husband had been, Arketa’s weeping father was decapitated. 

 

“Because of his deep Christian faith, because he was dah man who openly urged dah people of all religions, in the face of danger, ‘Be what you are today. Do not change.’ Because of dat, he was killed.”

 

Released, Arketa’s mother staggered to a tree and dropped herself against it. She tucked two of her grandchildren under her bruised arms, shielding their eyes. She rocked. She watched. Hands and arms, armed and unarmed, black and near-black, warriors and scholars, seized, struck, struggling. 

 

Lucia’s chant began, “De-sus . . . Ohhh, De-sus.” “De-sus.”  

            

Arketa’s brother Tabia, fought next to Puuke. London educated schoolteachers, both. Young, strong African and Arab legs braced, bent, delivered and blocked blows; bodies tumbled. Arketa heard the Arabic command, “Kill him!”  She heard a slicing sound, and the thud. Puuke’s strong shape shuddered and twitched against the soft forest floor. Puuke. Tabia. “Oh God!” 

 

Screaming. A woman’s screaming. Arketa turned to see her mother grab for Arketa’s sister, Teresa, but Teresa could take no more. She shoved her children toward Lucia and ran to the side of her struggling husband, Mondou. Their ten-year-old son, Borundo, followed, crying in the Balanda language, “Mommie! Daddy!”  

 

“Oh, God, Oh God . . . De-sus.” 

 

“What dah children saw that day? Dey was just, ‘Ohhh!’Like that. Frightened, holding tight,” Arketa said.

            

Teresa wrestled a knife from an attacker. She slashed, “cutting him good,” Arketa said. Arketa threw her hands to her face as the wounded Muslim killed Mondou, then Borundo, the child who tried to run. In a wild frenzy, the killer rewarded Teresa’s bravery with a rapid, rough rape. Spent, but still straddling her, he signaled for one of his cohorts to slip a knife in Teresa’s neck. 

            

“I heard, ‘Chuuu!’ and dat was it,” Arketa said. She saw legs of the dead moving, four men, one woman, one child; a hand on a headless body quivered, knocking against the ground. “Me and my mom watch, good.” Arketa said, then said no more. 

 

I knew what she meant by “watch good.” The sight was seared in Arketa’s mind. It meant she sheltered children as best she could but she honored her family by participating in their dying. She watched deeply, seeing what she expected for herself.  “We know dey is next coming for us.” 

 

If only the massacre had been enough, if only the thrill of the kill had sated or satisfied the killers’ appetites for brutality but the capacity of evil allowed more. After the slaughter, the men with soft hair turned to—no, they didn’t ‘turn to,’ they turned on—the surviving women. Raping, repeatedly raping, while “deh death is right dehr beside us.”

 

If only rape had spent the brutality, but something remained alive in Arketa and her attackers saw it and meant to see it die. A small fire Zambakaris had built provided the wood for burning her arms, legs, and belly. They were nearly done, nearly done with her. Her eyes were glazed. She seemed less like life now. One of the attackers whose belly for brutality screamed for yet more, turned back to Arketa and said, “Now, we are going to design your face, good. Do not cry. Do not scream or I will kill you.” With a knife dulled by the destruction of her family, covered still with their blood, a man carved three deep slashes on each cheek of her lovely twenty-six-year-old face.

 

“No tear come out,” Arketa said quietly. “No sound. No tear.”

 

° °  °

 

Was it raining that day? It was the rainy season so it must have been raining. Slowly, the women began to function again. Angelina and Lucia washed wounds with water dripping off broad leaves of nearby trees. 

 

“Dis was the time when dah rain could come, dah wind could come, but dah person doesn’t know it,” said Arketa. “Dis is dah time when you don’t focus on dat. Like dah mind has died.” 

 

It must have been raining. Arketa’s housedress hung wet on her. Or was that only blood? No. The children also stood in wet clothes, huddled in the clearing. It was raining.

            

“After dez things happen, we moved a short way with dah children. We hide dem. It was not really hiding because we was still thinking like, we are also going to die.”

 

Arketa, her sister Angelina, and their mom gathered large, dry leaves, broke them, and lay them as a bed for the children. Night fell. The women snuggled the children next to their bodies, hoping to lend warmth, hoping themselves not to sleep but to listen for any approach of danger. Arketa’s father’s spear lay against her back. She lay on her right side with Timothy at her breast. 

 

“You try not to sleep, for dah fear, but dah sleep will steal you. You jerk up,” Arketa said.  “Stay awake. Protect dah children. I was hurting bad on dah left leg but my thinking didn’t turn to dah leg. My hand was under my ear to hold my head from the ground.”

            

“Because of the cuts on your cheeks?”

 

“Because of cuts, yeah.”

 

° °  °

 

For weeks after bombs fell in Yambio, Arketa watched as eight small children follow their fathers and their fathers’ father; tiny, bare feet trampling the forest floor; dodging, ducking, slashing, hiding, rushing, retreating, resting. Eight strong children laughed, complained, played along the way, competed to find fruit, or to be the first to ford a small stream. They trusted the decisions of Zambakari men. Then, they watched those strong men slaughtered. Seven surviving children, under the age of seven, saw fear, felt fear, slept in fear, and woke to exhibit the effects of it. 

 

Not the sun, but birdcalls signaled that horrible night’s end. Angelina remained with sleeping children while Arketa and her mom crept back to the dead. 

 

“We know dah direction, how to come right to dah place where dez thing happen. Yeah. To pull dem together in one place.”

             

Two wounded women surveyed the situation, then found a small indented area “which was flat, like down.” They cleared it and deepened it nearly as they could, digging with their hands, discarding wet forest debris. “We push, just pull on dah leg, dah arm, push dah pieces of our family into what isn’t a hole, really. It is only something down in dah forest. We put dis one toward dis one . . . in a small place. Just pull everything in dat hole. To leave dem.” They gathered long grass, they plucked broad, waxy leaves from trees, and made a cover over the bodies of their dead. 

 

“What more can we do? We have no tools. And? Even if we have tools, we will not be waiting. Doz men will come back on us again. Dat was dah amount of dah thing. Everyone now was looking for dahr life. After dat happened? We travel a short way. We rest. Dis can never go away from my mind.”

 

°  °  °

Seven children, Arketa, her mom, and sister struck out for Bomboti. Arketa steadied a makeshift crutch under her left arm and balanced Timothy on her right hip.  She hobbled, painfully, while distortions and realities fanned confusion through her mind like a card-shark’s shuffle. S-S-S-Snap! Snatches of memory spilled through her troubled brain. The smell of flesh burning—Snap!Herflesh burning. Screams.  Whose screams? Snap!Streaming scenes seared synapses. Snap, snap, snap!   The shouting—shouts of assault, of response, shouts of struggling women, shouts, “Hide dah children’s faces!” Snap!

 

Partial thoughts fell fast, one on top of another. The sound of the little gun, “Poof!” The gurgle of voices; the smell of blood. Sharp blades slicing clean against necks snapped back. Her brother Puuke’s grunt. The sound of her sister’s body forced to the forest floor, the rapist falling on her. Little Angelo, six years old, and his four-year-old sister, Rosetta, screaming for the lives of their brother, their mother, and father, then seeing them die. Heads roll. Arketa felt great pain but couldn’t focus on it.

            

For some reason, on that forest floor, Lucia had pressed her hands hard against Arketa’s left leg. She screamed to others, “Get dah rope!” Arketa remembered that. She remembered the color, the smell, the warmth of blood seeping from her leg. She remembers her mother wrapping it with leaves and vine. She didn’t remember why. Delirium. Two or three days later the wound smelled bad. They stopped and rewrapped it. Then, like Angelo, Arketa began to “remember good.”  

 

°  °  °

            

Lucia had led the way from Source Yubu. According to tradition, as the surviving twin, Angelina, immediately lost her own name and assumed that of her murdered sister, Teresa. The now-Teresa, angry, and madder than hell at God, grumbled and flung fury toward the heavens. Within hours of the massacre near Source Yubu, she had lost both her given name and her faith. 

            

“Quiet!” demanded Lucia. An imperative—not a suggestion. One stern glance shushed new-Teresa’s complaining. “The children will not hear more of these bad things. Let us be like normal. If God don’t say today is your day, no matter what, you survive. Let us see what God will do.” 

            

Grandma Lucia, the God-honoring matriarch, small in body and huge in intention, struck the marching orders and managed the mood. Her thin left shoulder bore her husband’s ancient spear. In her right hand she clasped a forest-claimed walking stick and struck away low branches and vines, clearing the way through the light forest—a mile and a half to safety, a mile and a half to the border.

 

°  °  °

 

“Aucun passage ici! "The women heard French. “Pas ici!” Not here! “De cette façon!” That way! That way!” soldiers yelled. Uniformed men indicated the way to go by swinging machine guns in a leftward arc. At her back was Arketa’s country, Sudan. At the backs of the soldiers was the Central African Republic. Behind her, familiar languages of her country: Dinka, Nuer, Bari, Zande, Arabic. Ahead of her was the somewhat familiar French, and the completely unfamiliar CAR language, Songo.  

            

At Bomboti, slightly more than a mile inside Central African Republic, the long line formed. Police gestured orders. Weary Sudanese caught on. They funneled into a families-wide queue. Hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of people crowding, pushing like sheep to a pen, querying one another about the state of things, about the fate of families, shuffling forward to gain the status of refugee. 

 

Everyone wanted information. Like boaters stuck at port in a storm, everyone had questions and a story to tell. Here, the east African forest trembled with the telling of tragedy. The cry of distant hyenas melded with the cries of people. Sorrow upon sorrows spread through the crowd.         

 

“Ah!  Did you hear of the Zambakari deaths? Just near here. Nhnnn!”

 

The telling traveled from small group to group. The telling shook loose and hurled its way along hundreds of tongues. The absence of those honored men. Who could deny the truth of it when they saw Arketa or the condition of the children with her? The welts on Arketa’s cheeks, festering burns on her arms and legs, her limp, her bloody clothes told the story well enough. The Zambakaris were gently pulled to the front of the line, allowing them to cross early. 

 

“Because of dah deaths.Ress-pect,” said Arketa, remembering.

            

Bombotii—an outpost in nowhere. A small thatched building of burnt brick identified as a police station with makeshift tables planted outside in the dirt. Soldiers. Guns. No common African language. Arketa spent years alongside French-speaking medical workers. The father of her children spoke French. She spoke it well enough to understand instructions. Handed a piece of forest-burnt charcoal and a torn piece of cardboard, she was told to write her name, her birth date, and the number of children with her. She wrote. She wiped her hands on her bloody dress.

            

“You write dah name,” she said, “and dah police copy it into a book. Dey wash the box, take the charcoal, and hand it all to dah next person. Some people is in dah line for days. Yeah.”

 

Arketa felt pity for her people. Police yelled instructions in French but French to her people was like blaa, blaa, blaa.  “Maybe dah Sudanese man can say his name good, even in Arabic, but the CAR police say, ‘Wha-at?’”  

 

Twenty minutes or so into this phone call, Arketa could hardly finish her thought for the fun of it. “Dah French speaker don’t sound dah Sudanese words. Annnd?” She drew out the word to create suspense, “Dah Sudanese cannot spell it! Spelling is not dah Sudanese way of being smart. No.”

            

It took very little time and very few people lost in their attempt to cooperate before the police no longer cared what got recorded. “Dey just write anything. Dah people say the birthday but dah Central Africans don’t understand. So, by dah time you cross the border you don’t recognize your name. Annnd? You was a-l-l  born on January one. Ha, ha, ha. Dah police look and decide demselves how many years you have and put dat down. Dah police don’t care really. It was a mess, for sure. Dis part was funny.” 

            

Arketa knew organization well enough to see that this wasn’t it. Nor, she realized, was the border safe—from anyone on the Sudan side. Muslim militia, northerners, boldly approached the border and—no longer killing now—they carried off young people for slave-soldiers or servants. The SPLA, southerners, came looking for Muslim militia but also swept through the line of refugees bullying and beating people, shouting, ‘Why you are leaving your own country? Get back to Sudan!’ 

 

“Dey are even taking things from the Sudanese people—dahr own people—robbing dem!  When dat happen, when the Sudanese soldiers come with guns, everything at Bomboti is thrown down, dah tables tipping, dah papers flying; people just running back into dah forest. Dah CAR soldiers even leave dah guns! Yeh-ah!Dah Sudanese people, dah CAR police—run. That is when the easy crossing into Central African Republic comes to the Sudanese people. No more box to write on. Just walk in. Dis is too funny now. Not then. Not then.”

 

°  °  °

            

Before the SPLA came threatening, The Zambakari women and seven children had rested for several days in Bomboti, near the policing area—five days for identifying others from their region, five days for grieving the dead, for the loss of Elario, and for Arketa’s leg to support her.

 

She could not walk without great pain but Arketa would not stay longer in Bomboti. They were much too close to violence near the border. A small stream was nearby where they drank by dipping their hands, but there was no source of food. The women ordered the children to drink deeply. Leaving Bomboti, and knowing little about what was ahead, the group once again separated. Timothy lay his head on his mother’s shoulder and grabbed her firmly if anyone tried to pry him off. “The good is dat, moving into dah country, we found dah orange trees.  Dis was dah first food since Source Yubu.

 

“Not all of us together. We know dah militia is coming even into Central African Republic. Maybe two, three days more, den we meet together again. We point to dah big tree ahead and say, we will meet dehr. At night, we separate dah children in dah tall grass, one here, one there, to sleep. It looks like nothing is in dah grass. My mom, my sister and I, we sleep not at dah same time. We watch.

 

“In dah day, we hear something? The children is like I tell you before; like dah chicken when dah rain is coming, the chicks and the mother will not run dah same way. Dey will separate and shortly ahead dey will be coming together. We was like dat. At dah scary noise, children will just run and put dahr head under dah leaf in different place. When dah noise is not coming on us, everybody will come out again dah same.    

            

“Between Bomboti and Obo, you are in dah bush, not on dah road yet. Between des two places is a big, heavy forest. Dis is where dah grass is taller than dah Dinka man. Dah rain was bending it down. To walk in it? Oooouu! You never been dehr before; you can get lost and find yourself in dah same place you were. Dah ground was not like Sudan soil, not red with dah sand, but heavy, brown. Dah feet cannot find dah place without stones. In dah forest, slippers you wear in dah house go to dah finish on dah rocks. By dah time of reaching Obo, our clothes are ruined by dah forest. You see it, dah clothes of others hanging along dah trees.

            

“We don’t have dah container to keep water but dah thing you do is get water off dah leaves for dah children. If der is enough, you get some too. But, because Central African Republic has running water, when you arrive at it, dat is dah place you will take time. You call it dah stream? You will take two days. You can wash dah children. Dey can drink, deep. You can relax. Wash dah wounds, let the swelling legs go down. 

 

“At Bomboti we are weeks from Yambio; more weeks walking from Bomboti to Obo. Sometimes, we was stopped three days, maybe more before Obo . . .because I couldn’t even walk. To carry Timothy was not easy!”

            

I listened to Arketa and grew aware that I was missing something. Why could she barely walk? She had stayed in Bomboti for a time because her leg “could not carry her.”

 

“Arketa, help me here. Why could you not walk well?” 

 

“Ah, why?” she said when I inquired. 

 

“Dat particular cut was dah dangerous one. Like my mom say, ‘If this cut be in your hand, your arm, it will be good—you can walk. But, dis is on your left leg. You cannot make it.’ We have to stop, to stay for three days in dah bush, not in dah road, eating dah oranges and pineapple we find from old houses of people who moved away from dis place along dah way. 

 

“You see,” she said with emphasis, “dah mango, dah orange will keep producing from dat old place. Nobody is living dehr now. Maybe the animal in the bush will eat. Oh my goodness! We stop and we have a store of food. We can eat it. 

            

“Between Bomboti and Obo, you find dah banana dat nobody is eating. Dah elephant is smashing it down. When you see dat, you go and collect it for dah children. You eat. Dis banana tree will never go away. Dis one will be rotten? Dah young one will come out instead. Yeah.  You give it to dah kids. You can live if you get dah orange today. When you find it, where once people planted it, you will take a little bit, carry it along. But, I was carrying Timothy. With that, and nothing with my hand but dah stick like . . . what do you call it when it is under dah arm to dah ground to help you walk?”

            

“Crutch?” I hoped she was moving toward the answer to my question about walking.

            

“With Timothy and dah very big stick helping me walk, I cannot carry five oranges. I can carry two for later but not more.” Arketa saw the situation clearly. 

            

“Dis was a good place to stop because we are far enough to be safe now and because of my leg which was swolling, bad.”

            

“Hold it.” It was time for clarification. “I have seen the scar on your calf. Was that infected? Was that the problem?”

            

“Ah! No. Dis was not dah cut below dah knee what you saw; not on my leg, down. You see, between  . . . “ She stopped mid-sentence. Clearly, she realized, her friend on the boat was missing the point. Once again, I was walking in the wrong forest, misnaming the animals and trees, forgetting the many dangers, losing count of the number of days, and unintentionally minimizing desperation. 

 

“Dah knife on dah gun—you know dat?” Her voice became like that of an instructor offering one more chance for a student to get the right answer. Firm. Slightly impatient. “You see,” she said, “dah gun have something like a knife on dah top of it? You know dat?”

            

“Yes. It’s called a bayonet.” 

            

“Yeah,” she affirmed. “I can keep remembering dat good.”

 

“The second guy who raped me? After he raped me? He took dah gun knife and stuck that place . . . she paused. . . .in my leg. Because he pulled meat out? My leg was all blood. When I say, like. . .when something pains. . .you say ‘Aeeii’He say, ‘Don’t open your mouth! I will kill you in dis spot.’ I don’t cry. Dah tear don’t come out, When you are really in a situation like dat . . . ohhh. Dis cut with the gun knife was on inside up, pass my knee, inside, stopping just before dah top. Dat was dah cut my mom wrapped with leaves and dah forest rope. 

                        

“On dah inside, yeah. Thank God, the knife did not come out dah other side of my leg. It went up; to dah middle. I believe all dah dirt, all dah blood stay on dah inside. Dat is why my leg was swo-lling from my toe to dah waist. It was looking like elephant leg. Even the pain was to my chest, hurting. Yeah. Dis is why walking was bad. It was like dah leg was not even mine. Dat thing was bad.” 

 

“Dat’s why, at that time, I think, ‘Today is the end of me.’ You cannot have anything to focus on. You have to tie it coming from your knee, going to your waist to let the blood stop because dah blood can leak out of your body. My mom did dat.” 

 

The way Arketa breathed those words, “My mom did that,” led to a shift in her thoughts. She stayed in the forest between Bomboti and Obo but shifted from her pain to the memory of her mother, Lucia.

A story was coming.

 

°  °  °

 

“My mom knows dah heart of everyone. On dah walk, she called dah children near to walk with her.”

 

Lucia stopped the party by pressing her walking stick across the path, gently but firmly, like a slow swinging parking garage gate. She noticed when one of those small bodies took a persistent limp left or right or yielded to swelling legs or cut feet. She knew when they needed a break. 

 

Lucia gathered the children like a happy retriever rounds up her pups. “You know what?” Lucia would say with so much enthusiasm she nearly leapt off the rock she sat on. “When I was young I could climb dah tree like dis?” She pointed to the tallest tree around. “Up! Dis hand after dat hand. From dat place, I will come down dis way.” Lucia pretended to climb the big, big tree the children saw nearby.

 

“She do dat and everybody was happy,” said Arketa. “She would say, ‘Dis is dah thing to talk to dah kids about.’ If Lucia spotted flowers she would stop everyone. 

 

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “This one smell good!” All the children smelled the flower. Even Timothy was down from his mother’s hip, down with his nose to the flower.

“This flower smell good, too!” said Lucia, moving from blossom to blossom, bringing desperately needed distraction to suffering children. Flower after flower submitted to the test of tiny noses. 

 

“If you have the house someday?” Lucia continued, “You plant these flowers in a line and the people will see that line and say, ‘Oh! That line looks good!’” 

 

Lucia encouraged the young boys, Bazia, Christopher, and Angelo, to challenge each other, to dare be the strongest, the swiftest, the bravest. She described how if the green snake dropped from the branches, she would tussle and tie that snake in a knot. Ha!  

 

“Dat was what my mom want us to be with dah kids.”

 

“Arketa,” I said. “Angelo, told me a story about your mom. He said when the forest grew very dense and dark, near Obo, creepers like warara, ndevu,  gbadangi, and such united branches from one tree to another. Timothy also recently described three creepers that “tighten and makes up a thick roof of the forests.” Ndevu, Warara, and Gbadangi. 

 

“Angelo say, ‘waraaru’?” Arketa asked, spelling. “Does dat word have dah ‘U’ in it? Dat is the animal like the dog, like your golden retriever but not nice. Warru is half dat size but it can even kill dah buffalo. Yeah. When Angelo say, “ndevu,” it is what, Balanda? Or Songo or Luganda? Or what. I don’t understand that word.” 

 

“He was talking about vines and things he called ‘creepers,’ stuff growing from branch to branch, high in the forest canopy, blocking the sun. He said the way to Obo led to “heavy shade and dampish environment where sunshine does not penetrate easily; that the children grew frightened.”

            

“Ah! He was talking about bdangi. Ohhh!That one can roll itself from here to here, tree to tree to tree. It can be big, like dah arm. Sometime it has flowers. But, mostly it is twisting, twisting all through dah trees, yeah, covering everything.”

 

Angelo remembered that his grandmother told the children that “the only wild animals that could attack on the ground were the reptiles because most of the wildlife of such a deep forestry area stay on top of those shades—the umbrella-like tops of trees and creepers, to bask in the sun or to sleep. Those animals fed on other wildlife that climb for fruits, not on children,” she said.

 

“If I am to reflect on it,” he said, “I feel Grandma didn’t want us to fear as we trekked to the unknown zone.”

            

When Arketa finished agreeing with Angelo’s final statement, she listed wild animal that they feared during their walk, animals that did not lurk only in the tops of trees: the lion and leopard, the wild boar, the crashing rhinoceros, the warru—the dog-like animal “half dah size of your retrievers dat can kill even dah buffalo, the hyena.”

 

“Do you know the Dik-dik? Dis is something like dah antelope. 

            

“Because now dah walking Sudanese people was using dah bush for the toilet. Sometimes,” she broke the story to laugh, “sometimes, the Dik-dik will come running at you when you are down and . . .” laughter carried her away.  So good for her high blood pressure. 

“Sometimes, you see dah Sudanese person jumping up from toilet, running, holding dah pants—if dey still have pants, with dah Dik-dik running after dem! Some things was very funny, Barbara.

 

“And?” she continued, “Angelo is right about my mom. She wanted dah children to be happy. My mom, my sister and me, we take turns sleeping. One of us always awake, watching for dah snake, dah animals, for dangers of dah night. Near Obo where the deep forest was reached? It was very dark, even in dah daytime. My mom would keep dah children happy. She was wonderful, my mom. Yeah. She was wonderful.” 

 

Arketa sighed. “Okay Barbi,” she said, singing the phrase. “I will let you go back now to dah water in Canada that is big but not like dah river.” Then she added, with her usual conversation-ending chuckle, “Next time we talk, I will take you to Obo town where dah missionaries want to take away dah children.” 

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PART TWO -- CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

 

CHAPTER SIX

 

Bomboti to Obo

Winter 1991

Central African Republic (CAR) jungle

Somewhere in the 153 miles between Yambio and Bomboti, Arketa lost track of things, including the remaining fragments of her flip-flops. Miles, like the names of days, the passage of weeks, phases of the moon, condition of hair, smell of bodies or wounds were unmeasured, unmarked, and unimportant. Calendars, pens, telephones, work schedules, sacks of seed, church clothes, cooking pots, paychecks, laughter, lightheartedness and her eldest child—gone.