CHAPTER EIGHT

In a Matter of Months

 Dry Season 1991

One very warm April day, shortly before Easter, Arketa sat crouched in the small tree-hollowed pirogue for the crossing of the massive Mbomou River. As refugee women did, she wore bark cloth over her genitals and “leaves to cover dah butt.” Upon reaching the Democratic Republic of Congo shore, the forward oarsman jumped out and settled the boat. A cover of clouds complicated Arketa’s swift search for concealed crocodiles but did nothing to hamper the oppressive heat. Now visibly pregnant, she ran on bare feet toward the jungle’s edge and thanked God that she survived her third river crossing. Borrowed machete and digging tool in hand, she slashed a path forward, looking up for the winding yam vines that could twist sixty feet or more along tree trunks, through thick brush and clung to anything overhead. She and the two women she worked shouted out frequently to maintain proximity to one another and, they hoped, distance from wild animals. 

 

Cut dah path today,she thought, and dah forest eats dah space again by tomorrow. Spotting a vine, she squatted and began loosening the soil at its base. She grabbed the rope of it near the ground, and with her bare hands pulled on the sharp, prickly vine—the “Gormandia” in Zande, “Gbele” in Balandan, and wire is needlein translation. The ‘wire is needle’ switched wounds in the palms of her hands as she pulled. 

 

Step by step Arketa cleared away soil. She gently tugged, cleared more soil, and pulled again until finally a cluster of large tuberous roots emerged, some nearly the size of a cooking pot. She chose a few, then step by careful step returned the root ball to the ground to preserve the plant—doing what refugees failed to do when they first reached M’boki, thereby in little time destroying plants near the camps. 

 

Throughout the day, Arketa and her companions filled taro leaf bundles with yams, and listened for danger. When shafts of light allowed, she noted the shift of shadows, the measuring of time, to plan a return to the boats. But, on this, her third yam-hunting day—whether by cloud cover or jungle canopy—darkness enveloped the jungle and time-telling shadows evaporated. The women moved forward—or wait, was this forward? 

 

In dah forest, you will not know dah sun is coming from where to where, which one is east, which is south, which one is north.

 

Long after it was time to be at the river’s edge, the women weren’t. Arketa stopped moving, confessed her sins, and commended herself to God. She and her companions were lost. As much as she wished against the images forming in her mind, she imagined the bite of the snake, the monkey or baboon, the charge of a buffalo cow. She knew too well about people sleeping next to a tree pulled down and rolled by an elephant, but what could she do? She rested against a tree.

 

And wild dogs? She comforted herself with what she had been told by her mother. “If dey are coming close, you just keep quiet. Dey take a way like dey are already going. But dah lion or leopard?  If you run? It will attack you.” She knew that. She knew her mother talked to wild animals. She wondered, if confronted, whether she could do that. No, she thought, slapping at an army of insects already setting upon her warm-blooded body. No.

 

Nighttime in the forest terrified her. Nighttime was bad enough at her cleared plot in M’boki where a continuous fire warded off danger. Now, lost in the forest, she didn’t sleep. Couldn't. She imagined alll dah animals moving.This was the worst part for her. She imagined a snake moving over her legs. Aaaii! The snake wasmoving over her leg. The shape and intentions of wild animals fed on her fertile imagination. Any sound she heard, and she heard sounds all night long, she fashioned into fear.

 

She gave herself to death. She thought of her mother’s worries. Lucia knew the drill. In M’boki the next morning the step-by-step rescue plan would form. The search for Arketa—or for her body—would begin. But that was hours away. 

 

°  °  °

 

By 8:00pm, when her daughter failed to return from the river, Lucia “worried good.” Her imagination was as strong as Arketa’s. She pictured the Wa-ruu, that wolf-like animal that moves in the forest like the wild dog. She thought of the wild dog, too. She tried scrubbing from her mind the crocodile that might have carried her daughter into the water, rolling the woman to drown her. By nine Lucia was frantic but helpless. Only one thing could be done at night, the Night Prayer. No sleep. Only prayer.Let us see what is dah will of God. 

 

At morning’s first light, Lucia reported to the Sudanese elders who, in turn, reported this to M’boki’s mayor who asked around and learned where Arketa had last been seen. He then sent citizen scouts across the river with drums and matches and orders to implement the drill.

            

With the coming of predawn birdcalls and morning light, Arketa found herself alive. She knew to position herself so she could watch the sky for the dark smoke from damp grass. She remembered the instructions to everyone who crossed the river, “Open your eyes, look for the smoke of dah fire. Move to it.”

 

When Arketa and the women with her saw smoke high above the trees they lifted yam bundles to their heads and ran, cutting, frantically cutting their way toward help. Adrenalin surged when finally they heard drums. After several hours loud ululating caught their ears. Ah! The joy of familiar lu, lu, luu! Arketa ran like a frightened antelope. She called back. She slashed a path with the vigor of one running for her life.

 

°  °  °

 

The Zande boatmen rowed the women back to the M’boki side with no fee required. Arketa kept her body low in the boat, her arms tucked against her body and her eyes shut. If the crocodile was going to get her she needed it to be a surprise, she didn’t want to see it coming. Once on shore, under an afternoon sun, the women gave thanks to God and to their rescuers. Arketa returned the machete and digging tool. 

 

No more of dis for me,she said. It was a god-awful decision. The yam was life-giving. One could feed the family for more than a day. The Zambakari women made fu-fu from it. They roasted it. Or, pounding it good, they boiled it as pudding. Find wild honey? Ohhh! Heaven has fallen to dah family.Still, regardless of how it was prepared, the yam was dry. If they weren’t drinking water as they ate it, dah kids push dahr necks out like, ‘Oh, to swallow is not easy.’

 

°  °  °

Lucia called Arketa dah man of dah house.She watched her daughter confront obstacles with dauntless courage. If Arketa said no more trips across the river,Huhh!No questions asked. That decision was respected. No more watching crocodiles win the battles of hunger. No more. No more risking movement in the territory of lions and leopards and snakes without men bearing spears nearby. No. But having made that decision, Arketa knew she had to provide food for the children. She turned her attention to termites, and to local people with gardens. 

 

Even if they aren’t swarming, termites sometimes move underground. Arketa knew how to watch for that. It takes two or three days for them to dig deep enough to disappear completely. They are weak now, she knew. She also knew that while she might manage to dig them up at this vulnerable time, they fight and bite badly. She made it clear—this was not the small termite interested in eating her house in Arizona, no. Those found in M’boki are big . . .with dah red head, the very insect Arketa had survived on in Sudan during her first pregnancy when no other food appealed to her. 

 

Termites can work for years building a mound to the height of fifteen or more feet. Inside, while builders build, toward the bottom of the mound, an obese, index finger long queen who dwarfs her ordinary subjects by hundreds of times, can produce an egg every three seconds for up to fifteen years. At the end of her usefulness, before building a new community, her offspring gather to lick her mushy body to death. It’s more information than I could ever need but I found it irresistible so I include it here in Arketa’s story. 

 

The termite mound itself is primarily a breathing machine. Lungs, really, catching the air that vibrates at low frequencies while somehow, air at higher frequencies is kept out. It’s an amazing structure to any who has the luxury of seeing it as anything but a hedge against starvation. Fresh air is pushed down through the mound to the nest area and below. Stale air is sucked out by some amazing pressure difference. In a single year, termite colonies can move about 550 pound of soil and several tons of water (delivered from mouth to mouth), controlling the mound’s internal temperature. So much for admiring the industry of ants. I look with wonder at what Arketa sought for survival. 

 

Lucia wove a fine mesh net from forest vine for trapping swarming termites. With help from Angelo and Christopher, she hung it, placed palm oil torches near it to attract termites to light. They waited. Children danced on their muddy toes as they watched. Some of the millions of swarming insects would be dinner. The women and older children stripped wings off angry captured termites, washed them in clear water to clean dem good, then dropped them either in boiling water orburned dem like coffee beans in dah edge of dah fire. Now dey are crunchy. Termites provide iron and calcium, essential fatty acids, and amino acids but to wide-eyed waiting children, termites were jungle candy. 

 

Arketa hunted termites and river greens as the rainy season and thousands more refugees arrived. News brought by newly arriving refugees cancelled all hope of returning to Sudan. Misery and defeat clothed the population but created new determination in Arketa. Muslim rebels meant to kill the Zambakari influence by killing her father and his sons and very likely Arketa’s own son in Yambio, but in the camp, Arketa protected three surviving Zambakari boys and she meant for them to thrive. She had two precious girls to raise and a baby on the way. No. She would not sacrifice the Zambakari family She would not be miserable. She turned her attention to securing three things: a more stable source of food, a more permanent shelter, and a schoolteacher for the children. 

°  °  °

It was late March or early April that first year in M’boki, when heavy rains punctured the afternoons, a sure signal of the main planting season. Arketa approached local citizens and offered to work. Mr. Garapai hired her and in exchange for five or six hours of labor a day, he gave Arketa cassava, bundles of cassava leaves, some groundnuts, and an occasional bit of produce. On rare occasion he shared bush-meat. While they had only one meal a day, at least she wasn’t watching her family starve to death.

 

Around this time, Teresa’s husband, Julio, and their five children reached M’boki. They had not been in Saura when the bombs fell but made his way differently, hoping his wife had survived. Along with the bigger boys, Julio, scouted deeper in the M’boki forest for yams, trapped an occasional fish, gathered whatever fruit they found from abandoned tukuls, and collected firewood. 

 

Lucia tended fires and the smaller children, refreshed sleeping leaves, wove sitting and sleeping mats, and snare nets. She taught the young boys to use the spear and fired more cooking pots and water jugs. But for snakes, wild animals, worms, malaria, or typhoid, their basic existence, very basic existence, grew secure enough. For Arketa, two important tasks remained: education and shelter.

            

Among the Sudanese refugees, many professional people flatly refused to work. Arketa understood. She was one of three midwives in the camp but the only one willing to work. 

 

Dez people are stressed and now very poor. Work free? Dey don’t want. Care? Dey don’t. Dey want only to go home.

 

Every month the refugees heard, 'Maybe one month more, maybe two, then go home.' Even educated, proud people have to walk naked in public, Arketa explained.

Dez are dah people who can solve problems in Sudan but cannot think to solve problems in dah camp. Even my mom? Even my mom is not good in her mind. She cannot do dah clinic work like before. She doesn't want. She takes care of dah kids. Dis was dah situation with dah people. It was very hard, Barbi.

            

Arketa found a local teacher, a Zande man, “Just somebody who knows how to read and things like dat. To learn my kids. Dis man wrote with dah stick in the dirt, ‘Ah-Bah-Cee’ and 1-2-3 in French.” 

 

Arketa’s nephew, Angelo, who saw his parents and brother murdered in Source Yubu said, “Only mum Arketa knows the formula and hardship she was involved in to insure we were at school.” 

            

The wife of Sabé, the head of the M’boki gendarmerie, taught her own children in French. Before too many months, Arketa’s older children were invited to spend much of their time learning and playing in Sabé’s compound. Little could she imagine that by 2012, from that small group of her Zambakari children sitting in the dirt learning to read and to recognize numbers, several would gain honors, both in Africa and America—with one Masters of Divinity, one Doctorate in Law and Justice, one B.S. in Nursing Science, one Master’s of Nurse Practitioner, one BAA in Finance, and one becoming well-known singer of songs. For Arketa, finding a schoolteacher was an essential, not a luxury. 

 

° °  °

For a while, even by springtime, the Sudanese people in M’boki were not, and many never were again, in their right minds. Pain, violence and injury possessed them. They desperately needed help. M’boki’s Zande mayor, Mr Baragadanba, had a plan. He was sure that if the refugees cleared the long-abandoned airstrip, the Red Cross or foreign missionaries would fly in supplies. The runway had first been cut from the jungle in the midst of Sudan’s first civil war but had completely overgrown during the intervening thirty years. He was right. The refugees were willing to set to work.

 

Foreign missionaries, many miles west of M’boki, miles closer to the capital city, Bangui, knew about the refugees but also knew the condition of the roads in the Central African Republic. Ruts—that’s all they were, really—cut through jungle. The missionaries knew the bridge to M’boki was down and had been for as long as anyone could remember. They knew well enough that it would be ages before anything was repaired—if at all. Reaching M’boki was impossible.

 

If the mayor concealed a selfish strategy within his call to clear the airstrip, the refugees didn’t know it. He energized a wholly defeated people yearning for things like fabric, medicines, tools, and utensils. They dreamed of these things as they once dreamed about M’boki being a town. 

 

Who wasn’t sick of nakedness or chafing flaps of soften bark fabric bouncing against private parts? Slippers. Imagine the relief if flip-flops arrived—a rubber pad protecting feet from rocks. And, who didn’t have at least one person in their family suffering from malaria, or typhoid, from festering open wounds, or untreated burns, or . . . 

 

The refugees rallied, dreaming. They borrowed tools from local citizens. Work parties organized. Women swung stone-sharpened scythes against tall grass and low brush. A hoe and ax in the hands of men demolished small trees, stumps, and heavy brush. Strong forest rope lifted the strongest young men carrying saws high into the branches of trees to bring them down piece by piece. Everyone—women, men, children—hauled load after load of debris to a great bonfire. Invigorated, the people worked together. Week after week, wild dreams of essentials, of possibilities, of outlandish desires filled workers minds and fueled them with energy. 

            

In one month’s time the airstrip was useable. “By dah hand. Not with cement, no. Just hard, packed dirt.” Arketa heard the hopes of people. If they made the way good, the plane would bring food and medicines and, hope against hope, maybe take some people home. The real UN people will help. That's what everyone thought.

            

Hearing the strip was useable, missionaries flew to the capital city, Bangui where they picked up a small quantity of U. N. medications, then flew on to M’boki. 

 

M’boki locals and Sudanese refugees heard the plane’s engine and ran to the strip, expectations unrestrained. But what they delivered was discouraging news and a very limited supply of medications. No tools, no fabric, no food. They did, however, canvas the camps and promised to report the needs to the United Nations people in Bangui.

 

On that first occasion of aid, Arketa asserted herself against the will of Zande and Sudanese leaders boldly but unsuccessfully. She pleaded against the unwise decision to split dosages of the malaria syrup and pills. “There simply wasn’t enough, even for only children,” ran the argument of camp leaders. “More could be served by splitting dosages,” they reasoned, and that argument prevailed. Arketa argued back but the clamor, the need, the demand won out. A few children and some of the elderly received diluted dosages of what, at the proper dosage was life-saving medication, was wasted. No one’s life was saved. 

 

Arketa's Aside – Stuff that happened 1992-1995

In Arketa’s second year in M’boki, the UN did finally send a delegation from Geneva to “see dah condition.” They delivered a cooking pot for each un-housed household. Soon after that, some food arrived: rotting rice that arrived creamy and foul-smelling, but the people washed and cooked it. Starving people consumed it, gratefully. Soon thereafter came a shipment of dried fish and corn.

 

“Fish!” The cry circulated among refugees. The shoulder-to-shoulder pack of anticipation was fevered enough to raise the humid temperature by a few degrees. Anticipation created nothing short of happiness. Reality dashed hopes.

            

Arketa, her mother, and sister each received a “family’s portion” of the corn. Dry, it was. Hard, it was. But, it was corn. Big kernels. Bright yellow. Animal feed corn. They boiled water in the cooking pot. They cooked the kernels. And cooked it. Allll day. They watched the corn bounce in the very hot cooking pot all day and still the kernels refused to yield to the teeth. 

 

“What was dat corn made for?” the people asked. Arketa laughed and laughed. She was not to be defeated. She meant to grind it. She meant to make flour of it.. She meant to make Fu-fu but after two or three hours of pounding, she surrendered to the truth that before the corns would be crushed, the stone would be ground down. It would have been funny, this disaster, if it weren’t for starving conditions. 

 

“Dis was dah year dah corn ruined dah cooking pots. Burned dem good. And dah fish? Dah promised protein? HA! Hummmph!” 

 

The dried fish sent to M’boki camps smelled so bad that, “Not even dah flies could stand it.Even hungry dogs ran away from it.” 

°  °  °

By the third year, the Sudanese people had resigned to reality and ask the UN and the Red Cross, “Why can you not bring us tools? No more dead fish. We can make gardens for ourselves if you bring tools and seed.” In 1993, while I was settling in my beachfront home and listening to wind sing through cedar and fir trees, each starving Sudanese refugee family received four gardening tools. 

 

By 1995, in her fourth jungle year, some clothing, donated from Europe and America reached Bangui, with parcel labels reading: For Sudanese Refugees, M’boki Camp, Central African Republic. But the story of relief ran this way: In Bangui the boxes were broken into by the desperately poor or poor and plainly corrupt workers. The best items remained in Bangui. 

 

“Dah Central African people, even in Bangui was poor like us. Dah Central Africans take dah things meant for refugees. What can we do? What can they do?” 

 

Not until she left M’boki in 2000 did Arketa have a dress. In Bangui that year, while Arketa waited for travel photos and documents, the wife of a UN worker braided her hair, gave her a gently worn red dress, and two pair of undies, For the first time in ten years, Arketa was fully clothed.  When she saw a reflection of herself in a mirror, she thought, “Ah, I am dah human being.”  

°  °  °

M’boki 1991

But before gardens, before clothing, when she arrived in M’boki in 1991, Arketa settled on three goals: food, shelter, and education for her children. In that first year, Arketa poured over ideas to keep her family alive. 

            

Arketa had one final task to accomplish before summer’s end brought the birth of her fifth child. Education was underway for the children. Food, while scare, was coming, thanks to scavenging riverbanks for greens, termites, and her work in local citizens’ fields. Now, with no further delay, Arketa wanted shelter. Her pregnancy stretched taut in her skinny body, and she was resigned that this child would be born in Central African Republic. She was also convinced that to keep it alive after birth, she needed shelter.

 

Arketa borrowed an ax and machete from the neighboring police and set off to the forest to find eight slender trees needed as vertical supports. She cut them, trimmed them, lashed them together with forest rope and piled them on her head. A few hours later she reached her plot. She dropped the timbers, drank deeply of cold water from the sombah, and set to work. Over the next several days, each pole got planted in one of eight deep holes she dug with a borrowed hoe. She had seen her father and brothers do this. She could do it. With Lucia’s help, she tamped down the earth around the poles.  

 

When time away from working in the fields permitted, she returned to the forest to collect branches and strong reeds enough to weave horizontally from pole to pole. In each of the eight stations she stood on a large rock, and lashed branches and reeds with forest rope to establish the outer support for the roof.

 

Back to the forest she went, wiping rain and sweat from her body as she moved. She cut poles long enough to rest from the outer roof edge to a center pole, strong enough to support her climbing about on them when she hoisted up and laid down a hundred pounds or more of long grass. 

 

One last trip to the jungle—but this time she needed help. The trek and the purpose began seriously enough. Knowing she had to move deep, deep into the jungle, she and a friend traveled in the safety of a group. Elephants had been sighted nearby and little was more dangerous than a charging elephant. Groups of people walked for several hours to reach a field of long, nogarri grass. If a tukul or compound ever existed in this great open field, no one would ever know it, so high and thick did the shiny grass grow. Wielding machetes, Arketa worked the entire day, stopping only when the cast of shadows indicated the time to go home. Arketa and her friend carried twenty or more bundles, fifty kilos, a hundred-plus pounds of grass lifted by others onto their heads. 

 

“On dat day, carrying dah grass?” Arketa stood up from the sofa where she and I were sitting. She demonstrated how people helped lift the tied bundles to her head. How her baby-bulging- body bent under the weight of the long grass, how three feet or so of the massive load protruded forward, preventing her from seeing much of anything beyond the heels of her friend ahead on the path. She stretched her arm back to indicate how four or five feet of the stuff bent and bounced along behind her head. 

            

Arketa could smell elephants and elephants surely did smell people—their sense of smell being twenty or more times better than that of a dog. But on this day, bent nearly in half, all she smelled as she bounced along was sweet, freshly cut grass and her own sweat. 

Two things happened simultaneously. Arketa noticed two rough tree trunks protruding into the path’s right edge. As their unusual form registered in her mind, her friend, a few feet ahead of her, broke into a run, screaming (Here, Arketa’s living room transformed into a forest crisis). For a split second, Arketa missed the connection. She had bumped into a low canopy of brush or something and bent even further to clear it, when at the same time she was distracted by a sudden rumbling, a growling sound. 

 

“Like dah motor of dah helicopter or something. Loud,” she told me. 

 

“AMBARRA ANAY!!!”  “Elephant! We die!”screamed Arketa’s friend. 

 

“EEEEIIiiAAA!” screamed Arketa.

            

The African elephant’s massive head was high, reaching into a tree for some useful reason. Its belly, under which Arketa slid, stretched across the narrow path. Its back legs, the size of tree trunks, stood on one side of the path, front legs on the other. The elephant turned its head, and swift in the way such lumbering behemoths are able, lifted one front foot as Arketa cleared its belly. The women threw off their grass burdens and ran. The elephant ran, breaking trees and everything in its path as it went. Arketa slumped to her Phoenix sofa after telling the story. 

 

“I stayed home for the next two or three days,” she said, nodding her head in memory. By the time she was willing to return to rescue her bundles, the grass she labored to cut and carry had been carted off by others for uses of their own. Arketa and her friend returned to the field, again with borrowed scythes. They cut more grass, loaded it on their heads, and made their way along the path, this time loudly singing Sudanese songs. 

 

°  °  °

 

The veranda got built but it was not the usual tukul with mud or baked brick walls. Arketa called what she built, a “piota” No walls, just a swept dirt floor stripped of rocks and a raised roof for keeping sleepers dry. Word spread throughout all the camps, among all those who still slept under trees. They heard about this pregnant woman who raised a roof, who erected a useful veranda for her family. Now, when she walked to the river or from work in the field, admiring people shouted their greetings, saying, “Hallo, Hero of the roof!” Those who urged the end of torpidity used Arketa as the example: “Be like the pregnant woman who built the piota for herself.” This shelter was not topped with the special grass she will use for the real tukul she built in the second year of her M’boki stay. This one was, “just very quick.” 

            

As she worked on the veranda, Arketa remembered the tradition among her people. To show his worthiness, a new groom built a tukul in the compound of his bride’s parents. When it was done, an uncle of the bride would throw a spear at it—hard. If the grass stopped the spear, the groom was worthy of the girl. It is not easy to build so strong a grass roof. Arketa had her father’s spear at hand but she wasn’t about to have anyone throw it at her roof. She had nothing to prove. 

            

“I built just dah piota, yeah,” she said. “My mom say, ‘I was dah man,’ but what can I do? I had to climb to dah roof with my pregnant belly to build the hut for my kids. Dis was just dah tall roof under which we now sleep without dah rain. We can make dah two fires to sleep between, keeping dah children warm and dah snake away.

            

During the time belly-bulging Arketa had her near-naked butt in the air laying strong grass from the center pole to the outside roof edges, the mayor of M’boki went to the United Nations people now stationed in the camp and complained. He said, “Look, this is dangerous, to see the pregnant woman on the roof.” A staff person came to Arketa and said, “What can we do? We have no tools. We have no mattresses. We are still waiting for things to help you. The road is closed. You are pregnant. What you are doing is dangerous.”

            

“I told dem, ‘Look guys, I know. You are trying to make everything possible.  Look to dah rain!  Look to my kids!  How I’m going to leave dem outside?  Huh?’ Dat’s the way it’s going to be. Dez first months was not easy.”

 

Not many days later, as Arketa bent to tend cassava in Mr. Garapai’s garden, her first contraction struck. Hard. 

°  °  °

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SNEAK PREVIEW  CHAPTER NINE

Life and Death

 Summer’s end 1991

AAAIIIIEE! Arketa straightened up and waddled from the field of slender cassava trees. She hung the hoe, collected bundles of cassava root and leaves the local citizen paid her for garden work, and headed for home. The pain struck again. Arketa pressed one hand against her hardened belly, and with the other she steadied the precious bundle of food on her head. Cassava root is rich in starch, vitamin C, and calcium. The leaves provide protein but who knew? What she knew was that pain or no, she couldn’t leave the cassava behind.