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 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, and the leaves provide protein. But who knew? Neither root nor leaf store well but no one in M’boki had the luxury of storing food. Pain or not, Arketa would not leave the cassava behind. When the Zambakaris had cassava leaves or river greens, the women rolled a small jungle leaf into a cone leaving a small hole at the bottom. It was filled with cooled wood ash through which water was leached. A natural salt drained out and was added to the cooked greens. 

 

Oil palm trees slanting sixty feet or more into the sky and skinny as the waist of a barren woman grew plentifully along the path to camp #4. Now Arketa stopped frequently o to lean against one. No branches, only a trunk with leaves at the top and tucked among the leaves, hundred pound fruit clusters. With bare feet and sure hands, local Zande men scaled palm trees to tap for oil. They made strong beer from the fruit. Seldom did they share.

 

Sometimes, an overly ripened fruit cluster crashed to the ground to the delight of any refugee lucky enough to find it. For the hard work of pounding kernels or boiling fruit, two or more gallons of oil could be coaxed from one cluster. Strong, bitter kernel oil became Kerosene for torches – the African lamp. The fruit oil was also strong but different (more like a bitter raw olive taste said some; smells like violets, said others; like vomit, said many). Regardless of taste squabbles, everyone treasured it. No one knew its benefit of vitamins A and E, carotenes and antioxidants. 

 

As Arketa walked she smiled remembering the time some Sudanese men cut the climbing ropes Zande men used, stranding them high in the trees. The mayor threatened to call in the dreaded French military, the “Barracudas,” whom everyone feared. The shenanigans ended. “Teach us to climb,” said refugee men who wanted oil for their women and palm beer for themselves. They learned to climb.

 

°  °  °

 

Lucia was right. The baby was due. Arketa waddle-walked and thought about the births of Elario, Christopher, Nathalia, and Timothy—all born in the quaint but adequate Yambio hospital, all caught by the hands of Arketa’s midwife-mom. She thought of her own work with hundreds of Sudanese women at childbirth. Already in the few months she was in the camp she had delivered seventy or more babies, most of those on the dirt path beside her plot; three babies had been delivered along the path to the M’bomou River, to women meaning to cross the river in search of yams.

             

Of four Sudanese midwives in M’boki camps, Arketa was the only one willing to work. Strong-willed like her mother, she ordered families of laboring women to bring water, firewood and leaves. Some member of the woman’s family was appointed to carry soiled leaves used to wipe her body of blood, urine, and fecal matter to the designated place deep in the forest; someone had to agree to dig through rocks in that assigned place to bury placentas. Sometimes it required Arketa’s hands on her hips and a show of stubborn resolve, but she got cooperation. Stillborn babies were buried as they were in Sudan—on family property, which meant in M’boki, under your tree, at your barren plot. 

            

Arketa, a near naked field worker in M’boki, thought about how things once were. How she once donned a clean, well-starched white smock, drove a car to work, and worked along side qualified doctors and nurses. As a midwife, she was highly respected in Sudan. She knew how to take the baby out under any difficult situation. She gave medication, cleaned a woman goodbefore she massaged labia to discourage vaginal tearing. She had proper tools for emergency abortions, saved the lives of women and babies, and calmed crazed husbands. 

 

Arketa had treasured the coveted meds-box awarded her at the completion of her midwifery training. Now she treasured the memory of it: forceps, bulb syringe for suctioning the newborn, swaddling blanket, a plain cotton cloth for women too poor to purchase the blanket. Scrubbing soap. Gloves. Very sharp scissors for cutting the cord and other grizzly emergencies, suturing thread, and pads for mopping blood. A hat for a newborn was included for special people such as the wife of a governor or commissioner. Arketa’s med-box, like her past, had been bombed to bits. 

            

Arketa walked, then stopped. She dropped taro-wrapped cassava to the ground, and hands on knees, she braced against a contraction. Funny, she thought, the use of white, while attending such bloody work. As the contraction eased, she blew her breath out, long and smooth, put her paycheck back on her head, and struggled up the path.

 

Reaching the veranda, and thinking how glad she was to have built it, Arketa sat on a large rock called chair. She rested some before she, her mom and Teresa went to the forest on a search for fresh, large leaves. They brushed off insects, rinsed, and wiped the leaves clean. They had time. They fed the fires. Teresa assumed oversight of the children—seven plus her own five who had recently arrived with her husband. Night fell. Night passed. The wind picked up, the rain fell. Sometime before birdcalls began, Arketa’s water broke.

            

Lucia put water on the fire to boil. From the ribs of the roof she pulled a length of sugar cane. She boiled it, and sharpened it good with a sharp piece of tin. She sterilized a length of slender forest rope to tie off the umbilical cord. The cane knife would cut it. Lucia supervised the placing of leaves over rocky soil. Damned rocks. Nowhere could a person stand, sit, or lie down without rocks. She sent the older boys with their uncle to collect more firewood.  

            

It’s a girl, Lucia thought. The baby preferred the left side of Arketa’s belly. In Lucia’s experience, girls did that. Boys pushed right. She prayed. Two of her own ten babies died at birth. She couldn’t bear the thought of more sorrow.

            

It was after morning light but well before noon according to the shadows when lying on leaves between two fires, Arketa was delivered of a light-skinned baby girl with a full head of black hair. No clothes, no blankets, but God be praised, no malaria, and no complications. The baby took to the breast vigorously. Lucia rolled Arketa carefully, and removed the soiled leaves.  She and Teresa washed her with clean leaves softened in warm water. Lucia changed the folded leaves between Arketa’s legs. She bundled the birthing debris and leaves and carried the mess deep into a forest area cluttered with just such waste. All ordinary trash was thrown, willy-nilly, around compounds but here, in a designated clearing lay the waste of women’s bodies. Here, people buried placentas and burned filthy birthing leaves. In M’boki, women in childbirth or naked women in menses did not walk into the houses of people. They did not work. They stayed home with forest moss or leaves between their legs till the bleeding was done. 

 

Immediately after her birth, according to custom, Arketa’s baby girl was rubbed with oil. The wife of Sabé, the policeman, the teacher of the older children, brought precious simsim oil for the occasion. The sweet smell of Sudan seeped into the baby’s soft skin and reached deep into Arketa’s soul. The harsh, sweet smell of what once was. According to custom, the baby remained unwashed for a week.

            

After two months, Arketa returned to the fields with her baby bound to her body or resting in the arms of Lucia who sat nearby. The dry season came. The UN people of CAR came occasionally—rarely with supplies, but regularly with news of war in Sudan. No one was going home any time soon. December came; dry but cold—or at least as cold as it gets in a tropical forest. Nearly a year had passed. Cold, yes, to a Sudanese family wearing bits of bark or nothing at all. Heavy rain was due by mid-March. 

            

A tukul would help. A real tukul, with walls. No one was going back to Sudan soon. Everyone knew that now. Beginning their second year in a foreign land, the whole family helped build two rooms for sleeping; space enough for Arketa and her four children, her mom, the orphaned kids, her sister Teresa’s family and the essential fires. 

 

° °  ° 

 

No baked mud brick used in Zambakari tukuls of Sudan. No.In M’boki there was no way to cook brick. For this tukul, Arketa placed poles as she had done for the veranda but she brought cartloads of sticks, without the benefit of a cart, that she crisscrossed between the poles then rolled layer after layer of mud mixed with cut grass “alllalong in between.” She piled a layer, it dried, she added more. Layer after layer but not all the way to meet the roof, no.Between the circular wall and the grass roof space was left for smoke to escape from the night fire. Constantly burning tukul fires discouraged dangerous snakes from sharing the sleeping space.

 

“When dah mud was set, good, you will put dah poles beside the wall and with two hands, jump to dah roof with it to lay dah grass roof. You put grass good? No rain in dah tukul. It is dah same grass we got when we went under dah elephant.

 

“But, dis time?” Arketa started laughing. “I am cutting dah grass, laying it down to make dah bundles; first one, den back to cut and carry more. Someone is now helping me put dah bundles from dah ground to my head. Dis time? I was with dah tall grass on my head, close now to my tukul, and a man yelled, ‘Throw it! Throw it, Arketa!’ 

            

“I throw dah grass off my head. Nicely! When dah bundle hit the ground, a two-meter snake is in dah pile! His head come straight up in dah grass! Eeeee!Two meters is dat snake! Dat day in M’boki, dah snake is running, dah human being is running. But dah husband of Teresa killed it. I didn’t touch dat bundle again. Another person can have it.”

         

When the two-room tukul was built, Lucia wove its door from special reeds. No windows. At night everyone and everything went inside: the cooking pot, the water containers, the firewood, the fires and fourteen people. In the daytime everything, everyone, was returned to the veranda, the place for sitting in daytime and evenings, the place for the outside fire, for cooking, and for storytelling. There was no question but that this was an improvement, but not improvement enough. 

            

Well into the second year, grumbling refugees grew tired of the hours required for cutting grass or foraging for firewood, and especially tired of the hours of walking all this required. Arketa explained that now people started watching for opportunities to steal. 

 

“You go two, three days and collect dah grass what you need. You put down dah second, third bundle you make, walk to your compound with dah first, come back and dah wood or grass you left, is gone. Dah people watching are now taking things.

 

“Later, when we have dah gardens? Dah same. Dah corns will look good today. Tomorrow? Where did dah corns go?” She laughed. “Someone will sell your corn to you! Who will you complain to? Humff!But, dah problem was, everyone has big needs in M’boki and very few people was stealing. We just give what we have to each other. Even when I build dah small tukul? One day I took a bundle of grass I didn’t cut. Maybe don't put dat in dah book. Who can understand?”

°  °  °

 

A few months after the two-room tukul had been built, Arketa built a small tukul—just one room for herself and her kids—one requiring only ten bundles of grass for the roof. Christopher, Nathalia, and Timothy were growing and baby Sarai was “crawling around like a monkey.”

 

At night Arketa was “all dah time watching for dah snake, as every adult did. As often as she could manage, she slept for ten minutes, maybe thirty then before any more sleep, she watched and listened for danger. 

 

“But sleep can steal exhausted people,” Arketa said. On this particular night, she had fallen into deep sleep. Her children were sleeping beside her when she felt something move over her.

 

“Eeeeii!”

 

Arketa woke with a start. It was “dah big-g-ggray snake. In Zande it is dah Wammbagga. More than two meters long!” This is why, she explains, “nobody but children sleep comfortable in M’boki.” 

 

“Dis snake came and rolled over us. I’m telling you, I’m feeling it now. On dah wall over me? Dah tail. Dah head going on dah other wall. Big! I scream and I toss dah children out dah door. Dah husband of Teresa came running from his tukul with dah African lamp.”

 

Arketa paused as she told this story after years of separation from the jungle camp, “Dis is dah palm oil kerosene fire, on dah long stick, yeah.  He is going inside to find dah snake for us. He is putting dah lamp, up. Looking inside.” Arketa laughed good, anticipating a story worthy of sharing. 

 

“Dis is midnight, Barbi. People is now standing outside and dey start yelling, ‘Come out! Dah tukul is burning with you inside!’  Dis is how my new tukul was burned down.

            

“When you want to see something inside, don’t look with dah torch.” Arketa’s laughter proved uncontained. With tears she said, “Your eyes is inside looking for dah snake, not on dah lamp. Without dah zinc roof, with only grass—trouble.” 

            

The snake slithered away but Arketa lost her food and the calabash containers. The cooking pot was rescued but she lost the heavy pile of sleeping leaves. “Dat was our mattress.” But she still had her walls—well burnt. 

            

“Barbara, I never seen dah snake in each place like in M’boki. In dah daytime, how many snakes will run to your place? Huhh!In dah night, you put heavy fire. You are sitting. You see a big snake coming, slowly, slowly. Let me tell you, God is great. God save dah life with dah kids from all dat—from dah snake, from M’boki. Everything.” 

 

°  °  °

 

By the end of the dry season in 1993, refugees understood that nothing was reliable—not bridges or roads, not visits by the Red Cross or UN, and not cooperation by the Zande citizens of Central African Republic. By the beginning of the third year, when fantasies about going home had vanished and the search for food required miles of walking, the UN agreed to bring seed and cassava trees if the refugees prepared garden plots.

         

Sudanese leaders asked the Zande mayor, “Is it possible for us to have fields for the garden? We can work and plant some food for ourselves and we can survive.”

            

“Yes,” he said. “You can do it anywhere.”

 

The refugees looked for good soil and began the arduous work of clearing land. They cut the forest away as they had for the airstrip. The “complete forest,” Arketa said, “was closing itself with grass, tight.” The refugees worked through February into March starting with borrowed tools: the hoe, the machete, and the hands. Dig. Clean. Clear. Cut. Dry. Burn. The tall grass was cut and pulled up by the roots. The creepers and vines slashed away, trees felled and burned. For two months, every day, everyone who wanted a garden plot worked to prepare the place.

 

“Now, you start like you are going to make dah place to plant dah seed? Oh, what dah people of Central African Republic did to us! Dat time is when dah local citizen come to you and say, ‘Ah! Dis is dah land of my Grand-family. You cannot use dis land.It is family land.’ Aiii!Dah Sudanese men want to pick up dah mayor and kill him! The gendarmerie had to hide him. Yeah! Dah police are cooling dah Sudanese people down. Dis was painful. 

 

“For two months refugees worked before dah lazy local people take it from us. People are even still talking about dat. Dis is why we hate being refugees. After dis, dah Sudanese say we prefer to die in dah home soil which is better than being dah refugee.”

 

When tempers settled, the mayor apologized for what he called a misunderstanding. “Go beyond the Zongo River. There, the land is free. Make your gardens,” he said.

 

Arketa joined hundreds who walked two hours or more to reach the Zongo River. Arketa saw that the riverbed was very wide across but, the good was that the water was only in the middle, three or four meters—a skinny stream but very deep. Men cut poles to bridge it. 

 

The refuge population did again what they had done two months earlier in M’boki. They divided forestland into garden plots. Arketa, her mom, and her sister’s family each had land close to the riverbed. Arketa dug a well. “Dig, not even half, half-meter. Clean it good and fresh water is dehr, cool and clean for drinking. Only, ohhh,dah leopard liked it, too.”

 

In late May or early June home songs rose to the heavens as refugees carried precious cassava trees and seed to garden sites: okra, groundnuts, corn, pumpkin, millet and dura, (sorghum). They planted hope and they planted worry. It was late, too late really for planting. But that’s when plots were finally ready, they loudly explained to God. That’s when the UN delivered seed and trees. What could they do? They planted. They worried. God provided. The harvest grew beautifully. The millet shot high above Arketa’s head. Groundnuts that typically come out of the ground in July and August were pulled in September and were perfect.

 

“Now we can make peanut-butter. Dah people was crying with dah crack of groundnuts in our teeth.”

            

Arketa’s garden stretched to “one sudan” in size; a twenty-minute’s walk from corner to corner. Arketa’s ‘sudan’ is likely the Arabic “Feddan, meaning, I discovered, “an area an ox might till in a given amount of time, a unit of measure nearly equal to an acre.” There, by the side of the Zongo River, Arketa tended an acre of survival and prosperity. 

 

By the end of August, fresh corn was ready. Baskets of it. Corn to shuck and dry and preserve for the months of want. Corn enough to trade for oil. Fresh corn was heavy—especially heavy if you carried a child as well. By this time, Sarai was big enough to roll on her knees but was not yet walking. 

 

“You cross dah riverbed, you carry dah corn on your head and dah child with your hip. You rest. You go another hour, you rest. Another hour and you make it home.”

 

For the first time since they settled in M’boki, refugees who planted gardens ate twice a day. Even those people who hadn’t planted, who came to take food from the gardens without asking had food to eat. “Dis was dah first good thing of M’boki.”

            

The Sudanese had gotten fairly forest savvy but the Zongo River was not as familiar to them as the M’boki stream and the great M’bomou River. They didn’t know that in the heavy rain the Zongo floods. Fast. 

 

“Dah mayor didn’t tell us.” One day, Arketa was in the garden working. Her mother and sister were somewhere nearby. The children were being children, running and playing with a clique of kids when the rain came—hard. Who wasn’t used to it? Arketa straightened up and looked at the river. Aiiieee! The Zongo was no longer a wide riverbed with a bit of water in the center. In no more time than it took to run to the forest to relieve one’s self and run back, Zongo was a mighty, pounding wall of water stretched from bank to bank.

 

Angry rain pounded pockets into the garden’s soil. The river was furious. The pole bridge had washed away and the water was climbing fast, washing toward Arketa’s feet. The current roared forward, moving down to join the massive Oubangi River. That night and the next, until the rain stopped and the river rested, all the people slept under the trees near their gardens. No fires were possible. All tools were held close in case of fighting off animals or snakes. 

 

Arketa began shaping new rules for the community in her mind as she gathered children and moved further from the river.

The first rule? No one stays late in the gardens if the rain grows heavy. Go home, fast. Second? Verandas were built in the gardens and firewood was stored underneath veranda roofs. Everyone agreed with the mayor of gardens—Arketa Zambakari.

 

“You need a place where dah kids can stay if it’s raining or if dah flood washes away dah poles for crossing,” she said. By dah third year in M’boki, the Sudanese community understood the rivers—good.”

 

°  °  °

 

One day, sure-footed Arketa had made it nearly to the garden end of the restored pole bridge when she and the basket on her head toppled into the riverbed. Everything spilled as Arketa tumbled. “Aaaiiieee!”she screamed. 

 

Children and adults in the gardens heard the woman’s howl and ran to the river’s edge where even they risked falling in, consumed by laughter. It was funny, not dangerous. There were no crocodiles in the Zongo river. Soon, when Arketa’s fall was nearly forgotten, the river yielded up a cornucopia of young garden goods—groundnuts, dura, okra, and other greens. Laughter returned. Fingers pointed. The story grew with the greens in the river. Every time people passed by the story was repeated. “The Cor of Arketa” the place was named. “The Water of Arketa.” Cries of “Do it again, Arketa, do it again!” met Arketa week after week until the river flooded and washed the magic away. 

 

“Sudanese people remember dez things,” said Arketa, remembering.

 

°  °  °

 

May 1994

Three years after Arketa arrived in M’boki, her sister Margaret arrived from Wau town where still too many people were disappearing, where violence reigned. Margaret came as many people did. She and her children traveled by foot from camp to camp in Central African Republic, staying in each long enough to watch, to learn whether she might come upon any of her family. No one in a camp would tell a stranger anything. Too often people came snooping for nefarious reasons. Perhaps this inquiring person came to kill. Some men sought boys for service in the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. 

 

No. You do not ask questions about people by name. No one answered such direct questions. You watched. You waited. You finally believed none of your family was in that place and you moved on. Margaret moved from camp to camp, finally finding her family in camp #4, M’boki. Her arrival requires me to take a dip into a most complicated Zambakari practice.

         

°  °  °

 

Teresa, who came to M’boki with Arketa and their mother, was at birth named Angelina. She remained Angelina until the death of her fraternal twin Teresa in Source Yubu. In that tragic moment when Teresa died, according to tradition, Angelina assumed her dead sister’s name. Angelina and Teresa looked nothing alike. Then Margaret arrived and Margaret looked exactly like Angelina (now Teresa). Exactly. 

 

So, Margaret, who was born after Arketa and bore the home name “Abugu” because she as a baby constantly said, “bugu, bugu” (banana, banana), in M’boki was called Angelina. After all, she looked like Angelina and the name Angelina was available.

             

The name Margaret dropped away. The home name, Abugu, and the community name, Angelina, remained in place. Margaret was Angelina and the attempt to follow name uses entertained me until the crushing reality of refugee life returned to the conversation between Arketa and me. The naming story is funny. The story of Margaret is not.

 

°  °  °

 

One day, Margaret’s (now Angelina) eight-year-old son fell from a tree. The United Nations representative who had that year established residence in the camp, said the boy had to be taken to hospital in the capital, Bangui for the arm to be properly set. Arketa agreed to accompany them. While they were in the city, she would check the progress in getting Sarai’s birth certificate. 

 

Five days to Bangui by lorry, 700 rough and dangerous miles. At every bridge, whether stream or river, passengers piled out of the lorry bed while the driver inspected the logs over which he would drive. If he made it safely across, passengers walked across, then climbed back into the lorry and held on while the vehicle tipped and careened through ruts and rivulets, averaging at best, a brutal crawl to Bangui. God-awful, but they made it.

 

In Bangui, doctors determined that surgery was required but before the surgery, “dey have to do a lot of things.” Angelina now faced a much longer than anticipated stay. Arketa ran her errands and in a very few days returned to M’boki. She was the man of dah house. Angelina was doing fine. “Go,” Angelina said. So Arketa left her sister with the child and after five torturous lorry days and four forest nights, returned to the camp.

            

Many days later, after the boy’s treatment and surgery, Angelina (Margaret) and her son headed back to M’boki. At one crossing, which was described to Arketa as “very bad but the people stayed inside,” the bridge broke under the weight of the lorry. Everyone in that heavy vehicle, most of them refugees, fell to their deaths. Swept away with the river. News of this tragedy came to the camp the day after the accident. 

 

Arketa and her mom were headed home in the evening after a day’s work in in the garden. They crossed the Zongo River, their bare feet slapping the earth, their heads and arms loaded. As they walked the paths, in camp #4 a lorry arrived and moved its cargo into the recently opened clinic. 

            

Still in the deep forest, Arketa and Lucia saw someone running toward them and wondered at it. Arketa tapped the firewood on her head, centering it. Ah, it was one of the camp scouts. She recognized him. His job was to deliver information quickly. He was in a hurry. She moved to the side, to give him room to pass. He came closer, feet churning over the rocky path.

            

“Arketa!” he screamed. “Throw away what you have on your head. Throw it down!”

 

Arketa’s beautiful black face grew stern. The scout was not running past her. Panting, the man signaled for her to follow him. She was instantly concerned. She thought maybe the Muslim militia had come to the camp. Her kids were there. 

            

“What happened?” she asked.

            

“Just throw it down!” he said impatiently.

            

She asked again, urgently, “What happened?” 

 

He said, “Arketa, come with me. Run!” 

Now questions mounted in her mind. Snakes? Children? Fire?  

 

“Something happen to my kids, or what?” 

 

Now Lucia shouted, “Just Go!” Arketa dropped the firewood and ran with the scout.

 

“No,” he said. It was not her kids. “It is bad news. ‘Just come.’”

            

The scout ran through the camp to the clinic. Arketa worked there almost every day alongside the occasional foreign medical volunteers. The UN provisioned it with local beds and basic materials. The cries of ululating struck her ears. Arketa ran harder and as she did, she felt nearly the whole population of the camp around her. She could hardly put a foot down in the crush of people. Someone grabbed her by the arm and led her. Why, she wondered did someone have her arm? Why all this sadness around me?

 

“Oh god, I cannot put my feet for dah people. I don’t know what happened. But by dah time I am reaching dah clinic I see a lorry with people crying by it. Some of dah ladies of dah camp was there to be with me. Everybody come to hold 

me.” 

 

“What happened? Tell me!” she shouted.

            

“Ah, Arketa,” came the answer. “Your sister and the child had an accident. Yesterday. The death is here, inside. Inside the clinic.” 

 

“Somebody follow dah road for my mom,” Arketa screamed. “She is going to kill herself dehr.” 

            

Arketa went inside the small clinic. Her sister, Margaret/Angelina, lay there with her son beside her. Next to them lay Arketa’s neighbor woman and her two children and that woman’s adult sister—all of them returning by lorry to M’boki after receiving medical treatment in Bangui.

 

“Nine deaths, lying dehr, inside.”

 

“I don’t know how many days I didn’t know myself. Either I went to pieces or I was with my kids. I don’t know.  I just say, ‘From Bomboti, after my daddy, my brothers, dah brother, mother and father of Angelo and Rosetta was killed, dah worst things was dis. Dah death of my sister, Angelina, with her child. Killed with dah lorry. From dat time, I am ready for death.”

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Quick peek: CHAPTER TEN   M’boki—December-March 1999

 

What should she do? It had never entered Arketa’s mind that she might leave M’boki—except to return to Sudan. But a return was clearly out of the question since for ten years, life in M’boki had only become more settled as news from home was only news of violence and unsettledness. Consequently, when a United Nations representative suggested that Arketa’s family emigrate, she first dismissed the idea.