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 become only more settled as news from home was only news of violence and unsettledness. Consequently, when a United Nations representative posted in M’boki first suggested that Arketa’s family emigrate, she dismissed the idea. 

 

Anyone in M’boki could appreciate hesitancy. Everyone held sorry stories concerning transportation. If the Zambakaris left, a lorry would carry them for at least five days over precarious roads, rotting bridges, and past violent militia camps to reach Bangui, the volatile capital of Central African Republic. 

            

If they did reach Bangui safely, the UN would process them for travel to the care of the UN in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo—and who hadn’t head about that dangerous place. Since no reliable roads existed through the dense jungle between Bangui and Kinshasa-Brazzaville, the Zambakari family faced an unpredictable, unreliable, and for Arketa, a terrifying, two-week journey on the Oubangui and Congo rivers. Crossing the Mbombou River in a low-slung pirogue had created in Arketa more than a strong a sense of caution concerning river travel. 

 

Travel from Bangui to Kinshasa was talked about in the camps—ferries of a sorry sort, or by barges advised against in all travel brochures. Travel schedules existed but every vessel’s progress depended on a sketchy search for fuel, the whims of  revenue-seeking captains who often refused to leave quite yet, hoping for more passengers or freight, or who sometimes pulled into riverside towns along the way because of pounding rain or treacherous currents. It could mean, it nearly always meant, days of delay. Add to that the generally known information that boats were less available and less reliable the farther up river one goes, and that Bangui was well up river. Rumors and stories reached M’boki.  

 

But Arketa had been handed an opportunity.

            

°  °  °

 

By the closing days of 1999, Arketa had been in the jungle long enough to be acquainted with the threats of disease: malaria, diarrhea, typhoid, fevers, urinary infections, childbirth deaths, malnutrition, and open festering wounds. She grew familiar with the ever-present menace of wild animals: leopards, monkeys, elephants, crocodiles, buffalo, and lions. Burials were all too familiar. The host of native complications that greeted the Zambakari upon their arrival in 1991 included poisonous plants and snakes, scorpions, tribes of mosquitos, fire injuries, deep burns, foot worms, eye infections, thieving neighbors—all of which hung around like lingering houseguests.

 

            √ By 1999, when Bill Clinton was acquitted by the Senate in his impeachment trial, while the civilized world worried about genetically altered food, and Jerry Fallwell fretted over the sexuality of SpongeBobSquarePants, Arketa knew the jungle seasons in the Central African Republic well. Between mid-March and October rain fell nearly every day, but not necessarily all day. Heavy harvest rains, seventy or more inches, fell from April to November Near-naked Arketa noticed the cold when the dry season dropped temperatures into the low seventy degrees. Wearing little more than a flap of bark-cloth made a person aware of weather. The average temperature of eighty degrees with 80-90 percent humidity suited her. 

 

            √ By 1999, she had been in M’boki long enough to shed her compassion for slackers. During the dry season, every year since she built her tukuls, Arketa replaced termite-decimated tukul grass and roof poles. She had nothing but contempt for lazy people who stole her bundled grass or firewood. In her eight-year stay, M’boki both softened her and hardened her.

 

            √ By September of 1999, Arketa had been in M’boki long enough to expect the omnipresence of huge but nonvenomous African house snakes, the sort that once caused the alarm that caused her tukul fire.

 

            √ Long enough to know how common house fires were.

 

            √ Long enough that she hardly turned her head when a smooth, brown bodied, creamy-bellied snake crawled out from beneath blue tarpaulin or paper bags upon which the family slept before local beds got built.

 

             √  Long enough to be nothing but entertained by the harmless, shiny, black double-headed snake, quick to move all directions, and surprisingly apt to share the warmth of tukul fires at night.

 

            √ Long enough to be sick of deaths by the Boomslang, the slender green snakes nearly invisible on green mango leaves. If disturbed, this pencil-thin strip of jungle life delivered the promise of a brutal death. 

 

            √ Long enough to teach her family to fear the large and deadly black and green mamba.  A shy and rarely seen snake, observers say.  

 

“Ha!” says Arketa’s nephew, Angelo. “This belly creeper was frequently found and easily stepped on in the gardens of M’boki. People resorted to saying that the nationals were the ones sending snakes to kill refugees but the honest truth was we had really invaded their homes looking for food or survival.” 

 

            √ By 1999, Arketa had been in M’boki long enough to help Lucia build local beds.—the tambara.  One tambara in the original tukul held five sleeping children. Timothy knew how to build the bed by the time he was six. “Find perfectly forked timbers from the forest. Cut them. Space them, plant the tail of the ‘Y’ one foot down. Place a short beam across the arms. Lay looongstretches of cane or reed on these. Slap on and tie to the cane, layers of water-softened banana leaves. Allow the leaves to dry. Add long mats woven by my grandma. Sleep off the rocky ground. Wake up and laugh at the marks of the mattress on your bare back.” 

 

             √  By 1999, Arketa had lived in M’boki long enough for the Zambakari boys to learn from Lucia to make the hunter’s net in which they trapped game, to bake their own sweet potato in an earth-dug oven, to make a sturdy soccer ball from jungle leaves, gums, and reeds.

 

             √  Long enough for her mother to own two dogs and some chickens – all gifts from “the wife of Sabé, dah gendarme.” Lucia named the dogs “Gometa,” meaning “No relative,” and “Zanarella,” meaning, “No sister.” 

 

            √ Long enough for Timothy to see one of the dogs swallowed up by a python.

 

            √ By 1999, Arketa had been in M’boki long enough to learn to burn seed from the Zaw-waa tree, “dah leaf on it dah giraffe loved. Burn seed or make oil from it and dah mosqwitoes run away.” 

            √ Long enough to make torches from the liquid drawn from Barro tree bark. “Roll it on a stick. Dry it. Burn it to chase away the mosqwitoes.” 

 

            √ Long enough to plant “a fortress of calabash”—unbreakable gourds of various sizes used as vessels for food, for water storage, and drinking cups.

 

            √  Long enough to recognize the different calls pounded out on drums made from dried calabash wide as rain barrels topped with the skin of elephant ears.            

 

            √ Long enough to weave a reed colander for sifting rocks away from rice or dry corn.

 

            √ Long enough for Lucia to make, break, and make again, clay pots, ladles, and cooking vessels from the special clay collected at river’s edge.

 

            √ By the end of 1999, while the UN passed resolution 54/134 naming November 25 as the annual “International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women,” Arketa had been in M’boki long enough see a reed-walled church established where she prayed for the souls of the dead; for the souls of her son Elario, for murdered family members, for help from the Belgian father of her light-skinned children, for peace in south Sudan.

 

            √  Long enough for the Zambakari family to enjoy plenty from the garden for their one main meal a day: an evening feast of yam, cassava greens, okra, pumpkin, sweet potato, millet, sorghum, banana, groundnuts, maize, rice  . . . and occasionally a fish caught from the Zongo River. And rarely, but occasionally, chicken or bush meat.

 

            √ Long enough for the clutch of chickens, a gift from the wife of Sabé, to produce eggs and chicks. 

            

° °  °

 

“My mom and Grandma were very smart about the things of the forest,” said Timothy, Arketa’s now grown son whose awareness of life began as a toddler in M’boki.

 

By the time the UN delivered soap—harsh, and never enough, Arketa and Lucia had discovered how to make jungle soap. 

            

Arketa found two resources for washing things: the danda leaf resembled okra leaves and oozed a great cleansing foam. Arketa used this bubbly product for washing bodies and hair. The children loved it. Then, a root similar to cassava called sa-bon-sandi worked miracles on dirt-laden children’s clothes.  

 

            √ Indeed, by 1999, Arketa had stayed long enough in M’boki to score some clothes for her children from the donation box. “If you are a good fighter, you can get two pieces.” 

 

            √ Long enough to see her children learn “good,” tutored by Mr. Pascal and the wife of Sabé. 

 

            √ By 1999, Arketa had been in M’boki long enough to grow weary of working without relief, resting without deep sleep, and ever watching for dangers; long enough to be fairly proficient in French, Arabic, Zande, Songo, and, of course, her own Balanda Bor and Balanda Viri. 

 

            √ Long enough for the children to think of every language as one.

 

            √ By the last quarter of 1999, by the dry season, Arketa had been in M’boki long enough to see the UN establish a clinic—of sorts. Volunteer medical workers came from Europe and America—occasionally.  When they did, people lined up and waited all day to learn what the visiting experts knew—that little could be done to alleviate their ills. 

            

Arketa worked long hours nearly every day. She delivered babies, tended illnesses, taught hygiene, and excelled at removing the brown bodied, black-headed Too-kle-too-kle worms, embedded like a soft corn kernel between people’s toes or under the toenails. She kept her own children free of them “with dah needle of dah tree.” Tiny Guinea worms that nibbled into the bodies of refugees could grow to six feet in length. Arketa removed them. “Rolled it out on dah stick.”

 

In the camp, everyone used leaves and plants for medicine. Arketa knew all the trees, the worth of their leaves and roots

“Dah Banga bark is good. We know dah leaves of it. You get it and squeeze it. Dah water out from dat is for dah children. You put it in dah leaf, rolled, because we don’t have dah spoon. You measure veeery carefully for kids because, too much for dem, dey die. For adults, you take two leaves and just eat like spinach.” 

 

For people with blood and mucus in the stool, or for diarrhea, Arketa stripped a length of mango tree bark. . Rightly administered, mango tea nursed against malaria. She “cleaned it good,” then soaked it in hot water to make a tea for a suffering person drink. 

 

“Malaria, dysentery, malnutrition? What can you do?” 

 

            √ By 1999, for her around-the-clock clinic work, Arketa earned forty-some pounds of corn meal a month.

 

            √ By 1999, Arketa lived long enough in M’boki to see that her light-skinned children were particularly susceptible to malaria. 

 

“Every time it comes, it comes to my light-skinned children. I lay dem in dah clinic with me. Dey are miserable with dah big fever, with vomiting yellow. 

 

            √ By 1999, Arketa lived in M’boki long enough to learn from a German doctor, a friend from Yambio, that the daddy of her light-skinned children knew of her situation but could not, or would not, help her.

 

            √ Long enough to grieve the loss of too many things.

 

            √ Long enough to come to the attention of the UN official based in M’boki. A Haitian man who would change the course of Arketa’s life.

 

 

°  °  °

                                                            

Bangui, 1999, December

Even in the isolated jungle of M’boki nearly everyone knew  of the troubles in Bangui. The battery-driven radios held by the gendarmerie captured news, and that news spread by word of mouth throughout the camps. Arketa’s proximity to and friendship with the family of Sabé gave her fairly direct information.

 

Everyone knew about the three military mutinies that began in 1996, about riots that followed even after leaders of other African nations implemented the “Bangui Accords” in 1997, and about the outside troops that had descended on the capital to enforce peace. However, foreign leaders had not solved the problem of CAR’s corrupt president, Patassé. For months on end, they had not corrected his failure to pay government workers, schoolteachers, or military personnel. Looting and attacks on foreigners increased. Riots roughed up the city. Manufacturing, the little that did exist, ceased. Foreign interests began to pull out, and international relations collapsed along with CAR’s economy. A culture of conflict and corruption ruled the city.

 

In 1998 the UN moved in. Shortly after arriving, a UN peacekeeper was murdered. France withdrew completely. CAR President Patassé isolated himself. The many attempts on his life had him worried but even while in hiding he managed to keep corruption healthy. In the dry season of 1999, Patassé was elected to a new five-year term and the United Nations forces withdrew. 

 

On September 11, 1999, a clash between supporters of president Ange-Félix Patassé and former president, Andre Kolinba, resulted in two deaths and the promise of continuing crisis in the capital. Bangui’s stability was irreparably ruined. One could hardly cross one of the capital’s dirt streets without the threat of being caught in the crossfire of yet another deadly skirmish. Economic failure, looting, rioting, killings, destruction of industry, street scuffles—you could find it all in Bangui. Violence marked the capital city and the jungle that led the way to it. 

In December of 1999, Arketa heard first hand of an opportunity to travel to troubled Bangui, to move on to troubled Kinshasa, and from there, settle somewhere in the world other than “here.” This was her month of opportunity. 

                         

°  °  °

 

“You know where dey have dah big earthquake?” Arketa asked.

 

In a 2010 phone call originally meant for conversation about her ailing automobile, Arketa prepared me for a major shift in her story. On January 12, 2010 a massive earthquake hit Haiti and that reminded Arketa about her decision to leave M’boki in 1999.

 

“That ‘Hii-ate-tee’ guy was dah one who helped me.” He and his wife were UN workers in M’boki after a tour among Rwandan refugees in Democratic Republic of Congo, and a stint in Bangui. 

 

“He was black, like Africans,” Arketa said. “He was a good man. He was just like, in charge of everything of dah refugees. He is dah one, if I ask how many people are in dah camp, he can tell me. Tens of thousands of people in twenty-five camps.”

 

The Haitian noticed Arketa’s work ethic. He noticed her intelligence, her attention to her clinic work and to her children’s schooling. He noticed her bright children. He knew things could be better for her. He offered an opportunity.

 

“Dah German doctor who knew dah daddy of my children told the Hii-ate-tee guy my whole story.” 

 

°  °  °

 

September 1999, 

“Look, I am not going to hide anything from you,” the Haitian said. “You are not married to the Belgian guy. If you were married, there are official lines of assistance, but those are not open to you. You were girlfriend-boyfriend, working together. Nothing more. Forget about looking for him. Take care of your kids.”

 

The UN official wasn’t finished. He pressed. “When he was leaving Sudan, why didn’t this man give you his correct address? Everything about Sudan, about M’boki, about Yambio, is on the radio, on TV. Everybody knows where the population of Sudan is now. How people are divided—some in Nairobi, Congo, in CAR. That man can go to the Red Cross. He can use your name. He would find you ‘like that!’  But, this man doesn’t ask.

            

“Look now,” he said, “how you and your children are suffering. Those kids are God’s gift to you, Arketa.” Arketa said, “I remember dis good.

 

“Dis is what dat man and his wife said, really, to help me. Dah UN man tell me clear, ‘Dat guy was just working on dah contract in Sudan because he love dah Sudanese people. And? He is happy to be with dah important Zambakari family. But, with his help, you would not be a refugee. You would be on dah plane, gone from all dis trouble.” 

 

“He say, ‘Why are you in the camp? Why are you barefoot today? Look to your children. Your last name, Zambakari, is their name. Only you can help these kids.’” 

 

He had said enough.

            

°  °  °

Arketa suffered truth. She understood the man and his wife—fully. She believed them—totally. She especially paid attention when he said “You can know good children when they are small; children who will focus on something one day. The Zambakari children need to have opportunity.”

            

Whatever official things occurred behind scenes on that straight-talking day unbeknownst to Arketa, it resulted in the United Nations handing her an opportunity. The Haitian official assured her that he would make the arrangements if she wished to move on.

            

Arketa turned to prayer and the African proverb: You cannot climb the tree with two stones in your hands. She explained.

 

“Before you do something, sit down and watch. “Think—If you can’t make it up dah tree, up dah mountain and down?  Don’t go.

 

“Barbara, dat day my heart went down. I have to face dah truth of things. I said to dat man and his wife with him, ‘You are telling me truth.’”

 

She asked ‘how’ immigration happens. She heard all about the five-day lorry ride to Bangui to obtain travel documents before spending two weeks on the Oubangui and Congo rivers. She learned about Kinshasa where an evangelical church would provide a room while she waited a few years for her turn to leave Africa.

 

Arketa opened the conversation with her mom, arguing that either everyone would go or no one would. But by mid-January, by the time for the heavy work clearing and preparing the massive garden, Lucia made her feelings clear. 

 

“No. Never dah whole family in a lorry together.”

 

Lucia had already lost too much to a lorry. Never would she risk the entire family. Arketa should go, yes, Lucia agreed. 

            

Arketa delivered babies, tended burns and worms and wounds, and thought about what to do. 

 

During that year’s cold, dry season, Lucia swung the hoe and the panga machete, preparing her garden for seed, and worrying. Arketa should go. This opportunity was the first step of hope for the family. No one could go back to Sudan but neither could everyone leave M’boki at once.

 

Arketa observed her mother’s reluctance. It was the lorry. The dangerous city. The boat. The unknown. Strong Lucia whose mind had never quite snapped back to perfect since the slaughter of her family in Source Yubu, was afraid. Nothing about moving around in Africa was good. 

 

The children were happy now in M’boki, “growing up with dah big garden, friends, dah church, even a marketplace now and dah good stories around dah fire at night,” said Arketa.

            

It might have been late December 1999, when Lucia made the final decision for the family. Arketa doesn’t remember exactly. 

 

Arketa would go, said Lucia. She was to take the three light-skinned children with her: fourteen-year-old Christopher, twelve-year-old Nathalia, eight-year-old Sarai. Those children were most susceptible to African diseases, most vulnerable to mosquitos and malaria. 

 

“Let me make dis clear,” she said, then explained that neither she nor Arketa could care for all six children alone. If Arketa and her three made it out of Africa safely, Lucia would follow with the other grandchildren: Angelo, Rosetta and Timothy. It was decided. 

 

But as Arketa explained to the UN official, she had no money. She had no clothes. She had no documents beside her refugee card. Those things would be provided, he said. But, she needed to realize she had only a few weeks to turn things over to her family, to prepare to travel in the UN lorry. If they left no later than mid-March, he said, they could make it to Bangui before heavy rains ruined roads but late enough that heavy rains could lift river levels enough to allow transportation on the water. 

            

Arketa resigned herself to the trip. She had to make it. It was the only way to get education for her children. Better this,” she reasoned, than her whole life in the jungle.” 

             

°  °  °

 

“We didn’t tell the children. No. It wasn’t dah habit to tell children things.”

 

Ten-year-old Timothy, Arketa’s dark-skinned fully Balandan son, observed the fuss one night when people gathered for a bigggdinner. It had something to do with his mom, he figured out that much. But he, the gregarious master of the forest, was busy playing with friends. His play stopped when he noticed people crying. 

 

 “Why?” he asked, sidling up to his beloved Grandma.

 

“’Your mom is leaving tomorrow,” Lucia said. “Christopher, Nathalia, and little Sarai are going with her.” 

He tried again, “Why?” But got no answer. He knew his mother. He knew his grandmother. He knew he would not get information. They didn’t talk about difficult things. But he knew to trust them.

             

“Dey will be back,” said Lucia, the woman who likely could count the number of lies in her life on one hand. She suffered for this tenderhearted boy. 

            

Early the next morning, as a light rain fell, a huge lorry with steel caging and a flapping tarp over the open back—as high and wide as a sixteen-wheeler semi tractor-trailer—idled near the camp four police station. Zambakari tukuls stood steps away. The Haitian official and his wife sat in the truck cab along with the driver. 

            

In clothing secured by the UN official’s wife, Arketa and the three children said their goodbyes. Dressed for travel, and wearing plastic flip-flops, they moved toward the lorry. Sarai kept stumbling, trying to keep her eyes on her shod feet. She had never before worn anything on her feet.

 

Christopher climbed “dah iron pieces by dah tire” and got himself in. Lorry workers helped the younger children.

 

“Sit and stay dehr,” Arketa said. Then, barely able to see for her tears, barely able to breath for sorrow, she climbed in. 

 

“Like climbing dah tree,” she said. Arketa sat with her children on the wooden floor planks. She held her aching head between her hands.

            

Nobody felt good at the time. Everyone was crying. Everyone knew this was real separation. Arketa’s thoughts filled with the question, “Who will we see again?” She didn’t—couldn’t—think about opportunity.

 

Naked Timothy and his sibling cousins, Angelo and Rosetta, crowded around grandma, bare feet planted in the dirt. Grandma held as many hands as possible but not those of Timothy. Timothy leaned into her, his hands woven together, pressing down in despair atop his head, his eyes locked on his mother’s face, tears blurring what he never, ever, wanted to stop seeing.  Tears—in the lorry, on the land.

 

No one tried to prevent the tears that fell.

 

Sneak Preview: CHAPTER ELEVEN-- Bangui and the Boat 

 

M’boki to Bangui – Winter 2000

“NO!” 

Arketa stood her ground. For the first time in hours she was out of the lorry, her feet firmly planted on muddy ground somewhere between the villages of Zamou and Bangasu. Before her was a wide, swift river and at its edge was a raft—of sorts—a rattle of logs bound together and barely wider than the lorry itself. The attached motor hummed like a helicopter sputtering under water. Raft workers raced around yelling to one another, hoisting and hauling ropes thick as their bare thighs and heavy as sin. Arketa studied the situation as she was told to climb back into the lorry. It was time to load the lorry on the raft. Time to cross the river. Time enough for Arketa to say “No.”

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