ZAMBAKARI - CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

Africa to America—2001

Kinshasa – Tuesday, January 16, 2001  

“Christopher!” Arketa didn’t recognize the ruckus and uproar in her Kinshasa neighborhood but in her year’s stay she hadn’t heard such screaming or seen people running in the streets like families fleeing fire. She gathered her girls and yelled for her son. Something was terribly wrong and she knew the drill. Hide.

“Christopher!”  Arketa herded ten-year-old Sarai and thirteen-year-old Nathalia to their room.

A Congolese church worker reached Arketa with news that President Kabila had been shot at his residence on the hills nearby. Maybe he was dead. The word is, they are blaming the light-skinned foreigners. Tutsis. Keep your light-skinned children hidden, the worker warned. Rumors and rebellion rolled across Kinshasa followed by fires, gunshots, and reports of military brutalities.

Arketa pushed her daughters into their room shouting, “stay here.”  That boy Christopher; unconscious to all the chaos, was likely sitting under a tree with one of the Frenchor English speaking guests, learning all he could about their worlds. 

“Christopher!”

°  °  °

On Tuesday, January 16, 2001, the corpulent DRC president Kabila sat in his office at the Marble Palace talking with his health advisor, Emile Mota. So say some. Others say he was with a group of advisors, discussing DRC’s relation to France. Or, as others report, the topic concerned economics. Who was in the room and why they were are the first of many confusions surrounding the death of Laurent Désiré Kabila—the man who, in a horrific three-year reign turned his huge country into a battleground involving as many as eight African nations.

As Kabila talked, his trusted Kadogo bodyguard, Rashidi Kasereka, was granted permission to enter the room. Kasereka was, after all, one of Kabila’s trusted boy soldiers. Kabila often boasted that he was a father to them. Kasereka moved to the president’s side and leaned in, as if to whisper in confidence, before firing his revolver point blank—two shots; four some say; several, say others—into his trusting president, killing him on the spot. That is, Dr. Mashako Mamba, DRC’s health minister who was in the office next door, believed Kabila was dead “on the spot.” Not so, said others who reported the president died during a medical evacuation flight, giving time enough to state his wish that his son succeed to the presidency. At some point, however, all agree Kabila died. All agree that the assailant, Kasereka, ran. 

Many blamed the president’s death on the Kadogo boys. Just the day before, forty-some Kadogo teens had been executed by the order of an increasingly paranoid Kabila who witnessed the deaths being convinced his “beloved children” plotted against him. 

Most Congolese believed light-skinned Rwandan Tutsis arranged the assassination. When it came down to it, nearly everyone in western Africa was accused of plotting Kabila’s death—from the president’s son, Joseph, to Rwanda, Angola, Congolese Tutsis, or Kadogo boy soldiers. To this day scores of innocent men remain imprisoned, while the actual “who done it” remains unclear. 

° °  °   

Arketa knew none of this as she rushed through the compound, calling, squinting against the afternoon sun. When Felix, a guest from Spain caught up with her he told her he saw the pastor, a young British journalist, and Christopher leave the compound. Arketa hardly stayed on her feet. The fear of that possibility slapped her nearly senseless. Felix hastily suggested that if they had run into trouble on the streets, the three might be at the British Embassy. Surely they would run there. 

“At the main road, the one toward the river?” Arketa spat the question. “Left, or right?” 

“I’ll take you,” said Felix.

Arketa dashed to her room and insisted her girls not move from it. She and Felix headed out but were stopped at the compound gate by armed military guards. No one could leave the compound. Period. No amount of pleading worked. That January night, without Christopher, Arketa did not sleep. 

° °  °

Christopher—Ministry of Information

It must have been within walking distance, and the morning must have been quiet enough when the evangelical pastor, Christopher and Stewart, his new British journalist friend, set out on foot for the Ministry of Information. Stewart, who was in Kinshasa to cover the condition of DRC, learned quickly enough that as a journalist he needed two things: a translator and a license to work. His luck concerning the first was immediate. Fifteen-year-old Christopher Zambakari had a good grasp of English, spoke fluent French (the official language of DRC), and, while he didn’t speak much of it, he understood Lingala well enough. 

Small and skinny Christopher was in heaven using English to discuss soccer and world affairs with the cosmopolitan Brit. He jumped at the opportunity to translate. On the morning of January 16th, he, Stewart, and the evangelical pastor walked together to the Ministry of Information where they spent the hours required for Stewart to secure his license; hours enough for the city to fill with rumors and violence. The president was dead, or dying. He was aboard a plane taking him to the major hospital in Lulumbashi in southeast DRC. Or not. In the city, light-skinned Tutsis were being hunted down by crazed Congolese.

The three men stepped outside the Ministry of Information—one white Englishman, one black Congolese African and one slim-figured, tall framed, light-skinned Sudanese boy—then stopped.

Gunshots. Shouting. People running. People running at them. A cluster of soldiers and hyped-up youths brandishing guns, sticks, knives, and machetes surrounded them, pointing to Belgian-African Christopher. 

“Rwandan!” they screamed. The beatings began. 

°  °  °

Wednesday - January 17, 2001

For the second time in ten years, Arketa was losing a son and trying hard not to lose her mind. Military guards blocked her plan to search. The UN, as it had in Bangui the year before, locked its doors and evacuated workers. The Sudanese Embassy refused to help an aswad, a black refugee. Her country’s Embassy served people of north Sudan—Muslim, Arabic citizens, but not Christian Africans of the south. 

Felix Pablo suggested they try again to reach the British Embassy. It was a short walk from where they were in the Bandal municipality to the main road through the central part of the city, the “Ville,” and on to Gombe, the area of foreign Embassies and Consulates. Maybe thirty or forty minutes, “footing it,” explains Arketa.

“Cannot leave,” soldiers said. Military men surrounded the compound.

“Guns ready with dah hand on it. I think to protect dah foreigners inside,” Arketa said. “Military cars and soldiers are dah only thing now on dah streets. But by afternoon things are upside down, everywhere. I learn later, foreign Marines are taking all dah white people out of dah country.” Banking on the soldiers’ increasing distraction, Felix and Arketa tried again to leave the church compound.

“We make it out and move to dah British Embassy. We are careful to stay away from dah military movements. Reaching dehr, dah first Embassy security guard let us through. The second, where dah machine for checking you is, dah guard say, ‘Those men are not here. No reason for you to go inside.’ I am African but, very quick, dey take dah white man, Felix, inside to protect him.”

“I need help,” Arketa demanded, refusing to budge from the gate. 

After a few stubborn minutes, the Congolese boss inside came out to tell Arketa that the white man must be off the road. Foreigners were being killed for no reason better than being there. Turning, he scolded Arketa, reminding her that she was a foreigner herself. What was she doing out? “Crazy woman,” he said, “This is a very bad time. Go!”

“I am here because my son is missing up to now,” she said. “I need my son.” 

Arketa was losing patience. She was losing control. Tears rolled down her scarred cheeks. “Annnd?” A British guy is with Christopher. I am looking for dem. You should look for your British guy.”

“We don’t know about the British guy,” she was told. “Go to the military barracks to see if they have your son. They arrest people and put them there. Use your small French to identify yourself as you go.” Arketa raced back to the church, to her girls, dodging or ducking each time she heard gunfire. 

“I know now things are very bad in Kinshasa. Dis is when I push dem under dah bed. I squeezed them back, back. I say, ‘Do not move until you hear me say your names in my own language.’ Dos girls are light-skinned. Dey will be dead if dah Congolese people katch dem. I pull dah blanket down and tell dah girls again, not to move, no matter. And den, with my passport papers in my hand, I went to find Christopher. You can hear the gun—burrrrr, beurrrrr, toootoouu, you smell the bullet but being a mother, you can go dah way nobody can go.”

°  °  °

The prison was packed with men in various states of mental and physical grief. Dilapidated latrines were mostly unused. Men ate, slept, vomited, and relieved themselves in the holding cell. Young Christopher reeled from the beatings, from the demands that he confess to being Tutsi. He would die soon, he knew. He didn’t know where his friend Stewart was. He watched as guards picked men from the cell and left with them. Some were returned; many were not. A prisoner who knew the ropes explained to the Sudanese boy that most of those men were shot and their bodies discarded. Rumors filled the cell. Tutsis were being necklaced—bodies bound, a truck tire hung on their shoulders, doused with gasoline, and set afire. Christopher, they said, was Tutsi.

By the end of the second day, Christopher couldn’t turn his head to the left. He couldn’t hear from his left ear. It was hard to swallow. His neck was swollen to twice its size and, as Arketa would see, “bent bad to dah side.” One time, standing in a small prison yard where men walked, cried, and collapsed, Christopher watched in horror as a soldier shot a complaining man in the knees. At fifteen years, he had seen more violence in his life than men three times his age and now, he was the subject of it. His mother didn’t know where he was. He knew that. He had no hope but God alone.  

Then, one late afternoon—was it the second day or third day? He wasn't sure. A burly man in official dress came to the cell and pointed toward Christopher, the trembling boy sitting on the floor. 

“That one,” he said.

° °  °

As Christopher was being beaten by a guard he remembers as the “big, big guy who liked hitting heads,” Arketa ran—plastic slippers slapping the road. She held her hand high above her head, waving the travel document with pictures of her children in it.

“Refugie Soudanais! Refugie Soudanais!” she cried out, asking along the way, “Where is the military barracks?” 

“People was wild with guns, shooting anyone in front, back…crazy people looking for light-skinned Rwandans or any white people to kill. I was moving fast, always to dah right hand. I didn’t have dah local language good but I used French.”

When Arketa reached the prison, she stopped. She gazed at the massive Flemish-style building, intimidated by its size, by the heavy stone outcroppings, towers, tall windows, and a multitude of doors under deep arches, heavy with the history of Belgian domination. 

“When I see dah military barracks, I began crying Christopher’s name.” 

She could smell the water of the Fleuve Congo River. Rumors spread that bodies from the prison were thrown in it. At the prison perimeter, a guard approached.

Arketa met him with words spilling out. “You are holding my son, thinking he is Rwandan. He is not Rwandan.  He is Sudanese.” Arketa opened the document, to show Christopher’s photograph.

“He is Rwandan,” came the reply. 

“No! He is Sudanese.”

“Go home! Come back tomorrow.” The guard advanced, bullying, pushing his authority, shouting, “Go away!”

° °  °

Arketa and I sat at a small, round dining table in a rented condo where I was for a few winter months and where she and I could easily spend hours on my education of all things Zambakari.

“Dat is why I start crying with dah noise,” My heart is not letting me go away. ‘Dat building is holding my son!’ I say loud. ‘I have to sleep here if you don’t find my son. I cannot leave. If my son was killed let me know where you throw his death.’ They can show it to me. I will know. Now I was crying with noise in my own language. Another guard heard me screaming with my hand showing dah picture. He heard my language.”

The second guard approached Arketa and in Arabic asked, “Where in Sudan are you from?”

“Oh! To hear Arabic!” Arketa said. Her eyes and her smile widened as she revealed this moment. “It was like my family was dehr. Dis was dah first time since leaving Sudanese people dat I hear it. I say, ‘I am from Yambio, in West Equatoria.”

“’I have been there!” the guard said. “I love your country.” He had lived in South Sudan for nearly four years, he said. He loved the kind people, the mangos, bananas, and pineapple. He smiled at Arketa then turned to the first guard and in Lingala made it clear that he meant to help this Sudanese woman. 

He took the travel document, looked at the picture and taking Arketa’s hand said, “Come with me.” In Arabic he said, “Don’t cry, your son is here.”  

“Your son is here,’ he say.” Arketa slumped with the memory and repeated her frequently used phrase, “Oh my goodness, my goodness. 

“We go inside.” She listened while the guard told the boss about Christopher. Her son was recently caught with the white guy. It is the small boy. This one, he said, showing the picture of Christopher. 

“Dah boss say, ‘Yeah, he is dehr.’ I was crying, listening.”

“Sit down,” the boss said to Arketa. 

“I sit on dah floor. Den, someone bring a local chair for me and dah guard helping me said, ‘Don’t cry. Your son is coming out, but they beat him badly.’ I think, anything—if he is alive.” The boss left the room.

“Eiiieee,”Arketa cried. Christopher shuffled into her embrace, weeping, wincing under his mother’s hold. “His neck . . . Oh!It was tipping, and swollen bad to dah right. 

“’Hold your heart,’ I say to him. ‘We will get dah hot water to put on your neck and back. Christopher, you are alive. God is great.’”

The guard who loved Arketa’s country walked the refugees across an expanse of cobblestones to the gate. He wrote something in French on a piece of paper, handed it to Arketa and told her to show it to any military person who might stop her. He reminded her again to hold her travel document high, to stay off the main roads, and to constantly identify herself as Sudanese. Once in the church compound, he said, stay there. Especially, he warned, if all her children have light skin, stay in the building. 

“We are walking now, slowly back to dah church. Dah body of Christopher is not now like dah human body but, thanks to dat Congolese man, and thanks to God, I am with my son who is alive. 

“When we come to dah room, I say dah names of my children in my language. After all doz hours, doz girls crawl out of under dah bed. We are okay.”

By this time, many of the guestrooms occupied by foreigners were emptied, the occupants having been rescued by their embassies. The girls had heard the sounds of luggage locks snapping in place, of people leaving. They froze in place when someone opened their door and looked around. The British rescued Stewart from prison, and sent him off to London by way of Brazzaville. Even the pastor and his wife left soon after Christopher’s return—off to Brazzaville “by the small, small boat,” the pirogue, to the home of friends for safety’s sake.

“Dat bucket for dah shower? I took it, filled it from dah pipe, made it hot over dah three stones in dah firewood outside. I wash Christopher complete with dat hot water. I cover his body, carefully, with dah palm oil. For five days I work hot water on dah neck of Christopher, dah boy I feared was dead. Dah children stay inside. It is too dangerous in Kinshasa for anyone without good, black skin. After one week dehr was church again; but in dah streets, in dah city, still fighting. Kinshasa was very dangerous. 

Now, dah UN say, ‘Dis woman must get out, quickly.’ Dis UN lady, Elizabeth from Spain, was a single mom like me. She understood. She was dah protection officer for all dah refugees in Kinshasa. She knew dah fast way for me to go. Not five years now. No.”

° °  °

It was nothing short of a miracle. Arketa was sure of that. The UN called her in and explained that plans were being formed for getting the Zambakaris out of the country. 

To expedite the departure of refugees in danger, the UN flew Arketa with her children, and two refugees from Tanzania to Goma, Tutsi territory, in the east of the country. There, for reasons not completely clear to Arketa, and certainly not to me, the presence of each refugee was recorded, travel documents were stamped and the next day everyone was flown back to Kinshasa. It was then possible to say, as Arketa explains, “Dis is dah Sudanese refugee from Goma. Yeah. Here is dah problem. Rwandan people don’t like to see Sudanese in Goma; Congo people don’t like to see dem in Kinshasa. Where is it safe for dah refugee, huh? Dez people have to leave Kinshasa soon.” 

Everyone agreed that it was inconceivable to send her back to Central African Republic. It was impossible to send her back to Sudan or for her to remain in DRC. 

“Now, for us dehr is no security. Resettlement was essential. Elizabeth, the UN woman from Spain, now makes dah way how I can leave. She called for the man, Bill Smith, from the American Embassy in Nairobi, with INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service).” Dis is as January is disappearing.” 

Elizabeth sent word to Arketa, “Tomorrow, at 10 am, you must be at the UN building with your kids. Someone is coming from the USA. He wants to interview you. The UN car will pick you up.” 

On the appointed day, after Elizabeth seated the Zambakars in a conference room, closing the door behind her. The children sat in chairs swinging their bare feet. They looked to their mom who, in her own language, said to be very quiet and very still. Arketa expected the American man to come with hours of questions. That’s how the process went with other refugees who told her their story. She would try to remember things—exactly.

A tall, skinny American man entered the conference room, smiled, and introduced himself. Then he surprised Arketa completely. “We are going to pray,” he said.          

“All of us stand up.Oh!Dis man was like a pastor! After dah prayer he give greeting to each of us separate, and say we will be going soon. He already read our file. He knew our troubles, good. He knew dah kids was too smart. He said he heardabout what we went through. He just talk to us for a while den said, ‘You are going to the United States of America.’ 

“Dis is dah man who will determine where I go. Of doz of us waiting in Congo, I was dah only one to go to America. The rest of dah refugees went to Canada or Australia.

“When he say ‘United States,’ I didn’t know by dah sound dat dis is America. He ask me where I want to be. I say, in a warm place, please, and he writes down a very funny word: ‘Phoenix.’ Fffff . . .who can say dat?”

° °  °

Kinshasa-Brussels-NYC-Saint Louis-Chicago-Phoenix– March 2001

“Phoenix is not warm. Africa is warm. Phoenix is hot! Ooooh!Now it has been fourteen years and still we are not used to dah summer,”Arketa said one summer day when the temperature in Phoenix hovered around 115°, a day when she honored my request for more of the story. 

While Arketa and her children sat quietly at the U.N. conference table, Bill Smith made notes on the pad of paper. He explained that the children needed individual travel documents. Elizabeth would arrange that very day for photos and fingerprints. The documents should be ready within a week and she should expect to emigrate within three months. He stood, collected his pen and papers and reminded the Zambakaris of what they knew only too well—Kinshasa was dangerous. 

“Keep your children inside as much as possible,” he said. He wished them well and left the room, left them to their future.

As the month of March waned, Elizabeth came to the compound and said, “After tomorrow, stay in your place, we will come and pick you up.” She didn’t tell Arketa why. “But, one time,” Arketa said, “at dah United Nations, Elizabeth asked what I will take when it is time to leave Africa. ‘Me and three kids. I don’t have nothing,’” Arketa replied. 

Arketa didn’t remember the exact date or hour of the night when the convoy of three UN cars entered the church compound. With guns mounted on the front, tinted windows, and flags flapping from the fenders, the convoy was met by the Zambakari four, standing at the ready, just as ordered. Arketa wore a long African dress the pastor’s wife gave her for her journey to the United States of America. The children wore donated tee shirts and shorts.

“Dah feet of us was in plastic slippers—you call it what?”

“Flip-flops.”

“Hunnn.” 

The pastor prayed for their safety and bade them farewell. Arketa carried a plastic market bag over her wrist, leaving her hands free to hold tight to her children. In the bag was the dress given her in Bangui, an extra pair of underwear and a tee shirt for each of the children. Once aboard the plane and settled in their seats, a UN worker gave her boarding passes and documents essential to entering Europe and America. Everything went into the bag that “is never off my hand.”         

Arketa, the one who shunned boat windows during the river trip to DRC, was assigned a window seat on Sabena Airlines’ eight-hour flight to Brussels. She didn’t like it. Arketa-Nathalia-Sarai-Christopher—“In dah line of chairs.” This would not work. No. Nor was she about to put one of her children in her assigned seat next to “dah space where dah air is just from your hand, outside.” This was a new sort of fear. Then, Arketa noticed the man across, “sitting close to dah road in dah middle of dah airplane.” He was pulling his head around, trying to see out.” Ah!Arketa was pleased. 

“Would he like to trade for her seat?” 

As the takeoff roll began, the happy passenger was next to the window. Christopher, who also wanted to see out, sat next to that man; his sisters sat between him and his mother. Arketa, who would not leave her seat while dah plane was moving,” felt more secure “next to dah road by dah long middle seats.”        

On international flights, Kinshasa to Brussels, and Brussels to New York, food was served but sparingly eaten. In Songo, or Balandan, or French, the children asked “This is what?” So many unknowns at 30,000 feet.

“Corn,” Arketa answered, “Soft corn,” she said, “but not looking like corn from the M’boki garden. 

They tested it. Soft corn stayed on the tray. Ground corn belonged to fu-fu. It should not be soft, lying in a wet heap. No. Fried meat was stripped of breading. Salads won disapproval. The longing for Fu-fu and cassava, sugbegi, rice, or beans grew strong. The drinks that came in cans got tested and won the children’s polite response of “Mom, I don’t want.”        

“Dey don’t like dah sweet drink. Dey quietly put it down.”

At 8am, Brussels time, an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agent holding a sign that read, “ZAMBAKARI,” met the family and, at their request, walked them quickly to the restrooms. 

“Some people do it but we don’t want to get up and stand while dah plane is going. We emptied our bladder good in Brussels and in New York.” The agent then walked them to the connecting gate for a flight to New York.

“When we are about to arrive in New York, people are saying ‘Look! Look at dah water! Oh, dah Statue of Liberty!’ I am saying, ‘No.’ Look to dah way dah airplane is changing sounds and moving to dah sides! When dat plane go to dah ground I just say to God, ‘Thank you.’ I am not looking at things.”

INS volunteers met traveling refugees at every stop. Someone assisted Arketa with all the document processes. But in New York, real winter reached inside cotton tee-shirts and bitterly assaulted slippered feet. By the time a bus delivered them from JFK to LaGuardia for a flight on to Saint Louis, no one had feeling in their toes. The children cried with the pain of unfamiliar cold. 

“Dos INS people at LaGuardia saw dah problem and brought sweaters to dah children and something like dah blanket for me to wrap around my shoulders. Annnd?  Dah immigration people brought shoes for dah children, dah boot you can put dah foot inside.” She laughed. “Dis was dah first time dey put dahr foot down, inside dah shoe. Dos people were very kind.”

New York JFK to LaGuardia, Saint Louis, Chicago, Phoenix. No food service on those flights. Food for sale, yes. 

Sorry, penniless African woman with three hungry children in economy seating.

Sarai complained. Loudly. Loudly enough that at some point between the dark east coast and the dark southwest, a flight attendant delivered a cookie. One cookie. Arketa broke it into three pieces “so dah children felt something in dahr mouth.”

Close to midnight on Saturday, March 31, 2001, twenty-seven plus hours away from Kinshasa, the Zambakaris walked through a concourse at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport into American life. An INS worker held up the comforting sign: ZAMBAKARI and conveyed the fetched family to a temporary refugee apartment complex.       

In the wee dark hours of Sunday morning, April 1, 2001, four Zambakaris bent their knees before God, gave thanks, and offered a prayer for Sudan, a prayer for the dead, a prayer for family living in M’boki, Central African Republic, and a prayer for friends suffering in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. Prayers rose—and sleep followed on mattresses with clean sheets in a warm place somewhere in America.

COMING UP: PART THREE               AMERICA

And The Greatest of All Surprises!

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