ZAMBAKARI - CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Elario

Boom! Boom! 

Bombs blasted Yambio’s rutted roads. Government soldiers poured out from backs of lorries with weapons shouldered, shouting, signaling the time for slaughter. Strafing sounds singed the air.

“Boom! BOOM!  

Destruction falling from the sky shot tremors through little boys’ bare feet. They ran from the playground shouting for help, their soccer ball rolled free. Brother Benjamin, the local catechist, ran toward them from the priests’ house.

“No!” Benjamin shouted, grabbing Elario. “Not the road! Soldiers! Follow me!”  

It was November 1991. The region’s cool season with an average temperature of 84° was ending. February will bring hot days with temperatures rarely dropping below 95°. If all goes as expected, the coolest day of the year will visit Yambio in early January when the temperature might drop to 90° but Elario will not be there. His family will not be there. 

Six-year-old Elario and a handful of his friends stumbled after Benjamin, slapping hands over their ears as explosions ripped through their senses. Fires exploded, soldiers shouted and shot at anything moving—calves, chickens, children. Aircraft circled—no one could tell how many—strafing, bombs blasting buildings and roads. Animals, adults, and unaccompanied children ran screaming. Some fell wounded or dead as Yambio succumbed to slaughter. Neither Benjamin nor Elario dared entered the road that led just one kilometer’s distance to their families—no one was going home.

No more than twenty-five miles away, Nabiapia, near the border between Sudan and Zaire (DR Congo), was the closest and safest possible place where the situationcould be monitored, where families would reunite and determine what to do next.

Leaving Yambio, Elario began a walk that stretched through four years, four countries, and four refugee camps before he settled as an orphan under the care of the Roman Catholic Church in Hoima, Uganda; a 140 miles NW of Kampala.

“If it calms, we can go back,” Benjamin said as he and the boys fought the bush for the second day. Then, like hundreds of others, they roamed the border area for a month before conceding that a return to Yambio was impossible. Like thousands of others, they moved into a refugee camp in Dungu, Zaire, where Sudanese refugees—none but Elario with the name Zambakari—found shelter and food from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR ). 

°  °  °

Elario’s memory

In 2015, Elario answered my request for a description of the four years he was subject to the control of Sudanese war.

“Auntie,” he wrote, reflecting on those years, “while in the camp (Dungu) my friends got their parents and were happy again. I was not happy because the where about of my mother . . . was not known.

“To think of my mother and brothers being dead could make me cry and not eat. We stayed in the camp for three years where I had primary one, two, three—all in French. Life in the Congo was not an easy one.”

~

During this time, his grandfather, his uncles, an aunt and cousin were murdered. 

By his primary two, his mother had built a tukul and delivered a baby sister he knew nothing about—Sarai, born on the leaves in M’boki refugee camp.

By Elario’s primary three, Arketa’s search for him through the Red Cross and United Nations proved fruitless and she resigned to his death. 

~

Elario said, “There came a misunderstanding between the refugees in Dungu and the Congolese due to the fact that the Sudanese refused to hand over their guns, which brought insecurity. We were told UNHCR opened refugees camps in Ethiopia hence we wanted to go there. We had to walk to Ethiopia now with a Catechist we got in Congo, Miamangawi David.

“Very many people are moving. On the way through western Uganda to Ethiopia, many children died due to lack of food and water—a lot of hunger and no food on the way.”

From Zaire, across the top of Uganda and through a slice of northwestern Kenya, survivors of the five-week walk stood at the reed-carpeted bank of the Omo River and looked across to Ethiopia.  

“Many women and men who did not know how to swim had to die when crossing since there was no boat to use.” 

~

Elario was young, but he was old enough to understand the wailing of hopelessness. He understood the cries that warned against carpet vipers, scorpions, and crocodiles in the tall grass. The catechist lashed Elario to his back with vine for the river swim. Elario was old enough to know that if the croc came for one, both would die. They commended their lives to God and plunged intothe muddy water. 

On entering Ethiopia, Elario’s entire group was arrested. Since the early 1960s Ethiopia had its teeth on edge because of Sudan’s internal violence and instability. In 1963, at the beginning of Sudan’s first civil war, no fewer than five armed groups had settled along the border of Ethiopia. Within a year 20,000 or more refugees caught in Sudan’s hell, cast their eyes across the river with the hopes of perhaps escaping to stable Ethiopia. 

~

“We had no documents and there was no camp so the Ethiopians took us to the hidden prison and two of the men with us were killed that they were spies.” “No.” There would be no Sudanese in Ethiopia. Ever.

~

Not much had changed between the first (1955-72) and the second civil wars except that Elario was a victim of the second (1983-05). He saw it all--deaths by starvation, by drowning, by snakebite, by malaria, by the gun. After several days of imprisonment, Ethiopian officials ordered the Sudanese out of their country. 

“Refugees cannot be in Ethiopia. A refugees camp is forming in Kenya—Kakuma. Go.“ 

They went. Under the care of yet another pastor, the river was crossed, and one hundred miles or more slipped under the feet of weary, starving people before reaching Loki-Toki, Kenya. Elario remembered hoping he might stay there, but the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) had established its base camp there from Ethiopia. In Loki-Toki, refugees were as much a mark for SPLA guns as the guns of government soldiers or roaming rebels.

~

“We cannot make it here, not even for a short time,” said the pastor Elario had been handed over to in Ethiopia. Miamangawi, with whom Elario had been traveling, set out to search for his family. On Elario walked, 55 miles south to Kakuma.

~

“On the way, there is no water—people are dying but” said Elario, “there is a tree. You go and cut that tree? You wait for a while. Then? At first the water will come from it but it is not the good one. Then, water will come from the tree later and you can drink it, just like water. Some of us are doing that. And we are finding the wild yam for food.”

“It is good the Catechist knows English,” Elario wrote. “He can explain we are refugees. The local people waved their arms about and said, ‘This is Kakuma. This bush. This ground—which was sand—this grass. This hot desert land is for the refugee.’ 

“The catechist was a strong man. He had us working to construct like, a tukul, and we settle for some time. No water. No organization. No work. No food if you don’t find it.”

~

Essentials were as scarce as people’s hopes. Violence, especially between Sudanese Dinka and Nuer tribesmen, between all Sudanese and local Kenyans, was as predictable as the rising and setting of the sun.

Ten-year-old Elario could take little more. 

~

“Auntie, Kakuma was a hell. Getting food was a problem. I started to burn charcoal and sell so that I can get some money for our feeding. Water was only for drinking a cup or so a day and taking bath was once a week on Sunday. Up to the age of twelve years I had no underpants.

“I knew by now I will be an orphan forever. Life lost its meaning to me . . . every time I was thinking about my mother I was crying. When I am tired, when I am hungry, I don’t talk. I just cry. When there was food, I don’t eat. Now, I realized, ‘I have to face the world now alone.’”

~

By the time Elario reached Kenya, nearly every day in M’boki refugee camp, members of his family walked the four miles from their tukuls to massive gardens across the Zongo River. 

By the time Elario reached Kakuma, his mom was earning cornmeal by delivering babies in the newly constructed ‘clinic.’ She prayed every day for the soul of her dead son, Elario. 

~

“The Catechist with whom I was moving saw that this life is not a good one for me since I always sit without talking and sometimes crying for my mother and brothers. He earned some money by doing odd jobs for local Kenyans. He asked me to stop crying because we are going to leave the camp and go to Uganda where we can easily hear of my mother and brothers. This brought some hope into my face. 

“Since he was also looking for his wife and children, the catechist said, ‘Now, the only thing to do is, we go to Nairobi and Kampala in Uganda, because in Uganda, we shall hear about South Sudan. There, you can hear of your mother and brothers.

”We sold things given us in the camp and took a bus for Nairobi and Kampala where we learn about the school in Hoima. He could place me there and go look for his family.  

In Nairobi, Elario’s pastor visited various churches, asking for advice. “I have a child with me. I know the family. This boy was with another pastor I knew who hand him to me because the pastor was going back to look for his family—the same with me. Where can I leave the boy?”

“Ah!If the boy is from Sudan, take the boy to Hoima. That is an old, old place to go for the refugees to go to school. If you take the boy there, everything will be okay. Here, in Nairobi, it is too expensive.”

“Okay, Elario, I’m going to take you from Kampala to Hoima. I have to study the people I’m going to leave you with there.”

The Nairobi church pastor arranged for the bus to Kampala. “One day’s drive,” Elario said. “From six to six. From Kampala to Hoima, to Saint John Bosco Minor Seminary, the place and people that became home and family—124 miles.

°  °  °  

“Auntie, the major dates in my life are . . .

 the first time I heard the voice of my mother on the phone (2001), 

and the time I met my mother at the airport in Entebbe (2011). 

And staying then, with my mother for 37 days in Phoenix after 21 years will never be forgotten.”

°  °  °

What began in the summer of 2009 as my extraordinarily impulsive commitment to an African woman named Arketa—to reunite with her separated sons—seemed nearly done once Timothy arrived in Arizona. True, Timothy’s retrieval took massive amounts of his street-smart deception, a few bribes, a heap of frustration on everyone’s part, fear, faith, money enough to move a small mountain, and the calm of his cousin, Angelo. Still, after eleven years’ separation, after war, refugee camps, and Kampala’s slum—near midnight, one battered carry-on duffle-bag was dropped to the floor of Sky Harbor International Airport and twenty-year-old Timothy was in the arms of his wailing mom—March 2010.”

One down. One to go. 

I expected Elario’s immigration to resemble that of Timothy’s—minus the complexities of visa mistakes, corrections, bribes, and inexplicable airline trouble. When we began the paperwork to bring Elario, he was in Khartoum working his way through graduate school in preparation for the priesthood. He could finish that work in the United States, surely. The good news was that unlike Timothy, Elario held a Sudanese passport. His coming should be swift and easy.

Not so fast, said the U.S. powers that be: “Expect a five year wait.” 

“What?!”said Arketa. 

“What?”I repeated.

We were stunned. Arketa had been petitioning since 2002 to bring her family to America. We turned to a Congressman’s Administrative Assistant for help.

True, she explained. Arketa had been petitioning for nearly ten years but the file that counted was the one finally opened and active since 2009.

“I checked with the USCIS,“ said Cheri (our godsend)“and was told the following:

Priority Date for this case is:  July 17, 2009. The State Department is currently processing cases filed on or before January 1, 2005.  

Unmarried Son of USC over the age of 21 – First Preference.  

Her email explained, “It looks like @ least 4.5 more years, give or take.  There is no way to estimate an exact time.  In some cases the visa availabilities actually retrogress, meaning that they go backward.  You can check the priority date processing . . . at the visa bulletin which is updated monthly.  

I hope this helps.  I know that Arketa is anxious to get Elario home. . .”

She was right but neither Arketa, nor I, nor the hundred-some people now following this story wanted to believe this. Arketa’s hopes to see, to hold, to reacquaint herself with her eldest child after twenty years of separation—dashed.

What then? 

The “What then?” was this: Everyone who had chipped in toward the cost of Elario’s immigration agreed to redirect that money. We covered the costs of airfare, hotel accommodations, food and transportation for Arketa and Elario to meet in the relatively safe city of Kampala, in the care of Rosetta and Angelo. 

Let twenty years of separation be done with! 

Arketa arranged for six weeks off work. Zambakari friends covered her rent and utilities during her absence. To travel, she wore what she had worn for three days prior to her departure but she carried suitcases and parcels full of clothing for people of Kampala and South Sudan. She refused a window seat, of course, and once again she held her bladder through all stages of being airborne—some things never change. She conveyed the wrong arrival information to Angelo who by the time of Arketa’s departure from Phoenix, had a floor-pacing Elario in tow. 

Having finally arrived at Uganda’s Entebbe International Airport, Arketa borrowed a stranger’s cell phone, called Angelo and said, “I am here.” But, where here was in the massive airport had not been explained. 

Angelo, Rosetta, Elario, and a few stray children of the neighborhood rushed by taxi to Entebbe International Airport and started searching for . . . for what? For a single African woman standing among thousands of African women. Only, this one, being American, was likely to be heavier than her African sisters. . And, this one, knowing the needs in her homeland was likely to have a stack of parcels with her. Consequently, she was likely not to have moved far from the baggage claim area. 

They were right.

Searching the faces of every African man of Elario’s approximate age, Arketa called out his name, apologizing more than a few times when she nabbed a stranger, asking, “Elario?” 

It didn’t take long, once Elario arrived at the baggage claim area. He heard his name being called, ran to the caller and, crushing between them the flowers he brought, Elario embraced his mother for the first time in twenty-three years. But for sleep, over the next thirty-seven days the two were inseparable. 

°  °  °

Dear Arketa, Please Do Not

My message to Arketa before her departure to Uganda had been, “No matter what,pleaseArketa, don’t go into South Sudan. It’s much too dangerous.”

But—about a week after arriving in Kampala, Arketa, Elario and Angelo traveled by borrowed SUV—an old Mitsubishi Pajero—to Arua in northwestern Uganda where Arketa bent the kneeat her mother’s grave. From Aura they crossed into South Sudan at Koboko—a place thick with violence. 

Angelo described it for me, “In 2011, when mum come, it was a bit calm with only issues of gang rapes, armed robberies, murders and looting in the nights . . . We never had much problem and we stopped in Koboko for less than 20 minutes only to buy boxes of drinking water.

“It will be a lie if someone mentioned only the LRA (Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army rebels), without mentioning the SPLA (Sudanese People’s Liberation Army), and also the ADF (Alliance of Democratic Forces—Muslim Ugandans supported by Sudan government fighting the Government of Uganda), not forgetting the area boys who also did their part.”

I was undone by my friend Arketa traveling where “it was a bit calm” but she has regularly reminded me that some things are more important that personal safety. 

Arketa can name the places they reached by car before the engine exploded. With tears she can tell the stories of borrowed vehicles, buses, flights and lorries; of meeting people who knew her before and during all the troubles, people who fell to their knees in tears when the grown up Elario was identified. 

“May I ask,” said one polite man in Yambio “You look like Arketa.” But like most others, he noticed that she was fat. Ah!This wasArketa. And everyone agreed this was what America did to African people. 

Yambio, then another twenty-one familiar miles on to Yabongo, Saura, to pay respects at the grave of Elario’s paternal grandmother. News that Arketa was coming spread like dry snow on swift wind and not surprising to the travelers, when they reached Saura shortly before 5am, Angelo said “the compound was filled with people already awake and mourning. The wailing starting off as if the dead body was there.” Such sadness, such joy, such a lot to remember and share.

“Ah! Elario! Arketa!”  Stories fell atop stories, reunion upon reunion. Tears enough to fill a wide river.

Next, they traveled up into Bahr al Ghazal, the state of Arketa’s birth. Then on to Tambura, some fifty-two miles from Yambio on the Wau road. There, Arketa knelt at the grave of her cousin/sister, Anna—the gift child, killed by the bomb.

Angelo said, “from Tambura, the next day, we got the police escort pickup vehicle to escort us up to Nagero—a distance of about 106 miles—because the entire road to Nagero was full of rebels and gangs. Without bridges the journey took us the full day and we reached Nagero at 9pm. We visited all the Zambakari lands, the mango trees, and the birthplaces of most Mum Arketa’s brothers and sisters. The death place of Elario’s father.

“Mum Arketa was having visitors after visitors and meetings after meetings. She would only sleep after too much pressure and when we could tell the body guards of the commissioner not to allow any other visitors past midnight.”

°  °  °

How much more did I not know about this woman who commands the bodyguards of the commissioner? Whose boy was protected during his years of running by the phrase, “Dis is dah grandson of Zambakari. Take good care of him.”  

A strong history of family significance lay buried in Arketa’s heart as she has navigated life and hardship in America. How could I understand her deep need to return to South Sudan, to herlife? I simply could not. Still, my friends and I made it possible.

After four days in Nagero, the three Zambakaris set off by bus along the 306 miles of jungle road to Bor, Ngolima, Bazia—where as a child Arketa fell from the tree swing—to Taban, the village named for her paternal grandfather; and finally to the villages of Arketa’s childhood, to her mother and father’s tribal lands. 

Mile after mile, place after place, Arketa, Elario, and Angelo shared individual stories of walks, hardship, separations, and survival. They shared, but they also withheld—some things were too dreadful for words. 

Three Zambakaris moved through significant places in war-ravaged South Sudan—nine days in Wau visiting family and friends, back to Nagero for four nights, one more in Yambio-Yabongo until “we made it back to Uganda.”

Elario returned to graduate school in Khartoum, Arketa returned family and work in Arizona. Angelo returned to his studies toward a B.S. in Nursing at the International Health Sciences University in Kampala—thanks to new American friends sponsoring his dream of education.  

Of the thirty-seven days they spent together, Angelo wrote, “The days spent there were still like only one hour for both mum and her relations and visitors.”

°  °  ° 

When Arketa lived in African countries, she understood the meaning of having little. She knew what she didn’t have in M’boki—it wasn’t Yambio where life had been relatively easy. In M’boki, she had no Land Rover, no hospital job, and for many years, no decent housing, no central market, church building, medical clinic or schools. But, Central African refugee camp hardship was nothing like what she would come to know through American poverty. 

In M’boki, the jungle provided timbers, reeds, grasses, clay, water, medicinal ingredients, malleable bark, vine rope, palm oil, edible roots and greens. Once they had tools and seed, her family cleared, planted, tended and harvested gardens. Hard work rewarded her.

America offered an entirely different exchange. Everything was possible in America—hard work was exchanged for currency. But Arketa’s training to deliver babies, mend wounds, make medicines, build tukuls, dig for yams, hoe gardens, dig a well, snare game, and fire clay pots had no bargaining value.

As a refugee without American skills, Arketa qualified to clean hotel rooms and, eventually, fortunately, to work as a caregiver in exchange for just short of $10 an hour. Arketa’s hard work was rewarded with currency—just not much of it, considering all the demands pressed against what she collected.

In America, Arketa had to learn the cost of essentials—not things like trees or vines or calabash, or termites but, rather, stuff—stuff to purchase or owe—like mattresses, plates, rent, bus passes, food, school-clothes, taxes, fees, utilities, and health care.

Money was required to open the immigration files for Timothy and Elario. Arketa paid those fees in 2001 but after the death of her mother, found it impossible to meet the continued costs of fighting for those boys. Red palm oil she could purchase at the African grocery store but red tape called for stuff she seemed unable to afford. Immigration files were closed, re-opened, and closed over the next several years—not for the lack of hard work but for the lack of money. 

Arketa sent money to Kampala for the three children who lived without the guardianship of mothers, grandmothers, aunts, uncles or friends and always lived without enough of anything. Arketa sent money for shoes, a cooking pot, one plate a piece, a cup to drink water, for something to hold water, and malaria tablets. $200 of Arketa’s monthly earnings paid the rent of a Kampala slum room. 

Amazingly, frugal Arketa did well enough knowing where wisely to put her dollars. She saved the money needed to become a United States citizen. She shopped at thrift stores. She bargained for a used computer and bought a TV. She saved to match a grant offered refugees for the purchase of a home. A house payment was less costly than rent.

What Arketa didn’t bargain for, didn’t anticipate, was being the victim of a hit and run automobile accident in 2006, or being injured in a second auto accident a year later, losing weeks of work and having to default on fees required for straightening the immigration mess mounting in Kampala. Files were closed—again. Then, Christopher broke his wrist playing high-school soccer. On the advice of a Sudanese elder, Christopher quit sports. Who can afford such a luxury?

A negotiator extraordinaire, Arketa arranged to make monthly payments on mounting medical bills. She worked hard to make up for the weeks of work she missed without pay—she worked “double-double” shifts. “Going slowly to recover,” she said.

It would be nice to be able to say that Arketa “didn’t know what hit her” when one September night in 2008 she returned home near midnight after working a “double-double” shift. She stepped into her house and got beaten to a pulp by two thieves who made off with most of the things she had wisely purchased as well as her bag of essential documents proving her immigration, her citizenship, her passport, and all the necessary papers she needed to win the right for her children in Uganda to emigrate—but she didknow what hit her. She was conscious long enough to know she had been seriously injured.

“Dey beat me, dey really take me down. It’s like problem after problem,” said Arketa, explaining why—when she and I met in 2009—Timothy and Elario were still in Africa.

Between Arketa’s arrival in America in 2001 and my meeting her in 2009, she had fractured a wrist at work—losing work; she had emergency gallbladder surgery—again losing work. She had been in two auto accidents—losing work, been beaten up by home invaders which required several weeks in hospital—losing work, and losing ownership of her house.  It’s not like it isn’t normal stuff but as a result, her credit was ruined and two major lessons about America learned: the absolute necessity of money and the power of poverty.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I say, ‘God, whenmy problem is going to be in the hand? If you want me, working to kill me, let me go and let me forget about everything.” 

°  °  °

But, God didn’t work to kill her. She wasn’t able to hold on to the house, she wasn’t able to repair damage to her car, but she knew bus routes in Phoenix like Carl Sagan knew cosmology. By wit and instinct and “face to face” conversations with creditors, Arketa maneuvered her way through the complications of debt. Her children worked, earned scholarships, and burdened themselves with student debt to win graduate degrees. Their futures are promising. 

In 2009 Arketa and I began working on an agreement to bring her sons to America. Within a year or so of that, my mother joined in living as “grandma” in Arketa’s home. Arketa and I became friends. 

In March 2010, Timothy—who survived eleven hard years of separation—fell into his mother’s arms.

In 2011, Arketa flew to Kampala and for the first time in twenty years, to embrace her eldest, Elario.

In 2014, through the generosity of her band of American friends, Elario came to America on a three-month visitors visa. For the first time since he was six-years-old he entered his mother’s home. For the first time since he was six-years-old he ate meals with his siblings. He attended his baby sister’s college graduation; he nursed his mom after a mild stroke that occurred during his stay. And then—he returned to South Sudan where he continued to serve his people as a Roman Catholic priest. He returned without complaint because the United States was not ready to allow him a permanent stay, and because the Church in Africa was as surely his father as much as Arketa was his mother. 

°  °  °

After Elario left Phoenix, we all returned to our individual lives while expecting his priority date to appear on a visa bulletin in not more than another two years. Arketa and I were occasionally meeting to collaborate on this manuscript. Then, on December 9, 2015, in the rented Phoenix condo where my husband and I were spending some time away from a dark Washington state winter, Arketa called, excited. 

“Barbi,” said Arketa, “I am coming from the office of Immigration. Elario will be coming for good in two months!”

That day I wrote to the many people waiting with us for this very sort of news. I said,   

“Hear me scream, ‘WH-AT?’

Hear me insist that she can’t be right. Hear me doubt that her facts are straight. Hear my fear that this cannot be true. I’m sure she’s wrong . . .

“But today,” I wrote, “Arketa believes that Elairo may well immigrate to America within a matter of weeks. Tomorrow Arketa will confirm this with Immigration officials in New Hampshire who have been trying to reach her; then to me, and I to you.” This was December.

However, we were to learn, “May well”is not a synonym for “Shall.”

Coming up: Chapter 19 – Elario comes to America to stay—Not