Boy Soldier Read online

  It was a big change of heart for me to dare to rejoin the SPLA. But beneath my rush of patriotism was the most basic reason: I had run out of money and couldn’t see myself making it to Kenya on what I had. I could only see myself getting money by going back to Sudan.

  Considering how I felt about the SPLA, and having run away from them before, it didn’t really make sense – but I can only see that in hindsight. At the time, I thought I might get a paid job in intelligence, or as a radio operator, for the SPLA. I just had to find some money.

  It was at a border camp that I met General Oyei, an SPLA leader who later became chief-of-staff of the national army in southern Sudan. I told him that I wanted to rejoin the rebel army as a radio operator. As my English had been improved through schooling, I was seen as an asset. But the general, who was a very friendly and smart man, said, ‘Don’t join the army. Finish your schooling.’ He offered me a huge amount of money – up to two hundred thousand Ugandan shillings – to go back to school in Uganda. He said that the southern Sudanese cause needed educated young men now, not more cannon fodder. He gave me tea and a good talking-to. He said I should go to Kampala, the Ugandan capital, or to Kenya. After two weeks back with the SPLA, I took another army truck south.

  I wonder what might have happened to me if this meeting with General Oyei didn’t take place. I might have died in fighting, I might have survived . . . but whatever would have happened, this was the moment when my life changed course permanently.

  Kampala was another twelve hours to the south of Gulu. I had heard that it was an even bigger city than Gulu, and people always talked about how nice it was. From there I could travel eastwards, into Kenya. As well as hearing that Sudanese like myself were being resettled from Kenya into the USA, I had also been told that refugees could get school scholarships in Kenya, and I thought I would give it a try. Education was my single focus now. I believed that if I could finish my schooling to a high enough level, I could do anything I wanted with my life.

  I went searching for someone to give me a lift to Kenya. It would be a gamble to cross the border without papers, but I had no future in Uganda and it was the only way I could think of to get out. I asked a lot of people for help. Many were willing until they found out I had no passport. Some were still willing but wanted to charge too much money.

  Finally I was re-connected with a Kenyan called David Kamau, who I’d met at the garage in Gulu. The truck depot for Kenya-bound traffic was next to the SPLA office, and drivers would often ask Sudanese boys for help. And if we saw a Kenyan, we would stick close to him. David was in his mid-forties, a very skinny man who drove a long truck with a trailer. He was a talkative guy, and as we drove he told me he could tell I was nervous about crossing the border, but he would make sure I’d be okay. We left Gulu at around 7 am and got to Kampala around 7 pm; we slept the night in Kampala, and the next afternoon we drove east towards the Ugandan–Kenyan border.

  David would drive me up to the border and then into Kenya if I made it across – but I had to make my own way across the border itself. He would drop me before the crossing and then pick me up on the other side. He couldn’t risk going to prison for me, so I had to be careful I didn’t get him into trouble. This would be the first time I would try to cross a strictly patrolled border. There would be immigration officers checking for passports.

  We arrived at the border in the early evening and David told me where I could go to cross by foot. He pointed out where the police were and described to me the place where he would wait for me on the other side. There would be a long line of trucks parked, he said, in front of a street full of food stalls and hotels. I would find him there – if I made it.

  There were two ways across. If you went by car, you would be stopped at the official border station, have your passport stamped and possibly be searched. But there was also a pedestrian footpath, where the controls were much looser. On the Ugandan side were two police guarding a big wire fence, with a gate only wide enough for one person. On the Kenyan side, about another fifty metres away, there was another fence, also guarded by police. David said I would have to cross on the pedestrian path and hope that I was not one of the people stopped.

  I didn’t carry a bag, because if you had a bag you were an instant target for checking. I had only the clothes on my back and was hoping they would assume I was one of the thousands of Kenyans and Ugandans who went to and fro each day doing their business in the towns on both sides. This was a heavily populated area and it was not feasible for the officials to check the papers of every single person doing their shopping or going to work.

  As I walked, I was almost disjointed by fear. David had said, ‘Walk freely, as if you know the area.’ I tried my best, swinging my arms and strutting like a local. My heart was thumping in my chest as I waited for someone to call out: ‘Eh! Where’s your passport?’ But I must have impersonated a local pretty well, because I was lucky at both gates. I was only stopped when I had already reached the Kenyan side. It wasn’t an official who stopped me – it was a man who made money ‘helping’ people who were crossing illegally. This man offered to escort me to Nairobi for money but my lift was already arranged. I went to the line of trucks and found David’s. He was sitting in his truck waiting for me with some cold Cokes and Fantas. This had really been my lucky day.

  CHAPTER 5

  Kenya

  IT WAS SEPTEMBER 1995 when David and I arrived in Nairobi. I lived with my new friend for one week, but life was difficult. I was in a big city, and everywhere people were dependent on money, to buy their food and to live. The intensity of this dependence was still new to me. Where I came from, we had nothing and no use for money. Even in the camps I had lived in, money was a secondary concern: you could always get by with nothing. But now I was learning that life in a free country revolves around earning and spending money.

  David asked me to move out because he had a large family to feed and couldn’t afford to keep me when I had no money to contribute. What little spare money he did have, he gave to me. Then he explained where I had to go: the United Nations office in Nairobi.

  The UN building was in an affluent suburb called Westland, where a lot of the non-government organisations were housed. I talked my way through security and presented myself to the reception desk. The first official I spoke to told me to go back to the camps in Uganda, which was my first country of asylum.

  No chance! After all I’d been through to get here, I wasn’t going back. I ran out of the office, and with nowhere to stay I became a street kid for the next two weeks. I started to beg for money from rich-looking people. I felt so bad, my pride was destroyed – what would people think of me? I was asking people for food and money! What have I become? I asked myself many times. As bad as it was, however, I chose to beg rather than steal. I would go to the big hotels where people had money and enough education to understand my situation. It was ironic that some of them understood my situation quite clearly, even though I still did not.

  Begging outside the Hilton, I met an American man called Gordon Wagon. He was bald, about seventy years old, and was wearing a white T-shirt and shorts. He said he had worked in Sudan, so he was familiar with the political situation and the fate of boys like me. He was in Kenya as a consultant to an NGO. He gave me some money for that night and made an appointment for me to see him at his office in Nairobi the next day. When I arrived, he gave me three thousand Kenyan shillings, worth about fifty Australian dollars. He told me to go to the camp in the west of Kenya, near the border with Sudan, known as Kakuma.

  I didn’t want to go to Kakuma. I had heard of this place in the desert where more than 36,000 Sudanese refugees were held. Even if some of them were being resettled to America, what hope did I have? They weren’t going to send all of us, and I would be at the very bottom of the list. I lied to Gordon, saying, ‘Sure, I’ll go to Kakuma,’ but instead pursued information I had heard about another camp called Ifo. There was also a resettlement program from Ifo, sending peo
ple to America, Canada and Australia.

  Ifo was in the north of Kenya, in the Garrisa district. A lot of the people in the area were of Somalian descent. Most had travelled there as a result of their own war, but by now there were new generations that were considered Kenyan Somalian. It was also mainly a Muslim region.

  In October I caught a bus to Ifo. In front of the camp was the UN headquarters: one large brick building. To the side of it were rows of white tents. The whole site had a feeling of being temporary, not just because of the tents but because, compared with other camps I had been in, Ifo looked like a dumping ground not worthy of being cared for like with pride.

  In Ifo the situation was very different from what I had expected. I hoped it would be easy to get to America, but I was wrong. I applied to the United Nations to register me for resettlement but straightaway they told me that I was not eligible. This register was for Somalian and Ethiopian refugees only, they said. But I knew other Sudanese refugees ahead of me were registered. They got their chance to go to America – I was stuck. I found out that just before my arrival, the UN had changed its policy and cut the resettlement program from Ifo for Sudanese. They had been overwhelmed by the numbers. I was crying with frustration, but it did me no good.

  I walked into the camp itself, which was surrounded by a fence made of thorns. Inside the fence were four camps for Sudanese refugees. There were hundreds of mud huts, not covered by traditional roofs but by tarpaulins stamped with the United Nations logo. It was not a good way for the UN to advertise!

  I didn’t think I could stay in Ifo for long, as life quickly became more difficult than in the other camps I’d been in. As I was not on the register, I was not receiving food from the UN. I was hungry twenty-four hours a day.

  During the day, the camp seemed deserted. Ifo was always hot – every day was around 40°C. Often people would put water on the roof of their hut in an attempt to keep themselves cool, but instead it turned the water hot. People would either stay in their shelters or go into the bush and sit listlessly. There were very few tall trees within the camp providing enough shade to sit under. Many of the people in the camp had planted trees outside their huts in the hope that one day they would provide them with shade, but the trees were withered and leafless.

  Ifo was a hotbed of rumours. People were always running around with new and conflicting information. A lot of them were suffering, sitting with nothing to eat, so they would grab hold of any snippet of hope. The camp was not the worst place I had been, in the physical sense, but the mood was absolutely desperate because the people all felt like they were so close to getting out of Africa but had been blocked at the last step. Ifo was a strange mix of high excitement and the most terrible despair and frustration.

  The camp looked and felt like a prison. If you were outside after the gates were locked, it was hard to get back in. From a distance you could be forgiven for thinking it was a cemetery, the mud houses lined up like tombstones. The ground was covered in sand and on a windy day it was like a whirlwind with the sand flying around inside the confines of the fence. You saw people disappearing in the wind and enveloped by sand.

  No sooner had I arrived in Ifo than I was robbed of the few shillings I had left. Now I had nothing. There was only one way to survive: I had to find a job in the camp. I ended up gathering firewood in the forest and selling it for a pittance to other refugees in the camp. Somalis feared going into the forest because of the bandits who lurked there. I was afraid of the bandits too, and did meet a group of them once. As I stood there tensely, they asked me questions about what stuff the other Sudanese in the camp had – they wanted intelligence on whether we were worth robbing! They wanted me to help sneak them into the camp. I said as little as possible, saying I was very poor, which was why I had to collect firewood for money. Seeing how low I was on the food chain, they let me go. I was lucky, because sometimes even if they found a Sudanese who had nothing, they would force him to carry their things for them.

  I arranged with families to bring them firewood once a week; in return they gave me chapatis, tea, beans, and a place to sleep for a night. I would make some more food by offering to stand in the food queues for families who could not cope with the long wait. They let me keep a small food ‘commission’ – maybe some dry beans, or salt, or oil. I would build shelters, dig toilets three metres deep in hard ground in the heat of summer, anything to get food.

  I still had my school uniform from Biyaya private school. I was wearing it one day when I was trying to sell a bedsheet for some food. Nobody was interested in the sheet, but a man offered to buy my uniform for thirty Kenyan shillings. I loved the uniform, and it was one of the last things I had of any value. But I was so hungry, I had no choice. For about a dollar, I lost it. And with it I lost a symbol of my hope to return to school; I was beginning to lose hope in all those ideas I had had about getting educated.

  In Ifo I worked alongside Phillip Akot, a Sudanese guy who had been with me at Biyaya. We Sudanese were always popping up in the same places. It wasn’t just coincidence. We were hearing the same information from the same people, so Phillip had followed much the same trail as I had, eventually hearing from Sudanese in Nairobi that Ifo was the place to go.

  Phillip Akot was a garrulous guy who loved to joke and make people laugh. He also loved to play soccer. In Ifo we worked together as a team and were like brothers. We shared everything: clothes, money, food. Then one day he suddenly became paralysed down his left side – it happened overnight and we didn’t know what was wrong with him. It affected the way he walked and the work that he was able to do. At times he even needed help getting dressed. He was stressed beyond belief, not knowing what was wrong or if it would last. He went to the local hospital but didn’t receive any treatment; his illness was a mystery. Eventually Phillip went back to Nairobi for medical attention, and he was cured. Once he was fit again, he knew better than to return to Ifo. The last I heard of him, he was travelling between Uganda and Kenya.

  By January 1996, Ifo camp was falling apart. People were leaving because there was no aid coming in. There were looters living in the surrounding forest; at night they would come into the camp and demand money. If refused, they would turn violent. Three months into my stay they shot one of the Sudanese refugees in front of his wife and four children. He was an old man who tended a small shop selling tea and coffee. He was harmless and considered to be a leader within the community.

  After his death the camp’s security was increased. The fence of thorns was now built higher, and the gates to the camp were all closed by 4 pm. The people responsible for the shooting were never found. Instead of them going to prison, we were the ones whose fences grew, we were the ones being imprisoned. Not feeling protected by the authorities, people started to protect themselves by making spears and other home-made weapons.

  Ifo had originally been designed to be a Somalian camp, but with the influx of Sudanese refugees it had been divided into tribes. In Sudan 1 there were 500 Anuak people; in Sudan 2 there were 4000 Nuer people; in Sudan 3 there were 7000 Dinka people; and in Sudan 4 there were 10,000 Equatoria people. Setting up the camp this way created a new reason for conflict, as food and resources were not evenly distributed amongst the groups. Sudan 4 were given the majority of the rations. They were the ones who had arrived first and they were also the ones who had the most money. This meant that they were able to buy ration cards. With a card they could get oil, maize and beans every fortnight. Without the card, people like me got nothing. The card was also reflective of your registration as a refugee – without it you basically didn’t exist. The other camps had a limited supply of ration cards and were kind enough to share their rations, and I was able to get by through the generosity of other Dinka people there.

  Sudan 4 also had the advantage of having the chairman of the Sudanese community among them. Because he and those close to him were being looked after, he didn’t seem to care about the plight of those of us who were struggling. Those who had m
oney were setting up businesses, selling the meat of animals they had caught in the forest. They would sell rabbits, bats and small gazelles. This would be boosted by sales of sugar sold by the teaspoonful, wrapped in paper. The profits from the sale of the sugar were huge: most of the people in the camp didn’t have enough to buy large amounts of sugar but could manage just enough to buy a small quantity even if the price was triple what it was worth.

  The ones selling the goods were those who already had ration cards anyway – those who were hungry just grew more so and the divide between the groups grew with their hunger.

  Within the camp there was a protection officer called Alpond. He had been a refugee himself but had been settled in America, only to return to help those back in Africa. To the best of my knowledge he was originally from Burundi. He dressed in hip-hop gear and had both of his ears pierced; he was in his late thirties and had a habit of swearing like a rapper.

  Alpond had helped a lot of Sudanese refugees over the past couple of years, but unfortunately for me his generosity had run out by the time I met him. He was tired of not being thanked for the help he had given. He had the power to hand out ration cards and could also move you to the top of the list for being resettled overseas. Most of those he had helped in the past, he had never heard from again.

  Some of the people in the camp decided that the only way they were going to get any help from Alpond was to bribe him. They set about collecting money from all those who didn’t have ration cards. Unfortunately we had very little money and when the bribe was presented to Alpond he rejected it and told them to redistribute the money back to those it had been collected from. He had seen real money overseas, and wasn’t impressed by the small amount we could offer. After he had rejected the money everyone knew that their options were limited.