Boy Soldier Read online

  Two weeks after the failed bribe, Alpond arranged for trucks to take anyone who didn’t have a ration card to the camp at Kakuma where at least they would be fed. It was a decision each of us had to make for ourselves – go back to a camp with less chance of being resettled but have the satisfaction of food in our bellies, or stay put and hope for a miracle. I decided to stay put.

  Rumours started to go around the camp that Kenyan officials would use force to get us to go to Kakuma. Some people fled into the surrounding forests, others disappeared and were never heard of again. Others walked all night and day to the Garissa district, an eastern province of Kenya, where they could find agricultural work on banana, onion and tomato plantations. Some just hid all day in the forest, and others went for refuge in Somalian communities, seven hours’ drive away. Still I decided to stay, and the rumours were wrong: the officials never came and I was left safely within the camp.

  Meanwhile the trucks arrived for those who had elected to go to Kakuma. Thousands left, making it easier for those who stayed behind.

  As usual, peace didn’t last long. Fighting was breaking out all over the camp as people became restless at the lack of support from Alpond. People were beginning to write to the UN about him not being willing to help them. Before long he was moved from the camp. It was terrible that all his good work and his sincere hope to come back from America to help ended like this.

  No sooner had he left than the violence escalated. The chairman of our community was moved from Sudan 4 to Sudan 3, creating confusion over who was now leading the camp. It had been thought that, with the majority of people having moved to Kakuma, most of the problems relating to food rations would be solved as Sudan 4 would now be willing to share what they had with the rest of us. One night, people from Sudan 2 went to Sudan 4 for what should have been an evening of sharing and entertainment. Sudan 4 had set up small shacks from which they sold alcohol. A group of men from Sudan 2 had decided to spend the night drinking at one of these shacks. But they had no intention of paying for their drinks and every intention of starting a fight over what they saw as the unfair distribution of rations.

  The fight started in Sudan 4 at around 5 pm and quickly spread. Seven men from Sudan 2, having had their fair share to drink, started to bash their hosts. The hosts used sticks to beat them off and the seven men retreated to find reinforcements. By 8 pm they had gathered more than a hundred allies, all eager to fight the men of Sudan 4. Together they went back into Sudan 4 armed with the spears, stones and sticks people had been making for self-defence. But by now the men of Sudan 4 had also gathered weapons. Rather than take the fight out into neutral ground, the Sudan 4 men stayed within their camp in order to protect what was theirs.

  Despite the hundred men from Sudan 2 it was Sudan 4 who managed to win the battle. By the end of the night one of the men from Sudan 2 had been beaten to death as a message to the others not to return.

  In the weeks that followed, the tension in the camp was extreme. Whenever someone went to get water or food, they would go with a large group. Those in Sudan 4 were particularly nervous because they knew that revenge would be waiting for them.

  Three weeks later their fears were realised. Around fifteen men from Sudan 2 banded together to decide how best to pay back the murder of their friend. They had been keeping an eye on one of the members of Sudan 4, the only man not to stick with a large group when going hunting. The group from Sudan 2 waited until late in the afternoon, then attacked and killed him.

  Later that night, to make sure their message got through, they cut off his head, placed it in a plastic bag and threw it over the fence of Sudan 4. Everyone panicked. People were crying and screaming. He was a victim of revenge for a crime he had not committed, as he was not one of those who had been involved in the fight that had started the whole thing. He was just a refugee like the rest of us. He had travelled by foot to get to the camp; like me, he had not seen his parents in a long time. He had a card and should have been getting ready to be sent to America.

  Everyone grew even more afraid. No one would walk anywhere alone. The Kenyan police were tired of the Sudanese refugees bringing their rivalries to the local area. They threatened to close the camp down in order to restore peace. In the end they moved Sudan 4 to a camp three hours away called Dagahaley, while the Sudan 2 people were moved to a camp three hours away in the opposite direction. This meant that if they wanted to continue fighting they would have to walk six hours.

  Only Sudan 1 and 3 remained. The camp became quiet. There were no gatherings any more, no one talked to anyone outside their immediate group, and any sense of community now seemed gone forever.

  Food was becoming more and more scarce as time went on. In order to survive we had to become creative in the ways we sought and caught food. After the two other camps had been cleared out, we started to notice that the camp was attracting a lot of birds. They looked like small white doves – more importantly, they looked like dinner! The birds seemed to grow larger in numbers every day, and with our other food sources drying up, it was now crucial that we not waste the opportunity to nourish ourselves on the meat that was flying above us.

  Every morning we would go out and set traps to catch as many of the birds as possible. The traps were made from material similar to fishing line. The line would be pulled tight at both ends with the majority hidden beneath the sand. At different sections along the line we would tie loose knots like nooses. Around the knots we would scatter maize and place containers of water to attract the birds.

  Each morning they would fly down, thousands at a time. As they scratched through the sand for the maize their legs would get caught in the knots and when they tried to fly away the knots would tighten, trapping them. Sometimes each noose could trap up to twenty birds at a time. When they were removed from the traps their necks were snapped and then they were placed in boiling water for a couple of minutes to make pulling out their feathers easier. Once the feathers were removed their heads were cut off. They were now ready to cook. Most of the time they were simply put into a hot pan, as there weren’t enough rations to turn them into more interesting meals.

  The birds in the camp didn’t only come from the sky. There were also large birds like pelicans that would walk around the camp. These birds were like us – they were starving, and by now they were coming to us for help. Normally these birds would fly away as soon as we got too close, but because they were hungry they would come to us hoping to be fed. Little did they know that they would be feeding us – in the pan alongside their friends from the sky!

  By this time I was around nineteen years old. I say ‘around’ because I didn’t really know. I didn’t have any facial hair and I still looked like a boy. One of the men in the camp, called Panchol, who was distantly related to some of my cousins, took me into his group and looked after me. Around the same time, a new UN protection officer came to the camp who seemed to feel sorry for the Sudanese who were left behind and tried his best to get us registered with the UN as quickly as possible. I was considered too young to register by myself, so they nominated Panchol to act as my foster father and we could be registered together.

  Finally I received a ration card of my own. In 1996, one year after I had arrived in Kenya, the UN registered me as Chol Biem Ngor. I would now be able to access the resettlement program, and going to America seemed just around the corner. We were all asked to write our life story so we could be placed in order of need. At last, this was our chance to find a way out!

  But once again I was to be disappointed. I was beginning to ask myself if I carried some kind of curse. As soon as I arrived anywhere, the good times seemed to have just finished. If I had gone from Gulu straight to Ifo, I would have arrived at a time when American resettlements were being handed out like candy. The minute I arrived, they dried up. Now that I was registered with the UN, I found out that the resettlement system was full of corruption. People were paying the local UN representatives, the Kenyans, for their applications t
o be processed quicker.

  I wasn’t above corruption myself – I paid one official from Kenya for a position as a scooper, which meant I was responsible for measuring out the rations. I would measure out equal amounts of oil, salt and beans. People would always beg for more than they were entitled to. It was important not to give in, as there were supervisors conducting spot checks on how much everyone was given. I tried not to take advantage of the system and was never game to steal the rations for myself, but every now and then a supervisor would tell me that I had done a good job and could take extra for myself. If they were going to give me extra, I was not about to say no!

  But although I could pay enough to secure a job as a scooper, I had nowhere near enough money to bribe an official to have me resettled. I could see lots of people around me getting resettled ahead of where they should have been in the queue. It was obvious that they had paid money to get ahead of people like me. I soon realised resettlement wasn’t just around the corner. Some people had got to the point I was at – registered, with a ration card and a job – and then waited year after year, and they were still there. I could not afford the bribe and it became clear to me that I was destined to spend longer in this hellish camp than I could stand.

  I have to tell you, sometimes I wondered if I was the unluckiest person in all of Africa – which is saying something! But I did not succumb to self-pity, as tempting as it was. I always looked at setbacks as a challenge to fight my way through, not a sign from the gods that I had no hope. I looked forward, not backward. Maybe this was my survival instinct. If I’d spent too much time looking back and feeling sorry for myself, I might have given up on life itself.

  I decided to move on and try my luck somewhere new. I settled on Nairobi because I had heard that I might be able to get some kind of scholarship there to go to school. The information was unreliable, as always, but I pinned a lot of hope on it, as always. Anyway, it had to be an improvement on languishing forever in Ifo. Before I left I made sure that someone else was able to benefit from the scooping work that I had done. I gave my position as a scooper to a friend of mine called Aboui. The position had cost me two hundred Kenyan shillings in the initial bribe and was paid three hundred shillings a month. Or so it was said – I had had the job for three weeks and was yet to be paid anything.

  I made a deal with Aboui. In exchange for the position he would help me with transport to Nairobi. He would get the pay that I was owed for my three weeks, and I would have the chance to leave and find a better life. I would leave my card behind with Panchol. I would stay in contact with him, and if my name came up for resettlement, I would return.

  It never came up, so I believe I made the right choice.

  I left the camp around May 1997 on a bus to the Kenyan capital. The journey was difficult because I didn’t have any proper documents. Travelling without papers never allows for comfortable movement.

  Whenever we came to one of the numerous police checkpoints, I tensed up, thinking I was about to be arrested. The police did come on board a couple of times, but thanks to pure good luck and the fact that the other people on the bus had legitimate papers, I was not asked to identify myself.

  When I arrived in Nairobi I had nowhere to go. My plans for school had been vague at best. I felt lost in another big city, and out of place. I knew of places where Sudanese were living in Nairobi, but the central bus station was confusing – the destinations were marked with numbers, not places. I slept that first night in a big public park where a lot of homeless people were living. I wasn’t scared of the street kids who came in to raid, because I had nothing of value to steal. Probably most of them thought I was a street kid myself.

  The next morning, I decided that a church was the best place to go. I searched Nairobi until, shivering with the early morning cold, I came across Reverend Marks from the Born Again Christian Church. The ‘church’ was a big white tent near the park where I had slept. I huddled with his congregation and prayed. After the service, I approached him and he asked me where I was from. Seeing how cold I was, he took off the very nice leather jacket he was wearing and put it on me. ‘Keep it,’ he said.

  Reverend Marks was a medical doctor as well as a pastor, with very light skin. His mother was German and his father was Kenyan. For the next four months he gave me accommodation with the street kids the church rescued. The deal was that you were meant to be ‘born again’, and I prayed with them for a new life. I liked the idea of being born again, but I also liked the idea of being able to sleep and eat for free. After they had given me so much help, I volunteered to help hand out food to street kids from the soup kitchens the church set up around Nairobi.

  Here I met an old friend, called Williams Agar, from my Ugandan days. We worked side by side, and he was going to classes in English. Reverend Marks asked if I wanted to be sponsored to go to the school too, but I said I wanted to go further south, to Zimbabwe. Reverend Marks looked at me closely and said: ‘Tell me when you are ready, and I might be able to help you.’

  By August, I was ready to move on. Despite the kindness of people like Reverend Marks, Kenya had not been a happy place for me. The low point came when one of the street kids William and I had helped stole all of our possessions, including my prized leather jacket.

  I told Reverend Marks I was ready to go, and he gave me fifteen thousand Kenyan shillings. The Tanzanian border was only a couple of hours south of Nairobi, and I boarded a bus in the hope of getting to Arusha, the first big town on the Tanzanian side.

  As with my entry into Kenya, I thought my best chance of getting across the border would be to get out of the bus and walk through the pedestrian gate.

  But I had forgotten how much luck I had needed to cross a border that way. I have never been blessed by especially good fortune, and was probably unwise to believe that I was about to get lucky twice in a row.

  CHAPTER 6

  Tanzania

  AFTER DISMOUNTING FROM THE BUS, I walked clean through the gate on the Kenyan side of the border . . . and then through the gate on the Tanzanian side! I felt confident in my acting skills now. I must have really been looking the part of a local.

  But the Tanzanian side was swarming with police, army and immigration officials. Fearing that I was about to be tapped on the shoulder, I went into the immigration office and stood in the queue like a legitimate passport-holding traveller. I waited there a while until I was near the head of the queue and the police presence seemed to have thinned out, and then ducked quickly into the street as if I had had my passport stamped.

  There was a guesthouse with a restaurant where new arrivals waited for the bus to Arusha, about sixty kilometres south. While I was sitting there having a cold drink, a man came up and said he could help smuggle me out of here. I pretended to take affront. ‘What are you saying? I have a passport!’ I said. He said: ‘I know you don’t have a passport. Give me money and I will help you get to Arusha.’ I suspected he might have been a police agent, so I brushed him off.

  A little later, as I was still sitting there, one of the chief immigration officials came in. I don’t know if I had been informed on by the ‘smuggler’, or if the official just thought I looked illegal. He said: ‘Show me your passport.’ Of course, I had nothing to show. I spent my first night in Tanzania in a concrete police cell with a couple of others whose luck had also run out.

  The next morning I was deported back over the border into Kenya and handed to the Kenyan police. They asked if I had money. When I said I did, they took me to a bus that was heading back to Nairobi and told me to pay for my fare while they were watching. If I didn’t pay I would still have to go to Nairobi, only as a prisoner, and I would stay even longer than I wanted to. So, to get away from the police, I chose to pay.

  I got on the bus and kept to myself for the first kilometre, then asked the driver to stop and let me off. I would not be shaken – I was going to Tanzania. Again, I would have to walk, but not through the gate this time. I would head south-east, towa
rds the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, where there were no roads and, I hoped, no patrols. It took me a day and a half of trekking up steep hills and through thick forest, using only the cloud-shrouded volcano as my guide. I knew that if I kept heading south I would eventually hit a road well south of the border.

  While I walked, I passed Masai villagers who greeted me. I saw gazelles, snakes and other wildlife. I greeted the people politely but didn’t stop until I came to rest under a tree. While I was there, some local boys came up and we started talking. I said to one in English: ‘If I give you two hundred Kenyan shillings, will you go back towards the border and find a bus driver who will stop for me?’ Most of the transport was small Kombi vans that sped straight through to Arusha. The boy looked dubious. I said: ‘If you can do that, I will give you another eight hundred shillings when I get on the bus.’ A thousand Kenyan shillings was probably more than these boys would see in a year.

  The boy went, and I waited for a couple of hours before he returned with two men in an empty minibus. One was the driver, the other the conductor. They wanted ten thousand Kenyan shillings to travel a little more than one hour! I knew this was extortion – it cost fifteen hundred Kenyan shillings to go from Nairobi to the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam, which was about a twenty-four-hour drive.

  I refused, and they said: ‘Okay, we are going.’ Actually I wasn’t just outraged by their demand, I was afraid of them. I felt that if they knew I had ten thousand shillings, they would bash and rob me.

  For a few minutes I tried negotiating a lower price, but they knew they had all the power. Eventually I agreed to give them the ten thousand shillings, which left only four thousand in my pocket. It was a bad deal for me, but I had no choice. There was no point keeping my ten thousand shillings and being stuck in the middle of nowhere.