Six Months in Sudan (29 page)

a day or two before, i had sat in the compound and watched storm clouds roll in on top of each other. i imagined being up there, not in a plane, but just hanging in the mist, feeling the crackle of electricity, looking for sparks amidst the twisting gray fog. perhaps nature had interpreted it as a wish.

instead of flying into its blackness, we circled back towards kadugli. i could see the jagged silhouette of the nuba mountains as we turned west, away from el obeid, away from the storm, and i wondered where i would sleep the night.

we did not land. we flew past the airport with one eye on the storm, and started to circle its margins.

we followed the sun, over the mountains, just outrunning the storm, moving west … west … north a bit … north … west … north … north … northeast … northeast … around it, into a bright blue pocket. we unclenched our hands from our armrests and smiled at one another.

i wonder not why i feel this way about airplanes, only why everyone else doesn’t.

it is raining now, and i’m inside. i guess i should find something to do. wait. is that the gardener peeking through a shrub? oh, there is the concierge, trying to sneak up the steps. it appears my entreaties have worked. it appears the game is on. finally.

I
T IS MY LAST DAY IN KENYA
. I am sitting in the dying sunlight at an outdoor restaurant in the town nearest to where I am staying. Thus far, I have seen little of the country. I arrived sleepless in Nairobi, and flew eastward to the coast. At the airport, I waited for a shuttle that never came and, in the end, struck a bargain with a taxi driver to take me directly to my hotel.

This is my first time outside of it. I have spent the last four days sleeping, turning up the air conditioning, and drinking white wine. My first day I walked along the beach as far as I could in each direction, and was turned back by late-morning rain. The ocean is murky and swollen, thick with seaweed. I am one of five guests in a hotel that holds four hundred. It is ideal.

The events on the day of my departure are now clear, thanks to emails from Tim. A soldier, drunk already at that early hour of the morning, started firing randomly in the market. He was scheduled to go to court later that day and was determined to avoid it. People say he was mentally unwell. Probably schizophrenia.

Two policemen were killed in the market, and another died en route to surgery. The soldier turned the gun on himself, but succeeded only in blowing off his jaw. Tim also reported that when the shooting happened, armed men, dressed like civilians but obviously trained, marched across the open fields in Abyei and assumed strategic positions in town.

We evacuated the hospital again, because the soldiers stormed in with guns. This time, there was gunfire in the hospital.

It was a good time for chaos. Geneva had finally sent someone from their office to assess Abyei. She had arrived the day before I left. She will be gone by the time I get back.

For now I’m still here, in the last of the sun’s rays, sitting at a corner table, drinking a beer. Two tables over is a group of people my age half watching a football match on the screen above them. One of them just said something funny and the man closest to me laughed loudly and slapped the table so hard the glasses clattered.

I haven’t had a conversation with anyone in days. The last time was in Khartoum, the night I arrived. I went out for dinner with the new logistics coordinator and his girlfriend. Slowly the Khartoum office is filling.

A Land Cruiser pulls up with “Tour Company” written on the side, and a broad-shouldered blond man steps from behind the wheel, then hurries into a store.

There is a whole world right here, people criss-crossing paths, having chance encounters. On the way to this restaurant, I stopped at a store and bought shaving cream like a regular person. I just paid for it, and walked out of the store.

“Another beer please. Tusker.”

How many weeks to home? Six. Maybe a bit less. Closer to five. When I get back to Abyei, Tim will be leaving. I will be the oldest one in the mission. I never thought it would come to pass. Makes sense, though. I feel oldest.

I glance down the road. A group of children are walking towards me. There are five of them. One, two, three, four, five. I can see the expressions on their faces so clearly. Everything is clearer. I can do this. I can go back.

My food is done. So is my beer. All that is left is this wooden cutting block, stained with grease. My friends at the table are moving on. I wonder what they are doing. I wonder if they are going dancing.

I pay my bill and walk back along the road towards the bus station. Along the way I see men and women sitting together on plastic stools at other outside restaurants, talking and laughing. Set back from the road are poorly lit signs that promise discos. A gringo, a woman about fifty wearing a sarong and Tevas, passes me going the other way. I try to catch her eye and smile, but she doesn’t meet my gaze. It’s the opposite problem of Abyei. I’m invisible.

A local bus drops me off at the dirt road that leads, after several kilometers, to my hotel. At the intersection, a man is washing his car. I ask if I can hire him to take me back.

“Yes. Of course. It is not good to walk around here. Especially for you. Very dangerous.”

I wait for him to finish washing his car, then climb in.

10/06: space.

i am back in khartoum. how? i just finished waiting for the plane in agok, then the storm, then the middle of the night flight, then kenya, then back, and it seems like a minute, and soon i will be back tucking the mosquito net under my flat foam mattress, handset crackling beside me. time. it can’t be trusted.

i was thinking about my thoughts as i walked into the kitchen in abyei one time, about how many we have as we carry out the most straightforward tasks. pouring a glass of water, for instance. for an observer, it takes us ten seconds, but inside, it is an infinity. but of course it must be. our concept of the universe, its largeness, its distant stars and the black, cold vacuum between, our outer space, is exactly proportionate to the largeness of our inner one.

i was glad to find some space. for the first time in months, my every thought was not of abyei. distance afforded me perspective. the difference between circling a storm and being at its center. i was able to glimpse a larger world.

i am glad for whoever replaces me that he or she will have a clearer idea of what we are there to do, and how to accomplish it. they will better see the goals, and how to achieve them, just as i did because of the work of the person i followed. things have already been made noticeably better by the dozens of people piling effort on top of effort consistently on one side of the scale, tipping the balance of the project, and even abyei, towards an easier future.

it is one of the ways that i make sense of the world, to believe that it hangs in a grand balance. but no matter the distance, no matter how much i travel, no matter how much i read, no matter how carefully i look, i cannot determine which way it tips. good, or bad. success, or
failure. hope, or despair. i can’t say, and it doesn’t matter. all i can do is pile as many efforts as possible, no matter how small, on the side i want the most.

while i was away, lying on my bed shivering, the air conditioner whirring above me, i read a book by ryszard kapuscinski, one of poland’s greatest writers and one of the world’s best african correspondents. in part of it, he describes arriving to a town in ethiopia that is suffering from a severe drought. people lie on the side of the road, their eyes half open, starving. with that simple sentence, he picked me up and rushed me back to abyei. it was the half-open eyes of the starving. half open. half closed. mostly closed. closed.

i sat there, holding the book, and realized that no matter how much i try, i will never go back to being the person i was before i left. i can try not to think about it most of the time, and most of the time, i will succeed. the memories will fade from video to short sepia snapshots, but from nowhere, a simple sentence will throw all the hardness forward and with it, that helpless, sleepless, lonely drowning ache.

i will send word from abyei. i think the airstrip in agok is washed out, and i will have to be picked up in kadugli, a day away from abyei. i am looking forward to the drive, to the movement, to the space between.

“P
LEASE THIS WAY,”
Anthony says, and turns between two wooden stalls, stepping expertly on a flat plank placed across a long puddle.

We are in the market of a mud town, halfway to Abyei. We left at dawn this morning in an MSF Land Cruiser sent to pick us up. All of our air movements now would require at least two days.

“The owner is friend to me,” he explains.

We have stopped for lunch. There are five of us in the truck. Anthony, myself, two nurses returning from R&R in Khartoum, and Helen, the Ethiopian cook from the Khartoum guest house. She has been sent, at our request, to improve the food. She has brought with her an array of spices, some butter, cheese, a few different types of pasta. She’s young, twenty-two or -three, diminutive. I don’t like her chances with Ruth.

We pick our way through the market on planks of wood, right-angled like dominoes, mud to either side. We pass a butcher, a goat split in half on the wooden table in front of him. Flies cover the meat, and he swipes lazily at them with his newspaper, then goes back to reading it. It is raining lightly.

We stop at a covered stall, big enough to hold two low tables.

“Sit, sit,” Anthony says, smiling proudly. The owner emerges from a back room, rubbing his eyes. Anthony grabs his hand and shakes it vigorously.

“Dr. James, Coca-Cola or Fanta?”

“Um … Coca-Cola.”

Anthony takes orders from the others and walks into the back room. He emerges with five bottles, and hands them to each of us, waves away our money.

The owner pushes a gray pile of coals together and fans them with a piece of cardboard. They glow red. He takes a jar of murky oil and dumps it into a large steel pan, then places it over the embers. It starts to smoke.

A boy of seven or eight stands paused in the puddle next to our stall, staring at me. He is wearing a long dirty shirt, ripped at the shoulder. Around him, raindrops spatter into the water. Anthony sees him.

“Pffft. Pffffft.”

The boy leaves. He steps onto a plank barefoot.

Everyone is talking to one another in Arabic. I can’t understand a word. Behind us, the owner throws a bowlful of chopped goat into the pan. It hisses as it hits.

I lean towards Helen. “So, are you excited to go to Abyei?”

Her eyes tell me she is not. She is nervous. Until this morning, she had never been on a plane. She came from Addis to Khartoum by land and has seen cities mostly. This is the only town we have passed in half a day, its existence made possible by the large gravel pits nearby. It will be one of the last before we get to Abyei.

“Is Abyei like this?” she asks.

“Smaller.”

“Smaller?”

I nod.

“What can you get there?” she asks.

“Malaria.” She doesn’t laugh. “For food? Well, not much. You’ll see, I guess. It’s probably better to talk to the cook when you get there.”

“Is she a nice person?”

“Oh yes. Very nice.”

A tray full of gristly goat pieces is dropped between us. With it, five pieces of bread. A flurry of hungry hands reach for them. Mine stay in my lap.

“Dr. James? You eat?” Anthony asks.

“Not hungry. Thanks. Coca-Cola is okay.”

“You don’t like? Not good?”

“Oh no, it’s good. I like very much.”

Anthony is not convinced. The rest of the table is waiting. I break
off a piece of bread and scoop up a piece of goat. They start talking again.

I tear off another piece of bread. I have been sick enough times in the past four months. A picture of this market is hanging on the walls of
E. coli
travel agents around the planet. I went to the bathroom before we entered the market, and the latrine was flooded.

The food is soon finished. We need to get on our way. The drive is from dawn until dusk, and there is little time to pause. We thank our host, and pay. Anthony refuses to take my money.

We balance our way back to the Land Cruiser on the planks. One tips, I spill off, and sink into the thick mud.

The nurses jump into the back of the truck before I have a chance to protest. The ride in the rear is even more teeth rattling. Helen and I share the front seat. My right thigh digs into the handrest, my shoulder pushes uncomfortably against the metal chassis.

Helen is squeezed between the middle armrest and me. She is tiny. She is wearing short sleeves and her bare arm is against mine.

I have not touched a human being for a long time. Felt a few hundred, but it’s not the same. I forgot. It’s good. Soft. Simple.

I answer more of Helen’s questions about Abyei, but it is difficult to hear over the din. The road is rippled, and no speed, fast or slow, lessens the tumult. We stop talking, and she soon falls asleep, her head resting on my shoulder.

I put my earphones in, and watch the trees whiz by. My left arm is fast asleep, but I don’t move it.

13/06: open stretches.

after 10 hours on a chattering road, i arrived into abyei as planned, two days ago. the first thing i did after setting my bags down was to fall headfirst into a fever. i spent my first morning back shivering in bed.

today, i am better. at first i was worried i had disco fever, which in abyei, because of a lack of discos, is incurable. i considered lotto fever, spring fever, saturday night fever, johnny fever … pretty much all the fevers, but couldn’t confirm any of them. we simply don’t have the necessary tests, ones that would be readily available in canada. there, let’s say someone has, i don’t know, johnny fever. we just get the johnny fever guy on call, he rolls in with that episode of wkrp where mr. carlson decides to rain down turkeys on the thanksgiving parade, and the patient is cured. in abyei, it is much more difficult. the best we could do, if we even made the diagnosis of johnny fever, is to try to explain the episode from memory. it is poor treatment, and very rarely works.