Six Months in Sudan (32 page)

he will shake his head with me. he was born in abyei and, except for a few years in juba, has lived here all his life. he too has seen it change.

he lived in a tukul, made from grass. there was no electricity, no trains. two of his brothers died from diarrhea. he nearly died too. when he was three.

“how old are you now?”

“fifty-three. more or less.”

“was your mother blind?”

that is one version of the future. it already exists; it simply needs to be arrived at, uncovered, rolled into place. another is that this place remains forgotten, largely untouched by the best of the best things in the world. your attention, like mine, turns to other more personal matters. we read about abyei tipping once again into war, about thousands displaced. we shake our heads. in fifty years, if i’m alive, i will be an old man. i will look at abyei on google universe and all i will see are sticks and plastic bags fluttering in an empty field.

but for now, we are here. i meant to say this before, but i haven’t. when i write “we,” i don’t just mean the team or msf, i mean in the larger, more collective sense. you and me, and everyone we know. i mean the “we” as a species that has, through culture and nature, manifested a system of humanitarianism. that supports the idea that we should put ourselves in the middle of places that threaten to tilt into war or be swallowed by disease.

i believe this sincerely. we are here, you, me, and everyone we know, because there is something inherently valuable to our presence. it is the concrete manifestation of a quality in all of us, one that when exercised feels entirely correct. the feeling of standing between two people who are angry enough to fight, or stopping to help someone stranded by the side of the road. once you do, you realize the perceived risk is less than the actual one. we all know that it is better than the feeling we have when we turn our heads and pretend not to see. so, that’s why we are here. because of that part i share with you and everyone we know.

I
’M WATCHING MARCO
hunt letters on a keyboard.

“I can type, if you want.”

He shakes his head. It is midmorning. I left Mohamed in the hospital so I could come back to the compound and do my end-of-mission evaluation. I leave in two weeks, and Marco is leaving on his R&R next Wednesday. I won’t see him again once he goes. Not in Sudan, anyway.

“So, James … mmm … what would you say you accomplished while you were here?”

The sky is cloudless. We are edged into the shadow that frames Marco’s tukul. Each minute it grows smaller and we shuffle our chairs to find it again.

“Um. I think the part I liked most, and worked at the most, was probably the tuberculosis program.” I liked watching people get better instead of watching them die.

The corners just outside our tukul used to hold scruffs of thin grass. They are now lush, dappled with flowers. As we speak, butterflies jag between them.

“And I think I did okay with the medical team. I think their morale is good.” Thank god for them. They saved me. Especially Mohamed.

We skiff our chairs closer to Marco’s tukul. A swallow dives out of his door and circles away. Marco smiles.

“She has a nest in there. We share.”

The compound now has brick paths that take us from the gazebo to the kitchen, from our tukuls to the latrines. The floor of the office has been poured. This morning, I watched men spackle its walls. One would take a dustpan of thin cement and fling it onto the wall. The other would smooth it with a plastic blade, work it in larger and larger waves until it disappeared. Both of them were shirtless, spatters of cement on their strong backs. Once the office is built, we will take down the walls that divide compound 1. The tents too.

“And what did you find hard about the mission?”

Yesterday I took a shovel and pick from the bones of the new office
and broke the ground beside my tukul. It was hard work, all clay. I have blisters on the first knuckle of both of my thumbs. This morning, after last night’s rain, the ground is firm and smooth again, no sign of my work.

“I never felt like I could get away. I think we could have used some more support, too.”

Marco told me that we are getting another midwife, one more nurse, and a nutritionist. A pharmacy assistant will be coming to straighten things out. No more bits of paper under a calculator.

“But the mission is better and better.”

Once the fence beside the tukul goes, and the tent is moved, the compound will be wide open space. A volleyball net can be set up. Underneath the tamarind tree, we can stake a hammock. No more meetings in the gazebo. It can be a place to read, to play cards.

We have started to get occasional food from Khartoum now. With the last shipment of drugs, I received two kilograms of muesli. A nurse returning from R&R brought two containers of yogurt. I used these, and some skim milk powder, to make more. Though Helen’s trip did not cause a food revolution, Ruth has proudly added potatoes au gratin to her repertoire and makes it at least three times a week.

“And what do you think you could have done better?”

The other day, Marco reluctantly gave us permission to visit the UN bar. He said that he would not attend, that he thought it wise to keep our distance, but that we were grown men and women who could make our own choices.

“I … I think I was too serious. I didn’t relax. If I was done working, I would go to my tukul and write. I didn’t take enough walks. I didn’t visit compound 2 enough. I should have traveled more, spent less time in the hospital.”

The ground where I slept, under the tree, is now mud. I tried to walk there the other day in my rubber boots to look for another foam bed. Mine in my tukul was too thin. As I walked past the tree that was once my leafless roof, I looked up into its deep green, and stepped out of my boot and into the thick black muck. I found a bed, one used during the measles mission. It was stained, but better. When Laurence
saw me carrying it back, he said he was going to order some proper beds from Khartoum.

“Will you do another mission?” Marco asks.

There is no shadow left to slide into. The sun is straight above us, beating hot on our heads. Sweat beads on my forehead. Marco stifles a yawn with his hand. I need to go back to the hospital and help Mohamed.

“Yes.”

Marco folds his computer shut.

“Halas.”

Finished.

02/07: day.

now is the point in the story when the character begins to be pulled towards a future he thought would never come. the character, however, cannot appreciate any signs of movement. he still measures days in the same way: from dawn to dusk.

J
ULIE STICKS HER HEAD
into the log tukul. I am typing on its computer.

“Coming, James?”

“Um … yep. Right now.” I press “send,” close the computer’s plastic lid.

The team is standing just outside the gate. Save Marco. He is in his yellow housecoat, arms folded in silent disapproval. The rest of us are going to the UN bar tonight.

“Sure you don’t want to come, Marco?” I ask.

“No. I stay here.”

“All right.”

Laurence sticks his head inside the gate.

“James, let’s go. The driver’s here.”

“Hey, Laurence, since you will be acting field co when Marco is on R&R, can we have our morning meetings at the bar?”

“Well, we’ll probably be there from the night before, so I guess it makes sense. We might as well take our lunch there too.”

“What about dinner?”

“Only every second day.”

“Okay.”

“And are we still going to use Marco’s tukul for our girlfriends?”

“Of course.”

Marco shakes his head and turns around. I hop into the back of the Land Cruiser and slam the door. Laurence climbs into the front. Angela, Julie, and David are already inside, hunched on bench seats.

We turn onto Abyei’s road. The UN compound is on the outskirts. We crawl through town, the driver honking at bicycles in his way. They swerve out of our cone of light, and we slowly pass.

“The gas is the skinny one on the right,” Laurence says to the driver, who ignores him, his nose against the glass.

We approach Abyei’s speed bump, formed by an attempt to bury the power cord of a generator that crossed the road. Tim and I called it Mount Abyei, the highest point for miles. I look around the cabin of
the truck for someone to whom to tell my usual joke, that if I don’t survive the ascent, to tell my family I loved them. Everyone’s different. We bump across it.

The driver speeds up as we leave town. The gravel shakes us. We pass an SPLA checkpoint, the same one as on my morning run. From inside, a disembodied hand waves us through.

The road is empty. Coming up on our left is the storage compound for the World Food Programme. Its lights, lit by a generator, are strangely dim. As we draw closer, I can see why. A blur of bugs, thousands of thousands thick, whirl and loop around them. Tiny electron orbits of mosquitoes, an occasional parchment of moth wings. I imagine swiping my hand through their fast field, feeling them whap against my skin like sand.

Why the attraction to light? A remnant of their pupal stage, where they crawled towards an opened end? Or the right way to struggle from a bird’s mouth or a sticky plant’s. Maybe it’s just something that is beyond their control. Maybe before humans brought light to the dark, moths used to fly all night towards the hollow moon.

We are soon at the UN compound. Four helmeted UN peacekeepers sit in a guardhouse, yawning. One gets to his feet and gestures our car forward. He takes a comically large dentist’s mirror and reflects the underside of our car, looking for bombs. He waves us out, goes through our IDs one by one, and then lets us pass. Our driver backs the Land Cruiser away.

“Do you think he was drunk?” Laurence asks.

“Who? The driver?” I ask.

“Oui.”

“Could explain why he was going so effing slow. I was too far away. I’ll look on the way back.”

“When you’re drunk.”

“Exactly.”

We pass through the UN parking lot. Dozens of new Land Cruisers, their long CB antennas bent like mousetraps ready to spring. Containers full of soldiers, from Bangladesh, Zambia, Germany, and
Canada, sit humming and air-conditioned. Several hundred peacekeepers are stationed here in Abyei. Recently, both military groups, North and South, curtailed their movements. The UN soldiers are now forced to drive in smaller and smaller circles.

The bar lies just on the other side of a field flanking the parking lot.

“Watch for snakes,” David says. We look at our feet as we walk through the thick grass.

In a courtyard between containers sits the bar. Its roof is a tukul’s roof, its floor cement. Underneath harsh fluorescent lights are tables made from large, empty spools, and around these, a few plastic chairs. To one end is a counter. On it, a soldier sits, his shaved head resting in the crook of his elbow. Above him a fan slowly spins. It is quiet except for the calls of crickets and the hum of the large generators, different from the racket of our small one. The soldier sees us and sits up straight. Women have that effect in Abyei.

We each take a seat at one of the spools. There is no one else in the bar. Laurence starts to stand. I leap up.

“Let me. Pilsner, David?”

“Pilsner.”

“Laurence?”

“Pilsner.”

“Angela?”

“Yup.”

“Julie?”

“Same.”

I lean against the bar.

“Five pilsner, please.”

The soldier reaches into the glass cooler behind him, pulls them out one at a time, and pops their tops off. There is no satisfying hiss.

“Sorry. They all got frozen yesterday. Cooler was too cold.”

I shrug and hand him twenty-five dollars. He puts it in a tin box. I pass the bottles around.

“To beer,” I say.

“To Abyei,” Laurence says.

“To the UN,” David says. “Just kidding.”

We all take a sip. Flat. Cold. I reach for one of Laurence’s cigarettes. He nods.

“So, James … you leave soon.”

“Looks that way.”

“Have you heard about your replacement?”

“A little bit. First mission. Tropical disease experience, which is good. Speaks French. That’s the only bad thing, I guess.”

“Careful. Marco’s gone soon.”

“She’s not going to arrive before I leave, though.”

“Oh?”

“Visa problems or something. And I can’t stay. I start work in August.” I told Brian, when I first went through Khartoum, that I had agreed with the hospital to return and help out in the summer. People are on vacations, want to get rid of shifts. It was a foot in the door to the hospital, the university. Now it is a good reason to leave. I’m exhausted.

Angela and Julie are chatting with the soldier behind the bar. He is thrilled. Laurence and David start talking in French. I finish my pilsner and order another. Also flat. Cold.

Laurence leaves to use the latrine. I turn to David.

“You are leaving too,” I say to him.

“Yes. As soon as I can get a flight.”

“Through the South?” I ask.

“Yes, to Juba. Juba-Loki, Loki-Nairobi, Nairobi-Geneva.”

“Then what?”

“Not sure. Another mission, I guess. Whatever they tell me. Maybe back here. Still no borehole.”

“I see …”

David starts flipping the lighter, tapping it on the table. Neither of us wants to talk about work. Tap. Tap.

“Well, David, I’ll make you a deal.” He stops tapping. “You know how I told you one of the things that would frighten me most would be being at sea, on a sailboat hundreds of kilometers from shore, in the middle of a storm?”

“Yes, I remember. Me too.”

“And I don’t know if I will ever do it, but because I’m afraid, I kinda want to. Know what I mean?”

“Yes. I’m the same.”

“Okay. So, if in your life, in the next ten years or twenty years, whatever, if you decide you want to sail across the ocean and want someone to do it with, I’ll do it.”

He shakes his head. He doesn’t follow. I try again.

“If I had to sail across the ocean, and I could choose someone I thought would make good company and who I could work to solve problems with, it would be you.”