Displaced (19 page)

“Yeah, bad news.”

The name of the closest town was Pakwach, but
Nicole wasn’t in Pakwach, she was in a culture camp or displaced
persons camp some twenty miles distant from Pakwach run by the
Ugandan Defense Forces. A dusty affair centered by dozens of tents
surrounded by a sprawling slum housing thousands of people. On the
edge of the camp was the base housing the quarters of the Ugandan
soldiers. Those not fortunate to merit a tent resided in a
collection of contrapted lean tos and shanties with mud and stick
walls and corrugated metal roofs. Beyond the borders of the camp,
the landscape could best be described as scrub. Patchy bushes mixed
with tall grass and some trees to the horizon delineated by low
rock hills in the distance.

The camp was not altogether different from
the one in the Congo, but it was considerably larger. The
structures were different and the camp was less organized, like a
city without a government. Otherwise there was the same sense of
uncertainty, the standing around with nothing to do contrasted with
the constant effort to produce the next meal. The camp also was
primarily made up of Ugandans. Nicole had spent the night before
sleeping on the ground and she walked the camp with her head down
trying not to make eye contact, listening to the voices in English
and unable to understand the conversations carried in Lugandan.
Hunger was an issue, her belly felt hollow and her head ached. She
pushed through narrow alleys where shanties constructed of cast off
wood and corrugated metal abutted one another. The packed clay
trail she followed snaked over what was left of the natural
landscape, only the roots of trees that had been foraged and
stripped bare for fuel remained underfoot. People came and went
carrying water, wood and the necessities for everyday life. She
made contact with none of them as she passed preferring to go
unnoticed.

She recognized she had no plan and would soon
have to make a decision for helping herself. The path she followed
lead toward one edge of the camp where through thatched roofs, she
made out the sound of French language being spoken. From within a
hut a young woman emerged in a shirt and skirt and wearing a wrap
around her head. She was conversing with someone still within the
hut asking about firewood and cajoling the person within to go and
find some. A child sat nearby under a piece of plastic fastened to
an adjoining structure, seeking shade. Nicole stopped to listen and
the young woman went back into the hut without noticing her. The
young boy sitting in the shade looked at Nicole and then looked
where the other woman had been without saying anything. The woman
came outside again, this time with a girl carrying a jerry can and
instructed the boy to go with her to get water. The boy looked
again at Nicole, prompting the woman to do the same, and then did
as he was told, pushing the young girl out of the yard in front of
him.

“Pardon me,” Nicole said to the woman looking
at her. “I was wondering whether you could help me?”

“Yes,” said the woman. “You speak
French.”

“I am from Congo,” Nicole explained. “I just
arrived.”

“What can I do?”

“I have no place to stay,” Nicole said. “I
need to get to Kampala.”

“There are already so many here,” said the
woman.

Nicole looked at her without saying anything,
she waited for the woman to come to another conclusion.

“Do you have any money, anything to trade?”
the woman asked.

“No”

“We can barely care for ourselves,” the woman
said shaking her head.

Nicole looked at her pitifully, “if I can
just make it to Kampala, then I can get money,” she said.

The woman shook her head again and gestured
in an expression of surrender. “Okay, come in, let’s see what we
can do.”

“My name is Nicole,” she said introducing
herself.

“Okay Nicole, I’m Alice,” she said, “we have
a little water and some corn meal. This is my father,” she said
gesturing to another inhabitant of the hut, a thin man on a wooden
bench leaning against one wall. He looked up and waived at her
laconically.

“Dad this is Nicole, she is from Congo.”

“Hello Nicole,” he waived again and then
looked away as if the whole exchange was a distraction.

Nicole was seated on a low wooden bench next
to a table that divided the room in two. A fly buzzed overhead as
Alice poured water into a plastic blue cup and then set about
scraping cornmeal from an aluminum pot.

“You know but we still need some firewood
father.”

“Okay, I’ll get it,” the man said as if being
asked for the first time and then left.

“He is all the family, I have left,” Alice
explained. “He and my two children. We were forced to leave the
village after the soldiers came. They killed my husband, he is
dead,” she said matter of fact. “Where are you from in Congo.”

“Bunia,” Nicole answered.

“How did you get here?”

“I am making my way to Kampala,” she said
without elaboration. It seemed of little importance to relive her
journey for Alice’s sake. “I was traveling with my Aunt and we got
separated just the other side of the border. I managed to make it
this far. I have people waiting for me in Kampala.”

“Okay,” Alice responded as she busied herself
with housework that didn’t need to be done. “Maybe we can get in
touch with your people in Kampala. My family is from Beni,” she
continued. “Have you ever been to Beni?” she asked and Nicole had
not. “It is in Ituri, we had the nicest school house and a great
big marketplace until the war came to our town. Before that I went
to school with my brother and sister.” Alice went on, warming to
the availability of adult companionship, someone whom she could
talk to.

Nicole wasn’t the imposition Alice had feared
and placed no burden on her, allowing her to talk without
interruption. She looked at Nicole to make sure she was still
paying attention and continued talking. She explained how they had
come to the camp and described the structure of the camp. Each camp
had its own hierarchy it seemed and in Alice’s mind the French
speakers were the cultural superiors. She derided her Ugandan
neighbors, who did not speak French. She warned Nicole about the
Ugandan soldiers camped nearby, who were supposed to guard the camp
but took what they wanted. She doubted that they would fight for
the camp but would flee from a rebel attack. “You can sleep here,
we have an extra mat, but don’t go out after dark,” she warned.
“The Ugandan soldiers will take women they find outside after
dark.”

The soldiers let them farm and collect food
from outside of the camp, but only during the daytime. Residents of
the camp had to be back by six o’clock. The soldiers lived in fear
of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Alice explained. The Lord’s
Resistance worshipped the Ten Commandments and deified their own
leader. They occupied parts of northern Uganda raiding villages and
abducting boys and girls into military and sexual servitude. In
their attempt to separate the population, the Ugandan military had
set up civilian camps and were suspicious of anyone who did not
cooperate. Unfortunately, there was nobody to protect the
population from the military, which arbitrarily raped, beat, and
killed.

“I wonder if I could use a phone?” Nicole
asked. “I’d like to try and call my Uncle and let him know where I
am.”

“You can use a phone, we have several phones
that you can use for a fee.”

“I don’t have any money,” Nicole said.

“Well maybe we can arrange to have some sent,
you say you have people in Kampala.”

“Yes there is somebody in Kampala that can
send money.”

“Okay, we’ll arrange it this afternoon.”

****

Later that day, Alice spoke with the owner of
the kiosk that she had taken Nicole to, while Nicole waited
standing beside her. It was large with a counter that separated the
front from the back and a portion of the back was fenced off in a
pantry of chicken wire. In front a sign board with exchange rates
written in chalk stood next to a large man with a panga. The sun
shone through a crack in the walls and focused on the man behind
the counter annoying him as he talked with Alice.

“Your friend in Kampala can bring the money
to my cousin in the city, he has his own store called City Exchange
on Luwum Street,” he said. “He gives him the money there plus a
commission, he will contact me and then I will give you the money
here,” he explained to Alice.

“But we don’t have a phone to call him and
without the money we can’t afford one,” she said.

“Give me the number and I’ll call him,” the
man responded.

Nicole recited the number that Philomene had
made her remember on their trip out of Bunia, and Alice in turn
repeated the number to the man who produced his mobile phone and
pressed the digits. “Who am I calling?” the man asked.

“Ask for Father Ignatius Boniface,” Nicole
responded.

****

Father Boniface was walking between the
rectory and the church when his mobile phone rang. “Hello,” he
answered holding the handset to his ear. The voice on the other end
seemed small and distant at first but then grew louder as he
listened. “Yes this is Father Boniface. Who am I speaking with?” he
asked. The man on the other end didn’t answer the question, instead
he explained that he was calling from the Blue Heron money exchange
in Pakwach. “There is somebody here who says she knows you and is
asking for you to send money. What is your name?” he heard him ask,
not him, but someone at the other end of the phone. “Nicole, do you
know Nicole, Nicole Negusse?” the man finally asked.

“Yes, I know her. Is she there with you?”

“Yes.”

“In Pakwach?”

“Yes, near Pakwach, in a camp near
Pakwach.”

“Can I speak with her?”

“Yes, but first we have to make some
arrangements. She wants you to send some money. If you agree, you
need to go to City Exchange off Luwum Street and give them the
money there, plus commission of eight percent, plus three thousand
shillings for the phone call. Do you agree?”

“Yes, yes I agree, tell her I will send one
hundred thousand shillings plus commission plus for the phone call
of course.” He could hear voices of conversation on the other
end.

The man came back on the line, “they said
that should be good. Remember its City Exchange near the Uhuru
market. When you give them the money they will call me and then I
can release the money here.”

“City Exchange got it, I’ll take care of it
right away. Can I speak with the young lady please?”

“Just a minute.”

“Hello, this is Nicole Negusse.”

“Hello Nicole, this is Father Boniface, I was
just speaking with your Uncle the other day. He was very worried,
he’ll be glad to hear about you.”

The mention of her Uncle jolted Nicole’s
emotions. She had been consumed with her own preservation that she
had forgotten she once belonged to a family. A sense of
sentimentality overcame her and her eyes welled up. “Yes,” she
said. “And my Aunt, how is my Aunt?”

“She is fine, your Uncle mentioned her as
well,” he said. “Nicole, listen, I am sending you some money, okay?
I am sending you one hundred thousand shillings. I think the best
thing would be for you to get to Pakwach and take a bus from
Pakwach to Kampala. Do you think you can do that?”

“I don’t know,” he heard her say and then he
heard her say “a bus to Kampala,” but she wasn’t speaking to him,
there was second conversation going on in the background.

“Nicole, Nicole,” he talked loudly trying to
get her attention.

“Yes”

“Is there someone else there I can talk to?
Someone who might know where the camp is?”

‘Just a minute,” she said and he heard her
pass the phone, “he wants to talk with you,” he heard her say.

“Yes,” he heard the voice drawl in Congolese
French.

****

When he received the call from Father
Boniface stating he would need the travel documents, Jonathan
didn’t know what he was talking about. It had been a while since
they had spoken and he had put the matter out of his mind. After
some initial confusion, his memory was triggered and he agreed with
characteristic reluctance to see what he could do. Father Boniface
offered to cover all costs and he was a hard man to say “no”
to.

Father Boniface sent two pictures of a young
woman to Jonathan’s apartment in an envelope wrapped in paper with
the name Nicole Negusse written on it. The photos revealed the soft
face of a young woman brown and full. Jonathan posed the question
to his landlord, an Indian who ran a small contracting company in
Kampala, in the hypothetical. “If one needed a passport and travel
documents in hurry, how would one do it?” His landlord recommended
his driver, Mahesh. “Mahesh has contacts in the immigration office,
he handles a lot of immigration problems.” He said that he would
have Mahesh wait in the car in the parking lot that evening after
dropping him off, and Jonathan could talk with him then.

At around seven o’clock that evening, as
told, he heard the sound of his landlord’s car pull into the
parking lot. He looked out the window to see the lights switch off
the white camry and his landlord close the passenger door behind
him. He waited a few minutes to allow his landlord safely into the
building so he didn’t have to pass him in the hall before making
his way down the stairs and out into the evening on the parking
lot. It was dusk and overhead a cluster of bats made their daily
migration in search of insects as Jonathan crossed to the parked
car. The driver was sitting with his head back and his eyes closed
and he tapped on the roof to let him know he was there.

“Are you Mahesh?”

“Yes sir, I am. Mr. Jonathan? How are
you?”