The boys quickly devoured the scraps and resumed their game. Ayuel joined in, but stopped suddenly and asked, “Where’s Chuei? I want to check on him.”
“Asleep over there by the thorn bushes.”
“Hey, Chuei,” Malual said, “Wake up. Let’s play ball.”
“Let me sleep,” Chuei mumbled. “I don’t feel like talking.”
Ayuel shook his shoulder gently.
“Is that you, Mama?” Chuei said with his eyes closed. “Are you bringing me sorghum cakes?” His voice sounded happy, but his words didn’t make sense.
Donayok came over and knelt beside him. Without saying anything he gently turned Chuei’s face toward them.
“What’s wrong with him?” said the boy who held the rag ball.
Donayok pulled Chuei’s eyelids over his eyes. “He’s dead.”
Ayuel grieved over the loss of his cousin Chuei. All day he sat by the thorn bushes next to his cousin’s body. The others came and went. Some stayed awhile. Before he’d lost his family, Ayuel never thought about any of them dying. He’d obeyed his father and his mother. He fought with Aleer and tried to be like Deng. When he took the cows out to pastureland, he never thought about coming back and not finding his family. Life was normal and would go on being normal. Of course, he loved them, but they would always be there. Today he missed them terribly. Worse than ever.
But with Chuei and the others—he knew death hung over their heads. It was all around them. The bonds among them had grown deep and strong. Even the pleading of his uncle hadn’t been able pull him away from his group of seventeen. Somehow by taking care of each other, they had made it all this long way to Ethiopia without losing a single one. Now Chuei had been torn from them. He felt as if his own heart had been ripped from his chest.
Akon came and sat beside him. She stayed a long time with tears trickling down her cheeks. Finally, she said, “I think we should bury him.”
“We have nothing to dig with,” Ayuel said without looking at her.
“We can cover him with brush so he isn’t exposed.…” she offered.
Gutthier, Malual, Madau and some of the others helped break off the brittle thorn-bush branches and make a big mound over their friend. Afterward, Donayok said a prayer and they sang a Dinka hymn about God, the Shepherd of Life and Death, that Malual’s father, the church pastor, had written. Then, with hands bleeding from the thorns, they left their friend and went to look for another spot to call home.
As the group wandered through the masses, they noticed several people running in one direction. They stretched their necks to see what was happening and saw three trucks creeping into the crowd. When the trucks stopped, the boys approached and saw a man climb on top of the cab of the front vehicle.
“That’s Officer Chol!” Madau said with excitement in his voice. “No, I guess not. It’s someone else, but he has a microphone like his.”
The man holding the microphone was neatly dressed in a camouflage uniform. His loud voice echoed over the crowds: “Everyone stand back. Please stand back.” About a dozen men with him pulled out their rifles and surrounded the trucks to make sure everyone obeyed.
“I represent the government of Ethiopia. This maize is a generous gift from the people of Panyido to you. The people brought us whatever they could spare. It is just enough for each group to have one meal. Bring whatever containers you have and we will fill them.” People started clamoring, pushing and yelling.
A gunshot rang out and scared the crowd into silence.
“Now, hear me out,” said the government man. “One person from each group of about twenty, line up over here on the right. Then take your food and your group far to the other side. Don’t, I repeat, don’t eat the grain raw, and don’t eat too much. Chew slowly. The Panyido River is just beyond those trees, so you can get water and boil the grain until it is soft. And don’t come back for more. When these trucks are empty, we will go for the rest that the townspeople have collected so everyone can have one portion. There’s enough…”
The crowd drowned out the officer’s voice as they queued up to the trucks. Donayok sent half his group to fill their containers with water and the others to find firewood. He chose for himself the hardest task of standing in line with their one cooking pot to receive the grain. Even though the river was a mile away, they all knew walking was easier than standing in the hot sun. There would be shade by the water.
Fortunately for the sixteen, their grain lasted for two meals. A few days later, the government of Ethiopia brought in several trucks of maize and gave each group an allotment, enough for a week, with one small meal a day.
Children who had survived long periods without food now began to die from eating more than they were used to. Their thin bodies couldn’t adjust to processing the grain. The flies, filth and stench became unbearable. With thousands of people packed close together in the relentless heat by day and cold by night, they became too weak to make the long trek outside of camp to relieve themselves or to carry away the dead. With the absence of even minimal sanitation and the lack of clean water, large numbers of people became ill with diarrhea, followed by violent vomiting.
Two Ethiopian government men came back in less than a week with an empty truck. Without bothering to get out, one of them talked over a microphone. “We are trying as best we can to get health workers here, but it will be a while. Be patient.” Groans went up from the assembly. “You must clean up the space around you and boil the water you drink. Cholera has broken out here.” Shrieks mingled with the moans. Everyone knew about the vicious and deadly disease. “Take the dead bodies outside the camp, but don’t take them near the river.” The truck turned and sped away.
Ayuel’s group carefully followed the rules now. Like the others, they had become lax, because it took so much of their energy to do anything. But even with all their care, another boy from the group died during the night.
SEVEN
GRIEF AND WELCOMES
A few days later, Ayuel and his best friend, Malual Kuer, went down by the Panyido River for firewood to cook the day’s meal. After bathing and collecting a nice bundle of sticks, they sat on the bank to rest. The water’s edge swarmed with masses of people in and out of the river but the two boys kept to themselves. Certainly they would boil the drinking water they had brought back.
While they leaned against tree trunks, Malual began singing a Dinka song his father had written during the famine a few years back:
Lord, we know that we have wronged you many times.
We know that we just believe in words, but not in spirit.
So, Lord of the whole world, if You weren’t there,
We would have no seed left during this famine.
So, Lord, come and bless us,
Give us rain so that our cattle can feed on grass.
Give us food to eat so that our souls can live.
Ooh, Lord help us!
When Malual stopped singing, he said, “God is punishing us.”
“Why? Why do you say that?” Ayuel said. He looked at his friend and could tell his words were serious.