“I cannot answer that.” Ayuel threw a pebble into the river and watched the circles grow wide where it sank. He tried to find some reasons for Malual. “Maybe because our fathers or grandfathers were not good. They did something bad. Perhaps God is punishing us because our fathers did something against the Lord. That could be why He’s punishing the children of Sudan.”
“You know the scripture,” Malual said. “It says God is a jealous god. He carries revenge on the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generations.”
The boys picked up the sticks for firewood and headed back to the camp. On the way, Malual complained of stomach pains. Then he told Ayuel he was having bloody diarrhea.
“My mother used to boil roots to make a tea that helped that,” Ayuel said. So they dug roots with their hands and took them back and made tea.
“We have no knowledge of these roots, whether they can be used for medicine or not,” Malual said. “They might be poison.” He wouldn’t drink the liquid, but lay down and held his stomach.
Malual Kuer, the strongest in the group, became weaker and sicker by the hour. Ayuel sat beside him, giving him water and trying to get him to eat. They talked no more of God’s punishment.
On the morning of the second day, Ayuel held Malual’s head in his lap and fanned away the flies. We’re age-mates. We’re supposed to grow up together. Please, Malual, don’t leave me. Please, God, don’t let him. Tears dripped off his chin and fell on his friend’s neck. He wiped them off with the tail of his T-shirt. As he looked into Malual’s face, he saw that strange glow again.
“I’ll ask God about it,” Malual whispered. He closed his eyes and was gone.
Lord, we know that we have wronged you…Lord, come and bless us. Malual’s voice rang in Ayuel’s head. He remembered first meeting Malual when he’d followed that angelic voice through the village. Since that day, they had remained close friends. Sometimes Ayuel sang the words aloud as a way of mourning for his friend—his age-mate, his soul-mate. Yet the song was always there from the moment he rose to the moment until he lay down at night. So give us food to eat so that our souls can live. Sometimes just a line repeated itself over and over. Other times, he would sing the whole song as a prayer.
One morning after the worst of the cholera had subsided, the fourteen sat around drinking what they loosely called tea—water left from boiled leaves. Gutthier turned to his friends and said, “So… this is worse than when we walked every night. We could keep walking then because we thought we were going to a good place. But now we are here, and it’s not a good place.”
“I heard yesterday that there are other camps in Ethiopia,” Donayok said, sipping his tea from a gourd shell. “Dimma and Itang. Close by there is Markas. Maybe we came to the wrong one.”
“I hear they teach you to shoot guns in Markas and the food is better,” Madau said.
Ayuel remembered that Malual had once said he would like to be a soldier.
“I think Markas is not far from here,” Madau said, “I’d rather walk than sit around this smelly place all day. Who wants to go?”
Before they could make a decision, a commotion broke out around a vehicle that apparently had just pulled into camp. Since the meager food supply had arrived yesterday, this must be something else. A man’s voice boomed over the microphone. What was he saying? “Listen, listen,” Donayok said, motioning for them to hush.
The officer was standing on what they later learned was a jeep. “Tomorrow is a very important day in our lives. A congressman from the United States of America is coming here to visit you. The whole world will then know what terrible things are happening to the children of Sudan and in the refugee camps here in Ethiopia. They will want to help us. It is not right for you to endure this tragedy.”
Several people started shouting, “No, no! It’s not right!”
“What is a congressman?” Ayuel asked. “And where did he say he was from?”
“Unite something,” Madau said. “There are some Nuer boys here from Unity. That’s the town with an oil company where the government killed everybody in a raid. I hope that’s not where he’s from.”
“We will want to welcome the congressman,” said the official. “So I am going to teach you some English words. This is what the words look like.” Two men held up a huge banner attached to long poles at each end.
Ayuel had seen Arabic words before, but this didn’t look anything like that. A wave of excitement came over him. He was going to learn something.
“This is the first word right here.” The officer pointed to some marks at the left on the banner.
“I can read that,” said a boy, whom Ayuel had never seen before. He read off the words rapidly and then repeated them in Dinka. He grinned at his own accomplishment.
Amazed, Ayuel said, “How do you know how to read English?”
“Just do.” He rattled off a bunch of unintelligible words.
Ayuel was duly impressed, but said, “Let’s listen to the officer.”
“This says welcome.” The officer moved his stick to the next group of marks. “Does this look like the first word?”
A chorus of voices shouted, “Yes.”
“Right. Now repeat after me: Wel-come, wel-come.”
“Wel-come, wel-come.”
After teaching them to say American congressman, the man said, “Now some time tomorrow the congressman from the United States of America will be here. When the men hold up this banner, we will all shout out the English words you have learned. Now go practice saying these words to each other: Welcome, welcome, American Congressman.”
The boy who seemed to know English turned to Ayuel and offered his hand, “My name’s Emmanuel Jal.”
Ayuel shook his hand and introduced himself. “Am I saying it right?” He repeated the words they had just learned.
“Almost. It’s like this.” The boy practiced with him a few times until a bunch of his friends came by. “See you later, Ayuel.”
The next day, Ayuel—as well as the whole camp—watched with curiosity as long metal poles with some boxes atop rose at the place where the trucks usually stopped. Late in the afternoon some extremely bright lights shone from the boxes. Like the sun, they were too bright to look at directly. Donayok put Ayuel up on his shoulders so he could tell the others what was going on.
“They’re setting up a shade for the congressman, sort of a shelter with four wooden poles and a roof. Now a whole line of vehicles is coming toward the lights,” he reported. “But only one is a truck. The others are low with tops on them. I see people inside.”
“They’re called cars,” Donayok said with a laugh. “I’ve seen them in Bor.”
“Well, there is one that is very, very long with lots of windows. It has little flags on each side and it’s black and shiny. They’ve stopped by the lights and the shelter now. Two men are getting out of the long one—the long car. They look very strange, wearing funny clothes with sleeves that come down to their hands. Their skin is pale, much lighter than any Arab.”
“They’re khawaja, white people,” someone said.
“Now what are they doing?” asked Madau and pulled eagerly on Ayuel’s foot that hung over Donayok’s shoulder.
“Someone is pointing something big—I don’t think it’s a gun—right at the two pale men, the khawaja.”
“That’s