All light quickly faded in the thick jungle but the crowd kept tramping—thousands of feet marching through the undergrowth. Ayuel felt pursued by the beat, even though he was part of it.
A low growl not too far away stopped the children. They stood silently listening. Ayuel’s heart pounded in his throat. He dared not even breathe deeply. The growl came again, louder, more like a roar. The seventeen stood frozen in total darkness. Only far away the rustling of marchers continued.
Another loud roar. Angry now.
A pause. Then the shrill cry of children: “Oh, eeyo, oh, ee-yo, no-oh!” More low growls. Crunching sounds. Then silence.
The group sat huddled together in the grass for a long time, not risking talk.
In the distance, they could hear the howling of different animals, like dogs, only more terrible.
“Hyenas,” whispered Donayok.
The howls became louder—and closer. Again screams of children. Snarls. Thrashing about. Screams. More snarls. Quiet.
Ayuel and his friends shivered in the darkness, startled by every bird screech and every rustle in the grass. With thousands of people crouched in the jungle, no one could be sure if movements were by human or beast. They dared not close their eyes—though it was impossible to see anything. Squatted close together, terrified, they waited through the long night, hoping to be alive in the morning.
“Ayuelo, get up.” Gutthier, his half-brother, was gently shaking his arm and whispering in his ear. Pale light filtered through the trees, and waking birds chirped innocently. Ayuel could hear voices over where the terrible night noises had come from.
“What? What?” Ayuel said too loudly. He had fallen asleep on Gutthier’s shoulder for a few minutes just before dawn. Startled, he felt sick and vomited the green leaves he’d eaten the evening before. “What’s going on?”
“Let’s go see.”
The boys pushed their way through the thick vines to a place where lines of people filed past, some lingering, but mostly they shook their heads and went on. Some cried, others talked softly.
Ayuel and his friends stretched their necks to get a look. Bloody bones of six or seven children lay among shreds of clothing in the grass. Flies buzzed.
“Lions.”
“And hyenas over here.”
The seventeen chose not to go look at the second place.
Some of the SPLA soldiers were standing nearby. One said, “We’re sorry. We are here to protect you… we… There just aren’t enough of us.” He turned his head away.
Officer Chol said, “We must walk through the jungle by day so we can see the dangers. We’ll lie still at night. He shook his head and blew his nose on his shirttail. “We can get out quicker going this way. Follow me.” He turned and began walking, his two young brothers trailing close behind him. The officer took a little black box from his belt and held it close to his ear.
“What’s in that little box?” asked Madau, always the curious one.
“I think it’s a radio,” Ayuel said. “My father has one at his office.” If he has an office—if he’s alive.
“He listens to BBC,” Malual said.
“What’s that?” Ayuel wanted to talk about anything except what they had just seen.
“All I know is, it’s not in the Dinka language.”
“Then it must not be important.”
The boys shrugged their shoulders and followed the officer.
The children soon learned, as gossip spread, that wild animals had attacked many throughout the camp that night, leaving similar bloody scenes. As the daytime heat rose, it became difficult to breathe the humid air. Ayuel felt faint, but he held to vines and scrub trees to pull himself along through the thick underbrush. More than once they came across a shallow pool. Each time Ayuel untied his calabash from around his waist and drank the stagnant water.
By the third nightfall, they were out of the thickest part of the jungle with no more nearby attacks. “We must walk until we come to safe cover,” the soldier with them said. After struggling through the vines all day, the children wanted to lie down, but the soldier told them it wasn’t safe yet. Not only the animals posed a danger, but also some had died in the jungle from eating too many of the wrong kind of leaves.
“Let’s stay here just a little while,” said Akon, the only girl among the seventeen. “I’m so tired.” She sat down and then fell over and lay still. Images of his little sister sleeping, curled up safely on her mat, crossed Ayuel’s mind.
He stood over her a couple of minutes. Her bare feet, scratched and caked with dried blood, stuck out from under her soiled cotton dress. “There are wild animals here. Remember? They will chew you up like they did the children the other night. Come on.” Though weak himself, he took her arm and pulled her up.
Six weeks had passed since the beginning of their journey to Ethiopia, and again they were completely without water and without food. With no shelter in the desert, they now must walk by day and sleep in the open at night. Like sticks, the legs and arms of the children seemed stuck to their bodies, skin pulled tight over ribs and swollen stomachs, sagging elsewhere. Hair that their mothers had kept neatly cropped now stood in clumps with patches of orange. Those who still could moved slowly, moaning in agony.
Every now and then a child fell, writhed and groaned in the dirt until laying forever silent. Some gave up and laid down quietly to wait for death. With no time for sacred burial, friends of the dead piled dry brush over the bodies as they had seen earlier. Such makeshift graves lay everywhere, some exposing decaying flesh and bone, all covered with buzzing flies. The scorching sun bore down on the naked and near-naked bodies of the living. Unrelenting. No refuge anywhere from the heat and stench of death.
In desperation, Officer Chol shot his gun into the air and screamed this prayer: “Oh God, don’t do this to these children! Please, God!” His cries seemed to fall on deaf ears of the Almighty.
Ayuel dropped to the ground under a tree whose bare branches gave no shade. He moved his lips to say I can’t go on, but his mouth and tongue were too dry and swollen to utter even one word. The sun blinded his eyes and the caked earth burned his skin. Death clutched at his neck trying to choke off his life. He curled his toes inside his mutkukalei. Some child would find his “dead and gone” sandals and pull them from his lifeless feet.
As he lay there on his side, Malual Kuer knelt on the hot ground beside him and put his hand under the side of Ayuel’s face. Ayuel could see that his best friend’s eyes were sunken into his skull, like his own must be. He let his eyelids drop shut, content to give up.
He could feel the vibration of someone running toward him, but he didn’t turn his head. “I heard he was down.” The voice belonged to their leader, Donayok. “I came as soon as I could.”
“He’s not well,” Malual said.
“You must live,” Donayok whispered. He untied the calabash from around Ayuel’s waist. “You must pee in this… and drink it.”
Ayuel’s forehead wrinkled, even in his weakness. How disgusting!
“I’ve done it. Others are doing it,” he urged.
Ayuel tried, but his body was too dehydrated to urinate.
Others walked past him, moaning and crying.