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. He seemed to have a strange glow on his face.
“Look at us. We are so young, just children. We don’t have mothers and fathers, sisters or brothers. We don’t have spears to hunt animals. Today we cook the last little bit of food we have. So what kind of people are we? Why is God punishing us?”
“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
