FOR SEVERAL DAYS the six of us walked on a tiny path that was about a foot wide, walled by
thick bushes on either side. Junior was in front of me and his hands didn't swing as they used
to when he strolled across the yard on his way back from school. I wanted to know what he
was thinking, but everyone was too quiet and I didn't know how to break the silence. I
thought about where my family was, whether I would be able to see them again, and wished
that they were safe and not too heartbroken about Junior and me. Tears formed in my eyes,
but I was too hungry to cry.
We slept in abandoned villages, where we lay on the bare ground and hoped that the
following day we would be able to find something other than raw ca**ava to eat. We had
pa**ed through a village that had banana, orange, and coconut trees. Khalilou, who knew
how to climb better than all of us, mounted each of those trees and plucked as much from
them as he could. The bananas were raw, so we boiled them by adding wood to a fire that
was in one of the outdoor kitchens. Someone must have left that village when he or she saw
us coming, because the fire was new. The bananas didn't taste good at all, because there
was no salt or any other ingredients, but we ate every single bit, just to have something in
our stomachs. Afterward, we ate some oranges and some coconuts. We could not find
something substantial to eat. We got hungrier day after day, to the point that our stomachs
were hurting and our visions blurred at times. We had no choice but to sneak back into
Mattru Jong, along with some people we encountered on the path, to get some money we had left behind, so that we could buy food.
On our way through the quiet and almost barren town, which now seemed unfamiliar, we
saw rotten pots of food that had been left behind. Bodies, furniture, clothes, and all kinds of
property were scattered all over. On one verandah we saw an old man sitting in a chair as if
asleep. There was a bullet hole in his forehead, and underneath the stoop lay the bodies of
two men whose genitals, limbs, and hands had been chopped off by a machete that was on
the ground next to their piled body parts. I vomited and immediately felt feverish, but we had
to continue on. We ran on tiptoe as fast and as cautiously as we could, avoiding the main
streets. We stood against walls of houses and inspected the tiny gravel roads between
houses before crossing to another house. At one point, as soon as we had crossed the road,
we heard footsteps. There was no immediate cover, so we had to swiftly run onto a
verandah and hide behind stacks of cement bricks. We peeped from behind the bricks and
saw two rebels who wore baggy jeans, sleepers,
*
and white T-shirts. Their heads were tied
with red handkerchiefs and they carried their guns behind their backs. They were escorting a
group of young women who carried cooking pots, bags of rice, mortars and pestles. We
watched them until they were out of sight before we began moving again. We finally got to
Khalilou's house. All the doors were broken and the house was torn apart. The house, like
every other in the town, had been looted. There was a bullet hole in the doorframe and
broken gla**es of Star beer, a popular brand in the country, and empty cigarette packets on
the verandah floor. There was nothing of use to be found in the house. The only food that
was available was raw rice in bags that were too heavy to carry and would slow us down. But the money was, luckily, still where I had kept it, which was in a tiny plastic bag under
the foot of the bed. I put it inside my crape, and we headed back toward the swamp.
The six of us, including the people we had entered the town together with, gathered at
the edge of the swamp as planned and started crossing the clearing three at a time. I was in
the second batch, with Talloi and another person. We started to crawl across the clearing at
the signal of the first group that had made it across. While we were in the middle of the
clearing, they signaled for us to lie flat, and as soon as we hit the ground, they motioned for
us to continue crawling. There were dead bodies everywhere and flies were feasting on the
congealed blood on them. After we made it to the other side, we saw that there were rebels
on guard in a little tower at the wharf that overlooked the clearing. The next batch was
Junior and two others. As they were crossing, something fell out of someone's pocket onto
an aluminum pan in the clearing. The sound was loud enough to get the attention of the rebels
on guard, and they pointed their guns toward where the sound had come from. My heart
throbbed with pain as I watched my brother lying on the ground, pretending to be one of the
dead bodies. Several shots were heard in town, and that distracted the rebels and made them
turn the other way. Junior and the two others made it. His face was dusty and there were
residues of mud in between his teeth. He breathed heavily, clenching his fists. One boy
among the last batch to cross the clearing was too slow, because he carried a big bag of
things he had gathered from his house. As a result, the rebels who were on guard in the little
tower saw him and opened fire. Some of the rebels underneath the tower started running and
shooting toward us. We whispered to the boy, “Drop the bag and hurry. The rebels are
coming. Come on.” But the boy didn't listen. It fell from his shoulder after he had crossed
the clearing, and as we ran away, I saw him pulling on the bag, which was stuck tree stumps. We ran as fast as we could until we lost the rebels. It was sunset and we
walked quietly toward the big red sun and the still sky that awaited darkness. The boy who
caused the rebels to spot us didn't make it to the first crowded village we reached.
That night we were temporarily happy that we had some money, and were hoping to buy
some cooked rice with ca**ava or potato leaves for dinner. We high-fived each other as we
approached the village market, and our stomachs growled as the smell of palm oil wafted
from cooking huts. But when we got back to the cooked-food stalls, we were disappointed to
find that those who had been selling ca**ava leaves, okra soup, and potato leaves, all
cooked with dried fish and rich palm oil served with rice, had ceased to do so. Some of
them were saving their food in case things got worse, and others simply didn't want to sell
any more for unexplained reasons.
After all the trouble and risk we undertook to get the money, it became useless. We
would have been less hungry if we had stayed at the village instead of walking the miles to
Mattru Jong and back. I wanted to blame someone for this particular predicament, but there
was no one to be blamed. We had made a logical decision and it had come to this. It was a
typical aspect of being in the war. Things changed rapidly in a matter of seconds and no one
had any control over anything. We had yet to learn these things and implement survival
tactics, which was what it came down to. That night we were so hungry that we stole
people's food while they slept. It was the only way to get through the night.