The lost boy. Aher Arop Bol
safety. He would not cross the river and leave thousands of refugees to be slaughtered, he shouted, as his bodyguards pulled him towards a boat on the river bank. Commander Salva Kiir looked at the hundreds of youngsters who had gathered near the boat. “Please! Help the children!” he shouted. “They are innocent. Help them!”
He refused to get onto the boat until his bodyguards had tied a large sheet of plastic to it. They then urged some boys to grab hold of it, so that they might be pulled across the water. Commander Kiir then turned to me. “Can you swim, boy?” he wanted to know. “Do you think you can make it across on your own?”
“Yes, sir. I can swim,” I said. “I have already been on the other side, but there’s no food over there, so I came back before the water rose so high.” I told him this because I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t brave.
He understood. “Well,” he said, “let’s cross first, and then I’ll order my soldiers to go and collect some food for you.”
Young boys were swarming towards the river. “Those of you who are able to had better swim,” Commander Kiir said to those nearest him. “We’ll take your clothes for you.”
He then told his bodyguards to help some of the boys onto the boat with him and pull the rest across using the plastic sheet. We who remained on the river bank were overwhelmed with respect for our leader.
It was true that I could swim, I had learned to in the camp, but this river was terrifying – big and powerful! Water was rushing down, splashing up against the rocks. However, Commander Kiir had said that we were to swim, and had offered to take our clothes to the other side and to provide food for us. My heart told me that I could do it. I took off my clothes and handed them to one of the commander’s bodyguards. Then, before the boat’s engines had even started, I jumped in and swam, making for an island in the middle of the rushing water.
I had almost reached it when the shooting started, sub-machine-gun fire that left me in no doubt that the enemy had arrived. Hundreds, who were unable to swim, threw themselves into the water and drowned. Others were shot and killed. Infants came floating past me. Their mothers must have drowned, I thought, as I fought with the river.
It was on that day that I learned that a newborn child will not sink. I saw the little ones crying as the water swept them away, but there was nothing I could do.
There was a lull in the shooting when I reached the opposite bank and I attempted to grab hold of a branch that reached down to the water. I knew that I would have to climb up the steep bank, but after swimming the river I didn’t have the strength for it. I tried and fell back three times. At last I succeeded. Then, dragging myself to my feet, I ran.
“Lie down and roll!” a soldier shouted at me.
I could not. There were too many dead bodies. I bent my back and continued to run, but I didn’t get far before the shooting resumed. Bullets were coming from all directions. Our own soldiers were in front of me. “Don’t run!” they yelled. “Throw yourself down flat!”
This time I obeyed.
When the firefight had fizzled out someone shouted at me to get up and run towards the SPLA soldiers. One of them grabbed hold of me and pulled me down behind a fallen tree trunk.
In the meantime, many people who had managed to cross the river now used the lull to get up and run for the road. I quickly joined them.
A priest was standing by the roadside. When he saw that I was naked, he picked up a shirt and tossed it to me. But just as I was reaching out to catch it a bullet struck a tree that stood near us, splitting it in half. “Get away from the road!” a soldier shouted, as the priest and I dived down together. “You two are targets!”
The priest and I rolled in different directions.
There was a rubbish dump in the forest on the other side of the Gilo River. We had visited it once, crossing the river to collect some useful items for the camp, but on that day I ran right past it and continued running through the forest for an hour, smashing through the bush.
When at last I thought that I was out of reach of the bullets I sat down with a group of grown-ups. They were trying to determine in which direction the road lay. “It must be near the mountain,” one said.
“I’m not returning to that road,” replied his companion. “It’s too dangerous. They will see us and drop bombs on us.”
More people arrived. Some were looking for lost family members. Others, like me, who had no family to worry about, were thinking about where they could find clothes, how to survive the next crisis and how long it would be before the UNHCR would come to our rescue.
At last the elders reached agreement. We would walk in the direction of the mountain, where they thought we would find the road. The road that the bombs were sure to fall on!
By then a great crowd of people had congregated. Some were cooking. Some were anxious to leave because they wanted to reach Pochella that same night. Others were calling out, trying to locate the relatives of babies and young children they had snatched from the bloody river.
I was able to find a shirt and a pair of shorts – a friend of mine from Panyido had managed to hold on to his bag in which he had some spare clothes – and teamed up with boys of my own age that I knew. They had some beans and maize that they had brought from the camp. We cooked, resting in the middle of the crowd, watching people passing by.
When my companions and I had finished our meal we got to our feet and rejoined the dazed throng. We tried to stay together and, for safety, to keep to the middle of the crowd, but we soon got separated. I plodded on until I was too tired to continue, then joined a group of people sleeping on the side of the road. I was unable to sleep, though, so I got up again and kept moving until I found another family sleeping on the side of the road. I huddled up with them as more refugees joined us.
I was still awake when, around midnight, there was a sudden commotion. I couldn’t see anything, but I heard people calling out and scrambled for safety in the middle of the group as a voice wailed somewhere in the darkness. Someone had been dragged off by a lion!
When at last morning came we found an ownerless bag lying on the ground and discovered the victim had been a teacher. Some soldiers told us that they had seen the lion, but couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting the refugees.
We still had a long way to go, and it was already getting hot, so those who had food found a place in the shade and started cooking breakfast. A few were willing to share what they had with us children.
Later that day we reached the Sudanese town of Pochella, where I found my friends in a state of turmoil. We were desperate to join up with the boys from our groups again, but many had disappeared. There were no adults to call us for food distribution. We were alone.
At about ten o’clock that same evening, while the new arrivals were still settling in, we heard the sound of an aeroplane coming from the direction of Ethiopia.
“It’s food! It’s the UNHCR!” someone shouted.
But others dived for cover. “Lie down! Lie down!” they cried.
The plane flew over Pochella and disappeared in the direction of the river, then it returned. It had been sent by the north Sudanese government to attack us!
“Don’t look up!” a woman near me warned. “From a plane your eyes look bigger than a river. They will drop a bomb on you. Don’t look at it!”
As she was speaking, we heard two bombs exploding on the other side of the border. Then the plane came for us.
We learned later that a large number of refugees had been killed in the first strike. In Pochella more cows than people died because, mercifully, the part of the town that was hit was only sparsely populated.
And that was how President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s government welcomed us back from Panyido.
Chapter 8
We boys stayed in Pochella