Beyond the Vapour Trail Read online

  ‘Sure, let’s take the fast boat.’

  He took Keren aside.

  ‘OK. Ah, my friend, I just need fifty dollars up front,’ he said to Keren. ‘For fuel.’

  Keren pulled out fifty dollars and gave it to him. He jumped on the back of his friend’s motorbike and they rode off and disappeared.

  Keren walked back to us.

  ‘Ah … I think I might have just made a mistake.’

  Well, what’s life if you don’t learn something? So there we were, standing on the dock, minus the tour guide, the boat and fifty dollars. It seems appropriate to add a travel idiot warning here about Keren’s mistake, but I cannot – because about twenty minutes later they returned with a container of fuel. Then they paddled a small boat out and returned with the ‘fast boat’ at the dock. Except … it looked like it hadn’t been used in months. Maybe years. It was completely pepper-coated with dead insects, some type of tiny black lake fly, and two other guys now joined them, jumping in and quickly scrubbing away to clean up the boat.

  But then the real tour guide arrived, in a uniform, with lots of passengers, and a larger, official-looking boat arrived at the dock. It really looked like a tour boat – it had proper tour signs and everything. This was the tour we had booked with and were supposed to meet. Keren, Anna and I looked at each other and thought, Uh oh.

  I approached the official tour guide and told her our predicament.

  ‘Well, it’s too late now, you’ve made an arrangement with him,’ she explained abruptly. Some of her passengers were listening in and looked on, blinking at us. Slowly they all blinked their way onto the nice big tour boat, all official-looking and organised with its nice signs. The official tour boat launched, and chug-chugged off across the lake. We looked at our fast boat. It was still dirty, and seemed a bit small by comparison. We watched as the guys continued to scrub away at the dead flies. For a long time. Then I looked up at the slow boat. Slow as it was, it was disappearing out of sight. I was trying to calculate the advantage of this so-called fast boat and our extra fifteen dollars each. It wasn’t quite adding up.

  But, soon enough, our boat was ready, now actually looking quite white and fresh, and the three of us boarded and the fast boat began. Very slowly. But then suddenly, we took off. It really was fast. So fast, in fact, that the wind was in our hair, and Keren and Anna put their sunnies on and looked very Mediterranean-cruisy. Soon we saw, caught up with and overtook the slow boat. The passengers blinked at us, but our eyes were inscrutable behind our sunnies and windswept profiles. Eventually their boat was no more than a dot in the distance behind us.

  Until the fast boat conked out. Completely.

  This created a quiet moment to ponder Lake Victoria. It really is a big lake. There was now no land to be seen on any side. And we were somewhere in the middle of it, our hair no longer streaming behind us, but sitting limp like the boat. Our intrepid crew were dismantling things and found the engine, which I thought was good, and they began fiddling and sticking a tube of fuel in somewhere and winning not much more than the occasional spluttering noise.

  The slow boat caught up to us and overtook us. We blinked at them. They continued on.

  Yet you had to hand it to our crew. They never gave the appearance of knowing what they were doing like the grumpy tour people, but apparently they really did. The engine restarted, and once again we were cutting across the lake and soon overtook the slow tour boat again, arriving at Ngamba Island long before the others. We had the island to ourselves, as promised, for more than an hour.

  I wandered down to the shore. I was standing in thongs on the lake’s edge, and one of our tour operators (or boat thieves – I wasn’t sure which at this point) wandered up and stood beside me. ‘Be careful of bilharzia,’ he said. Oh yes, bilharzia. Schistosomiasis. I was familiar with this phenomenon through our work with communities. It’s a lovely little worm that spends part of its life cycle in snails. Then, for a change of scenery, it burrows into human skin through your feet – in water just like this – and makes its way through your body and arrives at … actually you don’t want to know, but it does a serious tour. Sometimes a worm might take a wrong turn and end up in your eyeball.

  His reminder had the desired effect. I observed the snails all around my thongs in the water through eyes that were not keen to have worms burrow inside them.

  The slow boat eventually arrived and the island took on a whole new complexion of slightly more tour-guided busyness.

  The island was divided by a massive fence, and as feeding time approached, the chimpanzees slowly began to appear out of the bush and gather in high numbers. They looked through at us, waiting to be fed.

  Suddenly there was a commotion among a group of females, and recognisable conflict. A young female was being bullied by an older chimp. She was being ostracised yet she didn’t want to back off. So the older female bit her. She responded in fury. I pointed my camera at her and caught her leaping, frozen in mid-air, teeth bared, all rage. A keeper beside me explained the call she was using was akin to a mating call, to attract the attention of the males. Meanwhile, the older female was trying to shut her up with physical intimidation. Finally one of the older males eventually wandered over and acted mildly grumpy for just a moment and this put a stop to the entire fuss. I recognised his ‘I’m over this, will you guys knock it off?’ efforts from my own parenting.

  We were also informed about an evacuation point. If the chimpanzees managed to break through, we were to consider them dangerous animals and we would need to flee the island. Then it struck me. I had pictured the chimps as being locked behind the high fence. But in fact they had almost the entire island to themselves. We were the ones locked away in a small corner behind the fence with the souvenirs. Who was really in the cage? Except that we could escape by boat, at will. Unless you were with the slow boat, in which case you were leaving very soon anyway. I said to Keren, ‘Well, we can stay longer, and then take the fast boat back and be home for dinner before half-past five.’

  One of the slow-boat tourists overheard us and spoke to the grumpy tour lady.

  ‘How can we go back on the fast boat?’

  ‘You can’t. You’re already booked on this boat,’ she half snapped.

  They left. The island returned to silence – at least the kind of silence that is made up only of sounds of nature or sounds we make ourselves. We drank it in, that smugness of not being led by the nose in a group tour. About forty minutes later we were ready, jumped in our fast boat, wind in our hair, passing the slow boat and heading back. One of our operators was now pretty sure he wanted an Australian girlfriend, but this didn’t seem to be on Keren’s list of things to do. We learnt that the boat belonged to the AIDS Council, and the fast-boat tour was a bit of moonlighting. But we were home well before moonlight. And long before the slow boat.

  I shared this story in an email to my eleven-year-old son Ciarán, who at the time was fascinated with birds.

  From: Brett Pierce

  Sent: 04/02/06

  To: Kathleen Pierce

  Subject: Message for Ciarán

  Ciarán-iarán-iarán, he ran he ran he ran here ran here, an ear, an ear an ear, ran nearer an era a near ah! knee run! Annie runny any hurry! A nah! Re-arnie uh … near? un-near!

  Ciarán.

  I have decided not to say anything funny in this first paragraph. Hello. That’s not funny. I was in Burundi, and Mr Downer said not to go there. That makes it all the more worthwhile to visit. Oops. I said Mr Downer, and I didn’t want to say anything funny. Burundi is the 3rd poorest country in the world. It’s good to at least be ahead of someone else, isn’t it. We should all aim for something.

  I have a few bird photos I think you’ll like. On Saturday, I went with two work friends - Anna and Keren - to go to this island on Lake Victoria - which is the second largest fresh water lake in the world. I think Burundi should look at this lake and aspire to something more. When we got there, this sneaky guy pretended to be
with the tour company, and took us straight down to the wharf. Then he said, you can take the slow boat, over two hours - or the really fast boat. 1 hour. $35 for slow boat. $50 for fast boat. Umm… OK, let’s take the fast boat. We could see the slow boat, but I couldn’t see which one was the fast boat. So he asked for $50 straight away. ‘For fuel’. Keren gave him $50 and he ran away.

  We began to wonder if we had made a mistake.

  But then some guys brought a second boat around, and started cleaning it. It had dead flies (lake flies) and bird droppings.

  We began to wonder if we had made a mistake.

  Then all the people came down from the tour with the guide, very organised, and started getting into the slow boat. And we realised we should be with them. Oh no. What now? The guys cleaning the boat said, no - it’s OK, he’ll come back. Soon. The grumpy tour guide lady said, well, you’ve made a deal with him now, I can’t help you.

  People in the slow boat looked at us, and started feeling sorry for us. Finally the guy came back with some fuel. Then they lifted up the engine covers and started fiddling with the engine. Uh oh. The other people were all in the slow boat, all ready to go. Then we got in too. We have to beat them! But the slow boat started. ‘I thought we were going to beat them?’ ‘Yes, once we get started.’ Then … we took off! In our shiny white clean speeding boat, crashing over the waves. The people in the slow boat got smaller and smaller in the distance. We were cruising, baby.

  Then, when we could no longer see land, the engine spluttered, and we stopped.

  They pulled open the engine. They pulled some hoses and stuff. The engine just made funny noises. We looked at each other, and all bobbed up and down on this boat.

  We wondered if we had made a mistake.

  Then the engine started and we took off. We got to the island, but there was a boat coming out to take us off, and it was really, really slow. ‘Quick! We have to beat the slow boat! We have to be on the island like we’ve been there since breakfast and we’re nearly bored!!’ And we did. We took 50 minutes. They took over two hours. We were the rulers of this island. For you, this island is a sanctuary of birds, which I took some photos of. For everyone else, there is a little attraction known as chimpanzees. The slow boat people who - eventually - arrived were quite nice.

  When it was over, I casually said, ‘Well… it only remains to take the fast boat home then.’ A slow boat person heard me. Of course, I wouldn’t have said it unless a few of them were near. He said to the grumpy tour guide lady, ‘How do we get on the fast boat?’ ‘You can’t. You’ve already paid.’ The slow boat people got on their slow boat and took off. We were casually shopping, taking photos, looking bored. Much later, we got in our super cruiser. And off we went. Wind in our hair. Sunglasses. Anna leaning over the back sunning herself like a rich girl in the Mediterranean. The slow boat people watched us go past. And we never saw the slow boat people again.

  Although we did get very sunburnt. It wasn’t the Mediterranean. The slow boat people had some shade.

  I’m in Kenya now. It’s dinner time. I’m going down to have something.

  Hope Jared had a great day.

  Love you.

  Dad

  XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXY(oops)XXXXXXXXX

  CHAPTER 11

  Betty Alajo’s Story: Through Her Own Eyes

  In 2014 I visited Betty again. She was now a young woman of twenty-one. She sat in a quiet empty cafe of a hotel in Soroti with her first ever cup of coffee, put four or five teaspoons of sugar in it, and then told me her story, in her own words.

  I started with my mother alone, I never knew my father. My mother had four children but the other three all passed on. I was staying with my mother alone and she was the one taking care of both of us. Back then, she was a businesswoman who sold small fish, omena, at the markets. She would travel to different markets to sell them.

  My mother had a brother. For some time my uncle came back from the army and was staying at the home. My uncle used to beat me whenever my mother went to the market. Then we left home and had to move to senior quarters in Arapai. When we left home we stayed in the senior quarters about two years.

  Background: At some point Clere’s brother came and stayed with them, but eventually Clere realised he was mistreating Betty. To protect her she moved into the senior quarters in Arapai, small concrete brick rooms built for the elderly. Sometime in the past Clere had contracted HIV and this had now become AIDS. After two years living in senior quarters, her health was fading.

  On a certain day, it was around a Thursday, I got information. They told me, ‘A mzungu (white man) is coming to see you.’ My mum was not around at home, she had gone to the Arapai market. Then I went looking for Mum. We went back home, but it was later on that day that you came. I think it was around 2 p.m. So you came out of the car, took our photos, myself and mum. And we gave you a rooster. You left, but you told me that you would come back again.

  So we heard a rumour that the rebels would come, and that made us leave. We all moved from the senior quarters to Aloet Primary School. That very day the rebels came and attacked a nearby village. After attacking that village they crossed over and they got us at the school – the same day.

  Background: The Aloet Primary School had already been used to house people displaced from the north like the family I had met on the road. With rumours the LRA might attack the area, people were evacuated from the senior quarters where Betty and her mother were living and sent to stay at the Aloet school. A small local militia known as the ‘arrow boys’ were guarding Arapai. They had only been hastily trained and were few in number, but this was a local initiative by the community to defend themselves.

  That very night the rebels moved in from the north-west and attacked. One of the arrow boys was killed and they realised they were hopelessly outnumbered. They fled to Soroti. They reached Soroti by midnight and reported the attack to the UPDF, the Ugandan army, which was now stationed in Soroti, only about fifteen minutes’ drive from Arapai and the Aloet Primary School.

  The UPDF did nothing. Fifteen people were killed and an unknown number of children, including Betty, were taken.

  With the arrow boys out of the way, and the Ugandan army safely in its barracks, this gave the rebels a clean sweep of the entire area. They moved across the district of Arapai through the night without resistance. The Ugandan army had known for many weeks that the LRA was in the area. Later, when the rebels returned in 2006, it was the arrow boys, now more organised and better armed, that finally drove the LRA away. It was local will and initiative, not the Ugandan government, that finally protected the Teso people.

  The day after this attack on the Aloet school where Betty was taken, the local member for Soroti, Alice Alaso, spoke out strongly to the Ugandan Parliament about this inaction.

  ‘If somebody heeded to the cries of that community around Soroti UCC [Uganda College of Commerce], maybe we would not be spending a lot of time talking about the deaths now. Reports on the ground show that the soldiers who are camped in Soroti UCC were told in the evening. Even when these people came at midnight, somebody ran to the soldiers but they said that they would sort that out the next day. As if they had an appointment with the rebels to sort out issues the following morning!

  ‘My concern is that it looks like the situation in Soroti and Teso is neither getting the interpretation nor the definition that it deserves. It looks like we have underplayed the situation to the extent that everything that seems to be coming out now looks like a surprise. You know, it comes to the rest of the nation as though it should not have happened.

  ‘Looking at the facts on the ground, however, probably we should even expect something worse than what we are seeing now. It is very disappointing to note that about a month ago, there was a landmine on the same route; two weeks back there was an ambush that was foiled on the same route; and yesterday, there was that ambush that succeeded in taking lives of more than twenty-five people.

  ‘I would want to imagin
e that if the people responsible for our security were responsible enough, those three instances and many others, including information from the public, would have moved them to put a patrol on that route. If those signals are not enough, then maybe we will need God to speak from heaven to tell our security people what to do.

  ‘I want to consider it irresponsibility of the highest order to continue leaving those major routes without any patrol on them. And as long as they are going to be that open, more and more lives are going to be lost.

  ‘The same applies to the situation in camps, which are not gazetted. Some of the fifteen people killed the other day died in Aloet Primary School, which is a place where IDPs are settled. It is not gazetted but they have run all the way from Katakwi, from Gweri Subcounty, and settled there. Perhaps if somebody thought of giving those people security, maybe they would not have died.’

  Sitting in the quiet cafe, years later, Betty Alajo continued her story.

  It was that night when the rebels came, around 5 a.m., to the Aloet Primary School where we had fled.

  I woke up and I didn’t know where my mother was. The people were very many in that place, so they were making a lot of noise and were crying. There were so many people everywhere and it was chaos. I was just roaming around, I didn’t know where to go.

  Then the rebels saw me and grabbed me. They put me with the group of children who were chosen to be taken away.

  After some time one of the rebels said, ‘This one is too young. Just leave her behind.’

  So they let me go. I was searching for my mother again, when another one of the rebels grabbed me a second time and put me in the group of children to be taken away. As they were preparing the group to go, a different rebel decided I was too young and sent me out of the group again.

  I just wanted to find my mother, but I couldn’t find her. Then some rebels came back a third time for more children, and I was taken again. This time they kept me in the group and they led us away. They captured very many children that day.