Beyond the Vapour Trail Read online

  When we left we walked fast for a long time. It was difficult because my leg was injured. A few days before the rebels came I had an accident with a bicycle. Someone was trying to carry out a bicycle and injured me, so I had a bad wound on my ankle and it was hard to walk and to keep up. But eventually after many days we ended up deep in the bush, somewhere near Gulu.

  Background: Children taken by the LRA report that they were often told how much they were now hated by everyone, that people would beat them or kill them on sight. They are alone, they have nobody. This army is their only family now. And after being part of atrocities, the children feel too ashamed to return.

  A young lad who had returned recalled that if anyone showed too much resistance in the camp, they would call everyone together. Then they would get some of the children to kill them.

  The camp was big. The people in the camp were very many, I cannot know the number. I never saw Kony.

  In the camp, everyone had jobs. One of my jobs was to look after young children and I also had to carry cooking utensils like saucepans and plates through the bush when we were on the move.

  When we were deep in the bush, we never knew if today was a Sunday, a Monday, or what. We just had no idea. Most days when I would wake up in the morning, I wouldn’t wash my face, or brush … no, I would just get up, and maybe go to the well to get water. Then when I came back I would go and look for firewood to prepare food later on at night.

  The rebels had tents and would sleep under shelter. But our job was to cook in the night. We had to prepare beans, and maybe maize, while the other people rested. That’s when we cooked, at night. The whole time there was a team of rebels who were monitoring. They didn’t want to see any smoke from the fire because it would expose where we were. If they found us there cooking and smoke was coming up, they would cane us. They beat us badly. The rebels would not tolerate this kind of thing. So the whole time I had to keep that flame burning, without producing what? Any smoke. I couldn’t allow the fire to go out or it would produce smoke. You had to keep it burning strongly all the time. To switch it off I had to pour water on it to finish it.

  After we had prepared food we had to serve the other people. Most of the food was for the other people in the camp. There was usually very little left over for us to eat. We always had only a little food.

  There were always guards. Some were around us, but there were others up in the trees monitoring. Always they were monitoring us.

  So we stayed in the bush and were eating beans and the fruits in the bush. The whole time I was so worried about my mother. I cannot remember exactly how long I was there, but I assume it was between four to seven months before I came back because I remember the independence celebrations in Lira Rehabilitation Centre after I had run away.

  When Betty told me this in the cafe, I hesitated. I knew she had been with the rebels for well over a year. She thought it was only four to seven months? I decided not to say anything. She was speaking with a degree of distance from it, as though she had managed to move on.

  Then one day, the rebels went to look for cassava, because at this time even cassava was becoming difficult to get. So when they came back from looking for cassava they sent us to the spring well to bring water. As we were walking to the well, I could not walk very fast because I still had that injury on my leg, so I was left behind walking slowly with one of my colleagues, a girl. Her name was Agipo Tene. She had become a good friend, but she was not Teso, she spoke Kumam. We didn’t even make it to the spring well before the team that had gone ahead of us were returning and met us on the way. So we started going back to the camp, and as we were coming back from the spring well, once again they went ahead of us, because only Agipo Tene walked with me.

  We were getting closer, when suddenly we heard gunshots at the base. There was so much shooting. A battle had started between the UPDF soldiers and the rebels at the camp. We just hid in the bush while the battle was happening.

  Eventually it stopped, so we waited for a long time until we were sure it was safe. Then we quietly snuck through the bush towards the camp.

  When we finally crept back into camp it was completely deserted. We found that the rebels had just taken off and had abandoned us. The UPDF were gone too. No-one was there. They left us alone. We didn’t know what to do, we were confused. So we just stayed in the camp. Now we were alone and scared. And for us we were not even aware of the place where they had gone.

  We just sat waiting for the rebels to come back. We didn’t know the place or have a map so we were also trying to pursue to look for the rebels, because we were not ready to come back. We didn’t know where else to go.

  Many days passed. Agipo Tene and I slept in the bush, alone, eating the fruits of the bush. But also, just like the rebels, we raided people’s gardens to get cassava or maize or fruits to eat.

  Eventually, one day, we just decided to say, let’s also walk our way. Even if we find the rebels we shall tell them that we are not running away but we were just looking for you. As we were moving we were also thinking that if we could just find one person, any person, who would take us to their home, we would want to stay with that person.

  It was a long walk because we had been very deep in the bush. As time went on, we weren’t afraid in the bush anymore. We weren’t afraid of the rebels. We just kept moving, eating, living in the bush, looking for anyone. In the end we were a month all by ourselves in the bush. It took us all that time to fully find our way out.

  Then, one day, we thought we could hear the sounds of vehicles and motorcycles moving. Finally we were blessed because we got nearer to a main road.

  When we reached it we found that there were people there working on the road. There were soldiers who had organised people to slash the grass on the sides of the road to make it wider.

  But we were afraid. We were scared of the people and thought they were going to beat us. We stayed hidden a little bit and remained along the side of the road in the bush watching them.

  Eventually, as we were trying to hide, we spotted a certain woman who was sitting down near the side of the road. She looked friendly, so we approached her. We crossed into the road, told her our story, and asked her, ‘Can you take us to your home?’

  She said, ‘No. I cannot manage you. You need to go to the soldiers. The soldiers will take you up to their home.’

  She took us to the soldiers, and then these soldiers brought us to the barracks. They took us to stay in one of the commander’s homes in the barracks. We were there for around three days. They asked us many questions about where we had come from, where we had been, all kinds of questions.

  Finally they took us to Gulu, where there were others like us. They also listened to our stories and asked us where we were coming from and how long we had been in the bush.

  Then they grouped everyone according to the regions where we came from. They separated the people who spoke Ateso and Kumam and brought us all to Lira. Those who were speaking Acholi were left in Gulu Rehabilitation Centre.

  At the Lira centre where they brought us, they were taking care of us, treating us, giving us medication and counselling us until we became OK. When they thought I was OK, they finally brought me back home.

  I came back from Lira into the hands of my grandmother, because by then my mother had passed on. Even by then my uncle had passed on, my mother’s brother. He had been killed during the time of the rebels. So they handed me into the hands of my grandmother to take care of me. She was so happy to see me! Until now she is the one who is taking care of me.

  When they returned me, I enrolled in Akai Kai Primary School, which was nearby. But after some time again the people from Lira came back and enrolled me in a boarding school, Soroti Demonstration School in town here.

  I was happy because I discovered my friend Agipo Tene was also at this school.

  Travel Mistakes and How to Avoid Them, Part 2

  To avoid travel mistakes, it helps if you are one of those careful, check-all
-the-details people. It might have helped if I was one of those kinds of people. But I’m not. I have better things to do with my life than having to stop and mentally list absolutely every item I own whenever I leave a hotel. So I learnt that good travel habits take less effort. For instance, my passport only ever goes in one of two places. In every hotel I always put my things in the same kinds of spaces. Because sometimes you end up rushing back to your room to check out, and you may not have time to remember that you did something different, like hanging a jacket in a different place. And that’s a bad idea, because then you’ll have to stop and mentally list every item you own whenever you leave a hotel. And I’m not one of those kinds of people.

  I did learn this the hard way. In my early travel days we often needed to carry significant cash because credit cards weren’t used in lonely rural places. In the 1990s I checked in to a hotel in the small seaside town of Iguape, a few hours south of São Paulo in Brazil. I often walk to explore new places, so I only carry a minimum of cash with me. Enough in my pocket to keep the thieves happy, enough in the room safe to keep me happy. The room in Iguape had no safe so I hid my wallet behind a little carved section on top of the wardrobe and went out. The next day we travelled to a project in the Vale do Ribeiro, which was further south, on the edge of the rainforest. We visited the house of a very poor family, and this lovely man stood beside his wife and children inside the kitchen of his tiny abode and announced that this was the proudest day of his life. Because of my visit. I mean, really, I’m not important. I wished I could have been, for his sake. I felt completely humbled. Just down the road we visited an afterschool club our project had established in the neighbourhood. They showed me the boys playing football before they were due to do their homework. Normally I go out and kick the football with kids. In Malawi, I once took on an entire group of kids – ‘Australia versus Malawi’ – and I’m sorry to report that Malawi won sixteen–nil, although the Malawi team had very big smiles. But here in Brazil as I looked on I saw a ten-year-old boy perform an upside-down bicycle kick in midair to score a goal. It was clear they were going to make an idiot out of me. So with discretion being the better part of valour, I said, ‘So … what do girls do?’

  It was a hot day and a long visit and we rushed back to Iguape and I didn’t give my wallet another thought until I was hundreds of kilometres away. This led to a moderately stressful recollection of a carved section of a wardrobe in Iguape. Later I did get the wallet back through the local staff in the area. No money was missing. So yes, I actually do stop for a bit of an inventory when leaving a hotel room, but creating good travel habits means you don’t need to think so much. Despite my habits I’ve left my passport in a taxi. And on a plane. I’m embarrassed now so I’ll stop there.

  Travel idiot warning #14: Maintain habits with your possessions or risk losing them. Check your hotel room, the seat pockets of the plane. Never put anything down on the seat of a taxi.

  Once I was in Harare, Zimbabwe. My work was complete, I had checked out of the hotel and was just waiting for my lift to the airport. I sat down beside an old lady and smiled at her as I pulled out my laptop and started on my expense report. After a while the vehicle arrived so I packed up my laptop and left. We hadn’t gone a hundred metres when the driver stopped. A security guard was chasing us down. Then the old lady came panting up and handed me my wallet, which I’d pulled out to check something while doing my expense report. It was full of money. She immediately turned and left, without any thought of reward. I wondered if I would have fared so well in my own country.

  About two years later, in Johannesburg, I took the shuttle to the airport, found my check-in line – it’s a big airport – and waited to check in. One of the staff from the shuttle bus appeared beside me with my wallet. She must have searched the airport to find me. When I had opened the bag for my passport in the van, my wallet had fallen out. Before I could turn to thank her she was gone. I wrote to the hotel management. These staff are not paid well and that kind of behaviour deserves recognition.

  Africa has so many honest, generous and dignified people.

  Travel idiot warning #62: Don’t wear those touristy money belts. You look like an idiot. But if you carry a wallet, don’t be an idiot.

  CHAPTER 12

  Betty Alajo 2014

  The world is not connected equally for everyone. By the time Betty turned fifteen, the project in her community had completed, and so I had no way of contacting her. It’s difficult to comprehend, but she has no address as we know it. To receive letters she would have to open a mailbox in town, which costs money that she doesn’t have. It would also involve paying two to three thousand shillings to go into town to check her mail – which is the grand sum of about eighty cents. This is a little too much on her budget. So you can imagine that phone and email are simply out of reach.

  Oddly, even though we had sat and laughed and cried together, the letters I received from her while she was sponsored were matter-of-fact, impersonal and didn’t address the questions I asked. It seemed incongruous with the girl I had met, but I knew that many African children don’t relate to written correspondence and prefer face-to-face communication.

  I thought about her constantly. Eight years crept by since the dress-buying visit. I waited for a trip to Uganda that just never eventuated, despite my frequent global travels.

  Eight years. How easily good intentions slip away if you let them. I felt that I hadn’t really contributed much to her life. It seemed as though I had been absent from my own children at critical times, either by being in another country or emotionally unavailable during my long period of depression. And I was absent to Betty. This seemed perfect irony for someone who worked to influence the lives of millions of children – putting a little perspective on all my work, perhaps.

  Finally, in May 2014 I had a chance to be in Uganda. I contacted my friend James, and he said, ‘Yes, we can get you to Arapai – but we need to see if we can find the girl.’ I also needed to know if she still wanted to see me. I told James that if she wished to tell her story, I would like to include it in a book. But only if she felt comfortable. The value of Betty’s wellbeing is worth infinitely more than any book. I have a counselling background from a past career, and knew walking through the past could either be healing or distressing for her, and I would pull the plug at the first sign this would be detrimental.

  An email from James arrived. They had found her and she really wanted to see me. She was now married with two children. I calculated that she was twenty-one. I had hoped she would have finished school or at least progressed, but marrying quite young is not uncommon in these communities. She also told them she was happy to talk about the past. For me, seeing her was the important thing. Whether we talked about her past or not would depend on what I saw in her eyes. And my God, what her eyes had seen.

  Before I went to Soroti I had to run a workshop in Tororo, which is in the south-east of Uganda. I got a lift to my hotel from the hotel owner. She was a rather well-travelled local with international sensibilities from living in the UK, and a small fluffy yappy dog that didn’t quite seem to belong in rural Uganda. While driving across town she quipped, ‘You’ll be staying right near the rock … which is about the only thing going on in Tororo.’ At that point she totally let down all her tourism training. Yes, there’s a very big rock that overhangs Tororo. I looked at the rock and didn’t think it was very impressive at all. It was only as we were leaving that I realised I had been staying on the wrong side of it. From the town side it’s a massive bluff that overhangs the town, and I could finally see what all the fuss was about. I could have so quickly climbed it from the easy side and sat atop to look at the view. Where was my boyhood sense of adventure?

  But it was the trip north to Arapai that had my attention.

  The drive was maybe four to five hours, the road quietly swarming with four-wheel drives, bicycles and motorbikes. It was end of rainy season, so the landscape looked like a scribbling of oil past
els. The skies were moody and grey, and heavy downpours chased us up and down the road. People would break from their field work to take shelter under trees or on their balconies to sit it out. Men in Uganda tend to wear their shirts out; the women dress in long skirts or dresses – overall everyone wears loose-fitting clothing. The difference from my previous trip eight years earlier was that many people now held mobile phones to their ears.

  Dotted along the landscape, or in small collections nearer the road, sat the buildings. The traditional round or square mud huts with thatched roofs, or small homes made from crooked homemade bricks held together with a generous dollop of mortar.

  When we finally arrived in Arapai I met with the local staff. I deal with many cultures but before we visited Betty I checked the protocols about what is polite. Albert, a program manager, was going to take me there and interpret. I asked him what was culturally appropriate with a married woman – should I shake hands, was it OK to hug? Good intentions don’t always translate, it’s always respectful to understand how you will be understood.

  ‘It’s OK, there’s no problem,’ he said. ‘By the way, I remember you on the other visits,’ he continued as we drove. ‘I was a child development facilitator when you arrived. I was just a lad, and now I’m a man.’

  ‘Ah, yes, that’s right.’ I realised we were together during the LRA attacks. ‘Actually, I interviewed you during the evaluation!’

  I had misgivings about my visit to Betty as we drew nearer. I had to admit to myself that I had done very little for this young woman, and it was unlikely I was important in any way to her. Who was I kidding? Two visits and a handful of letters in all those years.

  Arapai is not very far north of Soroti, but we still missed the track that runs off the road. The grass was thick and full after rainy season and the path barely registered visually. We turned in and drove a little way, and then there was another track no bigger than a bicycle track or walking path. Our oversized vehicle clumsily flattened the grass towards the four mud huts under a great spreading mango tree. Betty was there, and she shyly hid her face. When I got out of the car she came to me, hugged me tight like she would never let go, and cried and cried. She had thought I had forgotten her. She was completely overwhelmed that I was there, that I had come back.