CHAPTER 21

Now Chol had the fevers and his seemed to be worse than his brother’s. After breakfast, Beatrice made both boys follow her through the dirty and hectic streets of the settlement as she asked directions to the clinic. There were three, she was told, or maybe four, and the largest one was a mile away. She led the boys in that general direction. With each step she looked at each face, hoping to see Angelina. She had dreamed she would find her here, along with Ayak, and they would be together.

Beatrice eventually found the clinic and was not surprised to see a long line of mothers and their sick children waiting in the blazing sun. The morning passed before they made it inside the sprawling and packed tent. They missed lunch and needed water.

The clinic was run by a Lutheran ministry out of Hamburg, and the doctors and nurses were German and spoke with accents. James and Chol were fascinated to see white people, a rarity in that part of the world. A nurse examined the boys and determined they had malaria, a common affliction in South Sudan. And they were probably malnourished, but otherwise healthy. She gave Beatrice a bottle of pills with instructions.

“How long have you been here? ” the nurse asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe a week. ”

“Are you getting enough to eat? ”

“No, there’s never enough, but we’re not starving anymore. ”

“Where are you staying? ”

Beatrice shrugged and could think of no response.

“Okay, where are you sleeping? ”

“On the ground. ”

“You have no roof? ”

“No. ”

The nurse opened a drawer and pulled out two cards with numbers stamped on them. She handed one over and said, “There is a distribution center around the corner. Take this and go there and get clothing and water. ”

Beatrice thanked her and grabbed the card.

The nurse handed over the second one, light blue in color. “There is a new section of the settlement that is opening up. At the distribution center, you will see a sign that says ‘Housing. ’ Hand this to them and they will assign you a new tent, one large enough for your family. ”

Beatrice wanted to cry but immediately thought of her friends from Lotta. “But I am with others, ” she said. “And they have children. ”

“How many? ”

“Two families. ”

The nurse handed her two more blue cards, smiled, and said, “You will sleep in your own tents tonight. Bring the boys back in a week. ”

Beatrice forgot about the missed lunch and hurried to the distribution center where she found yet another long line of people waiting to get inside. She heard a loud voice and looked across the street. Under a canopy, a priest with a bullhorn was conducting Sunday Mass and thousands were sitting on the ground around him.

For the first time in forever, Beatrice knew the day of the week.

· · ·

Sleep was difficult and Samuel wasn’t getting much of it. He awoke in the dark Sunday morning and remembered that Murray had not made it back. He had a girlfriend in town and said he might stay at home.

Samuel showered, put on his best clothes, ate breakfast in the cafeteria, then walked two miles to the Sacred Heart Catholic Church. He enjoyed the service, thanked God for his goodness, and prayed fervently for his family.

There were few black people seated around him. Murray, a Methodist, said there were not many black Catholics in the South. Evidently, he was right.

Sunday’s practice would be a three-hour scrimmage, at night, when supposedly things would be cooler. But in the middle of August nothing was cool, and by the time Samuel returned to his dorm his shirt was soaked. He changed into gym shorts and walked ten minutes to Central’s gym, officially the McDougald-McLendon Arena, but a title that unwieldy begged for a nickname. For decades the gym had been known simply as The Nest. Samuel had his own key, thanks to T. Ray. He found a rack of balls and began shooting for the first time in days. It felt good to be bouncing the ball, taking shots, retrieving at a leisurely pace, dribbling, then pulling up for another shot. The air in the building was only a few degrees cooler than the outside heat, but for the moment it was the perfect temperature. His shots were hitting home with a remarkable frequency. He backed further away and found his range.

How many shots could he take alone in one hour with a reasonable amount of hustle? There was a clock on the wall and he timed himself. He talked to himself before each shot and mentally went through the basics. From behind the arc, he hit the first two, then missed three. Two-for-five. Three-for-six. Four-for-ten. Six-for-fifteen. Twelve-for-thirty.

Sixty minutes later, he had taken 200 shots and made a third of them.

That wasn’t good enough.

· · ·

The tent was six meters by six with a thick plastic floor, a door that zipped open and closed, and three windows that opened for ventilation. Beatrice, a tall woman, could almost stand upright without ducking her head. It was too large for a hiking tent and too small for the army, and must have been designed for refugees. Beatrice didn’t care how or why it was designed. It gave her and the boys their first moment of privacy and sense of place in many days. After they moved in, with nothing to move, she zipped the door and windows closed and huddled with James and Chol in the complete isolation. But as the air grew thick and hot, she quickly unzipped it all and stepped outside. Her friends from Lotta were on either side, and both were convinced she had managed a miracle to get the tents.

Their journey was over. They had survived the massacre and the nightmare of fleeing, and they had arrived in a place that promised safety, food, water, and now a roof.

The children at first hung around the tents, too timid to venture far, but by dark they were playing down the street with a group of kids. The tents, and there were thousands of them, all identical, were staked in a perfect grid, block after block. Each tent was exactly two meters from the one next door, so that through the vinyl fabric walls a family spat four tents down was shared by many. Once inside, the women and children soon learned to whisper about everything.

The small plots provided for two meters of ground in front of the tent and next to the street, and two meters behind for cooking and urinating. A few outhouses were scattered through the community, but not enough. Long lines of people waited while others relieved themselves wherever they could. The stench of shit and urine permeated the air. The acrid smoke from cooking fires hung like a fog over the area.

Beatrice longed for the day she would have something to cook.

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