Odokonyero
My waist buzzed. It was the radio tied to the belt holding up my pair of khaki trousers. The husky voice over the radio-call spoke.
Our chief commander was captured by the government soldiers last night. We shall not go on with our activities anymore. Inform everyone at your camps that we have decided to surrender. I expect everyone to cooperate.
That morning Ogoro hill had refused to release the sun past the grey clouds that hovered over it at dawn. When I had woken up the first thing was to scrape the mud off my boots. After last night’s raid I had not had time to clean them. The radio call came when I was preparing for today’s attacks. But now everything had changed. There were not going to be any more villages to attack. I would not be organising my men anymore. I radioed the other groups to confirm the order.
‘Jal walegi ni kiweki’ was all Ocoo said. He had been my guardian since I had been abducted years ago. He had taken care of me ever since allowing me special meals and even letting me have a girl on some nights. His voice died on the radio and I knew I was alone.
I summoned my men and they huddled around me. And as I told them I watched their faces. I could see that not all them were unhappy with the news. This scared me.
Our people collected in many small cocoons to discuss this latest order. The children played nearby. They played games that took them away from us, from everything in the rebel camp. There was a buzz here and there as a few people pulled out of their cocoons momentarily, as if to meditate and then rejoined the discussion. I strained to hear the whispers.
‘What next?’ one voice asked.
‘Home at last.’ Another chipped in.
Stealing a glance at me, a woman asked, ‘what if they find us again and kill us?’
A conclusive reply came: ‘We can’t stay’
The cocoons came together and split and came together and split.
After a few hours I stood again with my group tired of explaining the order that had come from the chief commander. A few of the men wanted me to tell them his exact words. Others just remained quiet. And that is when two of the men near me dropped to the ground. I heard the gunshots and everyone started running. More men, women and children fell and I realised the gunshots were coming from behind me. I ran sideways and then turned suddenly and then in the other direction. Ocoo had always told me that it was easier to shoot someone running in a straight line. I reached the huts on the Western side of the camp where the stores were. Safe behind the small huts I looked across the camp with my homemade pistol in my hand. I counted at least thirty bodies lying in the middle of the camp.
And then I heard the sound of the helicopter and I saw more people coming out from behind the huts with their hands in the air. Many cried, and some of the women seemed unable to move once they were out in open ground and collapsed, holding their children. The government soldiers emerged from the other side of the camp. I saw more of my own men coming out with their hands in the air. When I saw this, I ran straight for the bush on the other side without looking behind and hid behind a large baobab tree just outside the camp.
From my hiding place, I could hear the government soldiers counting in Ugandan Swahili.
‘Ishirini, ishirini na moja, ishirini na mbili, ishirini na tatu, ishirini na nne…’
This seemed to go on forever. I went closer and looked and saw Ocoo being dragged onto one the weather battered trucks. Men, women and children had been lined up separately to be put into trucks. I then heard approaching voices and saw two soldiers emerge from the huts nearest to me. They slowly came towards my direction and the one of them shouted at the other. The engines of the trucks started and the soldiers rushed off. As the trucks sped away the camp went up in smoke. I emerged to see that everything was on fire.
I walked into the bush towards the camp’s vegetable garden. I uprooted a cassava shoot that had about five tubers and sat down against a tree to eat. I thought of surrendering to civilians instead of the army as I munched the cassava as I enjoyed the breeze of the calm wind. I closed my eyes to shut out the world. When I woke up the sun was already at the horizon. I fell asleep again.
I woke up and the morning cold hit me. Hungry, I remembered my favourite childhood meal, lapena and kwon kal, years ago before I was abducted by the rebels. Ayaa, mother, had cooked it perfectly with shea butter. My stomach was already aching from the raw cassava I had eaten. I went into the bush to urinate and then came that familiar smell. Clearing my clogged throat, I spat.
I found the dead body hidden in the long spear grass. The eyes were popped out of their sockets. The lips were encrusted with dry blood flowing up to the ears. I said a silent prayer. My boots suddenly felt heavy and I sat down again looking at the cassava garden. When I managed to get up again I decided to walk and see what lay beyond the garden. But just then the earth beneath me threw me straight into the air and a large noise went off in my head.
I do not remember much more than a few moons before my tenth birthday. Ayaa had told me that I was born in the season of odunge, the season of granary emptying. I remember Ayaa in the kitchen making supper. I was playing with my cousin, Apita, on the veranda of our huge hut which accommodated the whole family. Being older than Apita by three granaries, I enjoyed bullying him. Since I was the only child of my parents, he always spent holidays at our home to keep me company. Baba had gone to a nearby drinking joint despite the warnings by the soldiers that everyone should stay at home. He went drinking every night and came back late to wake up Ayaa in the wee hours of the morning demanding for warm food. Sometimes he would beat up Ayaa because she delayed to open the door. Baba Adwong, his elder brother would always warn him against beating Ayaa but he never listened. I prayed for the day I would grow up into a big man and get revenge for Ayaa.
That night as Apita and I played, the trees rustled in the wind. I looked at Apita to see if he would run to Ayaa. Even a red ant crawling on his skin frightened him. But for the first time in his life he restrained himself. And then a man emerged from the trees and Apita hid behind me. The man asked for name of our village.
‘Lela Opuk,’ I said with pride. Then, another man appeared. ‘Where is your mother?’ I pointed at the small hut where Ayaa was preparing supper.
The first man grabbed me and Apita and took us towards the trees.
I heard Ayaa call out: ‘Odokonyero!’
‘Ayaa’ I cried out.
I heard Ayaa wailing and her running footsteps towards us. The men were tying our feet and hands when she appeared. One of the soldiers kicked her in the stomach and she fell over. Some other men now appeared with a large man who I later learned was the commander. He ordered Ayah to stop crying or she would be taken home. When the rebels talked about home, they meant death. Ayaa wept quietly wiping her face with the edges of her maxi skirt. I tried to break free from the chain and help her but the rope dug deeper into my skin. The large man picked up Ayah by her arm and dragged her behind the bushes. I tried to shut out her cries. The large man came back adjusting his trousers. Two other men went and brought back Ayaa. The commander looked at her and drew a large machete.
The rebels picked up Apita and I to our feet and all I heard were Ayaa’s screams and I thought about Baba. We were taken into the bushes where we found other men guarding some other boys. We were divided into two groups. This was the last time I ever saw Apita. The rebels divided the load and I was given half a sack of beans to carry. I was the youngest of the abductees in my group and it was the heaviest thing I had ever carried in my life. It felt about fifty times heavier than the five-litre jerry can I used to carry water from the village well for Ayaa. Later I saw the older abductees bullying the younger captives into carrying their loads when the rebels were not watching. We walked and at some point we were joined by several other rebels and more abductees and the load was shared out to them. I was given a goat to carry and it was much lighter. Later I would learn from others how to make a hole in a sack so that the load would get lighter as we walked.
At times we stopped and some of the men went off for a while and came back. Later I would learn that they were scouting the area or meeting government soldiers who gave them information for huge amounts of money. At times the men used their radios. We heard the commander tell his men that they were to avoid the areas of Otuke and Aloi for the next two days because the government soldiers would be there. The women cooked food while the men organized the guns, drew maps under the moon, listened to the radios in groups. That night, we moved for about ten kilometres through gardens of potatoes, cassava, maize and spear grass before settling in a bush. We made our beds from spear grass. The blades cut my palms.
Only a few rebels remained to stand guard. The night was cold and I barely slept. Dew settled on my body in the wee hours of the night. My nose hurt so much that it started bleeding. I used my shirt to clean up the mess. By the time morning came, my body was numb. Then, we were woken up before cockcrow to continue. After a while there were fewer villages and we didn’t have much trouble tearing through the bushes and gardens. Later in the day we stopped to collect water or dig out sweet potatoes but never stopped to rest.
After a few days we who had been captured started looking like the rebels. Our clothes became dirty, torn and weather-beaten. Our faces became darker, our hair unkempt and our breaths stank. Some of the rebels wore government soldier uniforms to confuse wananchi. Most of the soldiers wore olal sandals which were better for long walks in the bush. Slowly, I started learning the ways of the bush. The rebels had their own chain of command. The leaders were those who had killed the most government soldiers. Usually the commander had killed more than five. Eventually, during our journey I learned that we were headed for Pakwach near the Southern Sudan border. That would become my home for thirteen years where I would be trained as a rebel.
