Displaced (23 page)

The trip was slow and sporadic stretching a
long trip into a longer one. Soroti, Tororo, and Kangale, the bus
had to stop in each town along the way to discharge passengers and
onload people, beans, and some livestock. Between towns the mother
next to her held her child over the space between seats to let her
urinate on the floor. The topography flattened and the road
improved the further south they went until sometime after seven
they entered Mbale and drove through to the other end of town to
the bus park.

With the gained familiarity of a fellow
traveler, her seat mate directed her to the Mt. Elgin Hotel and
Nicole walked the half mile to a squat three story cement structure
with an awning on the roof. Hector had had only time to assault her
and not rob her before being interrupted, and she paid the tariff
for a single night for a second story room facing the street and
overlooking the town’s central intersection. She washed in the
shared bathroom, and then in her own room moved the furniture, a
large wooden armchair and end table, to barricade the door before
lying down clothed on top of the bed spread to sleep. Just outside
her window on the street below was a constant cacophony of revving
motorbikes and the calls of street hawkers selling roasted meat.
Despite the noise, Nicole dozed quickly and slept through the night
unmolested.

She woke early the next morning and counted
out her money. She had over fifty thousand shillings remaining and
treated herself to breakfast at the hotel café. After breakfast,
she went immediately back to the bus park and enquired about
transport to Kampala and was shown to the next minivan departing
for the city. She was early, but was content to wait and sat in the
back of the matatu near the window looking out at the drivers and
others who worked in the taxi park. Men sat around idly doing
nothing waiting for the matatu to fill while women with bundles on
their heads and in their arms walked past. The sliding door was
left open which offered some breeze and allowed other passenger to
slowly occupy the vehicle. Two girls in school uniforms, perhaps
going to Kampala on break, sat next to her and looked at her with
wide eyes but she did not return the gesture. After forty five
minutes the van was full and the driver’s assistant slid the door
shut and collected the five thousand shilling fare from each of the
passengers. The van angled out of the bus park onto the open road
where it immediately picked up speed.

When the minivan reached speed, a white
plastic bag caught along the body work and the window and began
flapping, and the assistant opened the sliding door while in motion
and attempted but failed to free it. The bag flared in the wind
like a tell tale shifting with the wind and the direction and speed
of the vehicle. They passed the remains of a collision, a minivan
with one side sheared off revealing its insides, a cross section of
passenger seats upended and mangled. The totem did little to impede
their own driver, who drove fast and passed slower vehicles using
both the oncoming traffic lane and the shoulder when one presented
itself. He used the horn generously and talked excitedly with his
assistant as the matatu sped down the road. “Glory be to God,” was
printed across the very top of the windshield in a metallic
adhesive foil offering both an expression of faith and a prayer.
They passed through green rolling hills, some covered with rows of
coffee bushes and through small towns with buildings whitewashed in
MTN telephone advertisements. After about four hours with her knees
pressed up against the seat in front of her, Nicole reached the
outskirts of Kampala.

They made an unscheduled stop in Jinja, where
the driver’s assistant and a bag of beans left the minivan, and
then stalled in the mid afternoon traffic of the suburbs of
Kampala. They crawled the last bit of the journey through the snarl
of the roundabout to the taxi park at the base of the city bounded
by hills. The taxi park was larger than any Nicole had seen and
held a large number of minivans and white Toyota saloon cars
tightly congregated in complex disorganization on a muddy red flat.
She spotted the adjacent Shop Rite on the ride in and after the van
came to a stop and everyone got off, she picked her way across the
muddy lot to the supermarket.

“Excuse me,” she said to a woman picking a
shopping cart for her groceries, “can you please show me the way to
Christ the King Church?”

“Sure dear,” the lady, a mzungu, a white
woman, said to her, “it’s pretty much straight up the hill,” and
pointed the way.

Nicole could have called Father Boniface to
pick her up but she was so close. She should have hired a taxi to
take her the short distance up the hill through traffic to the
Church but considered it an extravagance. She had ridden in taxis
and trains in France, but her sensibilities were relative to
geography and she wouldn’t hire a car to take her the remaining
distance. She settled on one of the ubiquitous boda bodas, a moped,
and rode on the back of the bike exposed. It wasn’t clear that the
bike would have the power to make it up the incline with two
riders, but it cycled through its gears and gained a momentum that
sustained it through the climb.

They went up the street along the side of the
supermarket and then cut back sideways toward the center of town
before turning right again past the gated parliament building. The
Church appeared to her from behind an office building, a white
washed concrete structure with a peaked clay tile roof and bell
tower occupying a commanding position on the side of the hill
overlooking the city center and eclipsed only by the Sheraton,
which stood further up the hill. She was glad to get off the motor
bike and had the driver drop her still two blocks away in
anticipation. Sanctuary was in reach, just in front of her now, and
she hurried nearly ran to the front of the Church. She pulled on
the large wooden doors but they were closed to her, locked from the
inside. She banged on the doors in frustration and then felt light
headed and sat on the front steps for just a moment. Picking
herself up again, she walked around the side of the building to the
rectory. A caretaker was working on the grounds in the distance and
she tried the door to the Church offices, which was also locked.
The buzzer clearly was not working and she knocked and then stood
in the shade of the building with her head against the doorway.

“Can I help you?” a man’s voice said to her
from behind. A large man in coveralls and a straw hat, he looked at
her and saw a prostitute, a waif, a street urchin.

“I’m looking for Father Boniface,” she
said.

“You’ve found him.”

“I’m Nicole Negusse, Father, we spoke on the
phone.”

“Nicole, oh my God” he said “I was expecting
a phone call.” He looked at her and she was recognizable from her
picture but only just, her eyes were sunken and her face was
taught. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you, oh dear, please come in,
how are you?”

“I know, I should have called,” she started
to explain, “but I was so close and…,” she trembled and put her
face in her hands and sobbed.

“Oh dear, it’s okay now,” he said and
embraced her lightly. She pressed her face into his chest, like
hugging a rain barrel, and cried.

****

Jonathan shook his head as he walked through
the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel on his appointed visit. How did he
manage to get roped into this kind of thing, another hard luck
case. At home, friends were getting promoted, buying homes, getting
married, having children, even getting divorced, moving on with
their lives. He was not being promoted, more likely fired, and on
an unpaid errand mostly illegal for a refugee Priest. He could have
avoided the meeting by just agreeing to help. Why did he let this
Priest push his buttons?

Cups a million or some such thing was the
name of the coffee house in the Sheraton Gardens. Father Boniface
was going out of town for the day and suggested that he meet her
outside of the rectory. Nicole Negusse, he remembered her name from
the photo, and the whole arrangement seemed unnecessarily dubious.
He felt defensive and manipulated.

Debra hadn’t returned for dinner last night
and he hadn’t seen her for two days. The few small possessions she
kept at his apartment remained but they provided little in the way
of a connection and could easily be abandoned. He felt alone as
though he had forfeited something, something intrinsic and
unrecoverable creating a gap that he didn’t know how to fill. Maybe
it was for the best he thought, but couldn’t convince himself and
nurtured this regret as he looked for the coffee shop.

He spotted Nicole right away sitting at a
table just outside the coffee shop entrance, in a print dress with
her hands folded in her lap. She was young and pretty with smooth
brown skin and her hair pulled straight back. He knew the matter
was already decided for him, and thought to make the meeting as
quick as possible.

“Hello,” he said walking up to her, “you must
be Nicole.”

She stood and extended her hand. “Yes,” she
said, “it’s nice to meet you.” They shook hands and her manner was
matter of fact as if she were doing him the favor.

“I was going to get a coffee, can I get you
something?”

“A small coffee would be fine, if you don’t
mind,” she said.

“Not at all.” He left her and went to the
counter and placed the order. The shop was largely empty and the
lobby of the hotel was quiet save for the elevator and the sound of
luggage being pulled on wheels. He returned with the coffee and
they sat at the table sipping from their cups.

“Father Boniface says you can help me,” she
said breaking the silence.

“Sure,” he said, “did he show you the
passport?”

“Yes, he did, but he said I need a visa as
well.”

“That’s right and we’ll make sure that you
get one,” he said.

“Okay then,” she said looking at him. “Thank
you.”

He looked around feeling uncomfortable, not
wanting to be recognized. I can see it in his eyes, she thought. I
am an intrusion. You hold me in contempt because I am a burden,
indistinguishable from the prostitutes at the Rock Garden. I am
better educated than you, she did not say. I can speak multiple
languages, she thought engaging in her own contempt for the white
face looking at her from across the table.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No, nothing, everything’s fine.”

“I do appreciate your help,” she said.
“Father Boniface has told me what a big help you have been, and I
want to let you know that I can pay for your trouble.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “Father Boniface has
already taken care of it.”

After a little more small talk, they finished
their coffee and said good bye. Jonathan wished her luck as they
parted company at the hotel’s front entrance. He offered her, a
ride back to the rectory, but she said she wanted to walk and had
an errand to run besides. She thanked him again for his help.

****

That afternoon, Jonathan arranged again to
meet with Mahesh outside of his apartment building in the evening.
Mahesh told him that he could not produce a visa himself but would
need to contact a man who worked for a man named Raju, the boss of
a local criminal organization. For one thousand dollars up front,
Mahesh’s contact could obtain a US visa. He told Jonathan, the
point wasn’t a matter of negotiation and Jonathan agreed. They
agreed to meet again the next evening and Jonathan came with the
passport and the money, which he got from Fr. Boniface and in turn
gave to Mahesh.

Three days later, Mahesh’s contact came
through and Jonathan retrieved the passport complete with US visa.
Mahesh instructed that the visa would certainly get Nicole on the
plane to the United States, whether or not US immigration officials
would permit her entry depended in large part on Nicole’s ability
to be Lucy Babinaga. Together with these instructions, Jonathan put
the passport into a large envelope which he sealed with Father
Boniface’s name on it and slipped it under the door of the rectory.
He walked away satisfied that his obligation was complete.

****

On the day she left, Father Boniface drove
Nicole to the airport in Entebbe. He walked with her into the
departure terminal, which was noisy and busy. She gave him a hug
and thanked him again for all of his help. After they said goodbye,
he stood alone as departing travelers rushed around him carrying
luggage. The hard tile floor seemed littered with passengers and
suitcases as people parted or greeted and moved on. Through the
crowd he watched her walk away as far as the immigration control
desk. Upon request by the man in a white shirt and black tie, she
presented her passport. He looked at it as if scrutinizing it for
some tell tale sign of fraud or officiality, but in reality was
making a show and asked her no questions before stating the amount
for an exit visa. Nicole was prepared and handed him the exact
amount and he stamped her passport, handed it back to her and waved
her through.

She passed though a pair of double doors and
up a truncated escalator and entered the international departure
lounge as if entering a different world. The long hallway was clean
and almost silent except for the soft piped in music. A gaggle of
Lufthansa flight attendants dressed in blue pulling their bags on
wheels and followed by two men in captain’s uniforms passed,
walking in the opposite direction, chatting among themselves. She
walked past the duty free shops, with translucent glass fronts and
offerings of liquor and wood carvings, a last opportunity to spend
one’s shillings before returning from holiday. She was early for an
early flight and looked out from behind the air conditioned glass
of the nearly empty departure terminal into the bright morning sun
shining over the airport runway. She felt she had left the
continent already and entered a state of in between, a sort of
limbo or purgatory. Nicole found her gate and sat alone in the
departure lounge and waited for her flight.