Six Months in Sudan (28 page)

“And this is Aweil. She’s basically the best.” I continue on, too shy to stop.

In the nursing room, an infant is screaming as a nurse places an intravenous catheter. His mom cradles his body and he struggles weakly against her. Mohamed is writing orders on an admission sheet.

“Pneumonia,” he says, pointing at the child with his pen.

“Basically,” I say, “everyone gets antibiotics no matter what, and most kids get IVs whether they need them or not. At first I was trying to convince everyone to use oral antibiotics, but nurses like IVs, patients’ families like IVs, and we can dose once a day. MSF, pushing antibiotic resistance forward, one viral infection at a time!”

I pick up a finished chart from the desk and turn to the orders.

“Okay, and then we record the …”

Angela’s face is pressed forward, her eyebrows arched. I put the chart down.

“You know what,” I say. “That’s enough for now. Let’s go back to the compound. It’s almost lunchtime.”

She nods. “That would be good. I’m hungry.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. Mohamed, we’ll see you after lunch. Don’t forget to take Abul back to compound 2.”

We leave Mohamed to finish the orders and walk out the front gate.

“I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Like what?”

“That kid, the one with the NG tube in her nose.”

“Oh yeah, she came in last night. She’s going to die. Probably today.”

The sky is cloudy. The wind picks up, gusts across the road.

“How do you get used to that?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure if you get used to it. You end up just kind of … not accepting it …. More … you just … put up with it, I guess.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to.”

“You will.”

25/05: six days race.

tired.

at the entrance to compound I, there is a whiteboard on which all of our movements are recorded. it has room for 2 weeks of mondays through sundays. when a week runs through, it is wiped off the board and replaced with seven more days. it flips through time like those old clock radios did numbers. i watch people arrive from two weeks away, and from days back, watch them leave. underneath may 30, in scrawled felt pen, sits my name. “Agok-Krt: Dr. James R&R.” like a marathon is a 20-mile jog to a 6-mile race, so too this latest push. one foot in front of another, one day at a time, and on may 30, i will meet myself leaning against the plane window pane, and fly away.

six days. now it’s a race.

I
AM IN AGOK AGAIN
, looking at the sky for the metal glint of a plane. It was easier an hour ago, before the clouds started to build. They were white at first, and flat. Now they stack black and thunderous. We have been told that flights will soon stop leaving from here because the landing strip is too rutted.

I am sitting on a white plastic chair underneath the flat grass roof of Agok’s arrivals/departures lounge. Other accoutrements include an overfilled latrine and … an airstrip. My driver sits in the Land Cruiser listening to a radio.

Ours is the only vehicle here. I wonder if we have the latest flight schedule. Usually there is more than one person from the area trying to leave it.

I am trying. This morning I packed my backpack with two changes of clothes and a book. I will pick up some swim trunks in Khartoum and, tomorrow, leave for Nairobi. I will be glad to be moving in something other than circles.

A fat drop hits the dust beside my chair. I look up. Thunderous. If it rains, or if the wind picks up too much, the plane won’t land. One must not get too attached to the future. I stand to get a better look at the sky. We joke that WFP stands for “Where the F
^***
is the Plane?”

I can’t see it. I scan the runway back and forth. To my left, two hundred meters away, a boy is crawling on the ground. He is maybe thirteen or fourteen, difficult to say from this distance. He is crawling on the ground, his belly flat to it, pulling himself forward with his forearms. A man in army fatigues is hitting him with a thin switch, shouting something I can’t hear above the wind and wouldn’t understand if I did. It doesn’t matter. I know what it is. He is yelling “Lower! Faster!”

A second boy is standing farther back, a rifle-sized piece of wood balanced on his right shoulder. It is now his turn. He hands the wood to the first boy, extending his arms fully, as he has been taught, and drops to his belly.

Lower! Faster!

He finishes his crawl, and marches back. I consider taking a clandestine photo, but refrain. I sit back down.

A second Land Cruiser pulls up, “UN” stencilled carefully on the side. Marissa, one of the directors from the World Food Programme, climbs out, pulls her bag from the back seat. She is talking excitedly on a satellite phone. She waves hello to me.

“So, did you hear?” she asks.

“Hear what?”

“The fighting in Abyei?”

“What?”

“In the market, at eleven-thirty. What time did you leave?”

“Like, eleven-thirty exactly,” I answer.

“And you heard nothing?”

“No. What?”

“I guess someone started shooting up the market, shot some police. Killed them. I can’t believe you don’t know. My whole staff is in our compound, waiting for word whether we should evacuate.”

“Is it still happening?”

Her phone rings. She answers and moves away.

The market is a flashpoint. Its merchants are largely Misseriya traders, its denizens mostly Dinka. Surrounding it are the military compounds, and next to it, between them all, is MSF’s.

I walk over to the Land Cruiser.

“Anthony. Have you heard from compound 1?”

He shakes his head.

“Call them. See if you can get Marco.”

He calls into the handset, “Alpha Bravo, Alpha Bravo for Mobile 2. Alpha Bravo, Alpha Bravo …”

Marissa’s off the phone. I hurry over.

“So, any news?”

“Well, no one’s heard any more shooting.”

“You guys going to evacuate?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“I’ve got to figure out if I should go back,” I say.

If this is the start of something larger, I’m not sure they’ll let me through the checkstop. If the call is made to evacuate, they might just want me to get on the plane anyway. One more seat on the UN helicopter for someone else.

But what if there are a bunch of wounded, and it’s just Mohamed and Angela? I want to be there. I’m going.

I don’t want to be there at all.

I walk back to the car. Anthony is on the radio, speaking in Arabic.

“Marco? Can I talk to Marco?”

He shakes his head. “Marco hospital.”

“David?”

He calls into the handset. I hear David’s voice, “Go ahead.”

“David, it’s James. What is the situation? Over.”

“Shooting in the market, several wounded, two dead.” He cannot elaborate on the radio. Our transmissions are public.

“Any further casualties?”

“Negative.”

“David, do you need me to return?”

“At this point, negative.”

“Are you planning to evacuate?”

“Negative.”

“Can you talk to Angela and Mohamed in the hospital, to see if they need my help?”

“Stand by.”

Marissa is talking on the phone again. Still no sign of the plane. It is an hour or more past its scheduled arrival. The spaces between the clouds are thin. A few more fat drops.

“James for David. James for David.”

“David, go ahead.”

“I spoke with Marco. He says the situation is stable. Do not return. Repeat. Do not return.”

I am relieved, as much that the decision has been taken from my hands as with its result. Marco wants me to leave. He said so this morning, as he shook my hand.

“Good copy. I’ll stand by in Agok. Over and out.”

“James, we need to make two transfers for surgery and we need Mobile 2. Over.”

“All right. Stand by.”

I walk back to Marissa. She is sitting in the seat of her Land Cruiser, her phone on her lap.

“Marissa, if the plane doesn’t show, do you think I could get a ride back with you?”

She hesitates for a second. We are well known for keeping our distance from other organizations. We can’t speak to their motivations, nor their methods. Ours, from the training of our logisticians to the malnutrition guidelines, are developed from years of experience. We remain responsible to them, to our headquarters. By doing our own thing, we remain focused and flexible, rarely on unfamiliar ground. Our distance from the UN is even greater. They are not an NGO; they are the opposite, a GO. When we can get it, we need our space.

“Sure. Why not.”

Anthony has already started the truck. He is returning, no matter what. I take my pack from the back and slam it shut. With a wave, he bumps across the rutted runway and disappears.

I have no Land Cruiser. No radio. No sat phone. No stethoscope.

I’m free.

04/06: contrails.

after six flights, i am on kenya’s coast. i feel like a poor traveler. after years of throwing my backpack on the top of local buses and bumping from country to country, i have forsaken discovery in favor of renewing pleasures that abyei does not afford. yesterday, immediately after my sleepless arrival, i ate fresh ocean fish in a sour coconut sauce, drank a glass of white wine, and fell asleep on a wide, white bed with a mound of pillows and an air conditioner whirring above me. 24 hours later, i have left my room only to swim.

operation boredom: accomplished.

it didn’t take very long. one day. in an attempt to liven things up, i have unsuccessfully tried to find trouble in paradise. there is no conflict, no disease, no problems to solve, no situations to talk yourself out of. i have looked for seediness, for shady characters, and found none. i have even begged the hotel staff to hunt me for sport but have been politely refused. i figure if i continue to insist, they will do it for pleasure.

traveling is best done on the ground, bus to bus, and planned only when necessary. it allows for the greatest number of oblique entries.

traveling is also best done on the ground because it avoids it in the air. flying is for the birds. for me, putting a hundred humans in a metal cylinder and propelling it into the atmosphere using combustion is not a miracle of modern aviation, it is stupid.

my discomfort with lifting off the ground with a thousand kilograms of gasoline and navigating incredible distances at incredible speeds while avoiding incredible numbers of other missiles with similar trajectories
does not improve with the number of times i fly. i fly all of the time. the only thing that has improved is how quickly i accept my inevitable end with every unanticipated click of the aircraft.

(click)

“well, i guess that’s it. i’ve led a good life. seen amazing, beautiful things. i knew it was just a matter of time. should have taken the bus.”

the flights in northern sudan have done little to quell my belief that i am flying on borrowed time.

the sky had shifted from blue to gray when the plane dropped from it. we would have a two-hour flight to kadugli, the nearest tarmac landing strip, where we would refuel. after boarding we climbed through the gathering wind, our tail waggling from side to side, and flew north. wind whistled through the door behind me. we ascended to several thousand feet, and as we reached the base of the clouds, we bumped against it. bump. bump. as we were being thrown up and down, one of the passengers turned to me and said, “i’m going to get some shut-eye,” and i was like, “what? in this tin coffin? fine. you sleep, i’ll use my mental energy to keep the plane aloft.” so we flew to kadugli, our heads brushing the clouds, one of us fast asleep, one of us fast awake. below us, the scorched earth raced by.

after circling kadugli for what seemed like an inordinately long time (“is this normal? they would tell me if there was a problem. i’m sure they would”), we bumped shakily down. “crosswind,” the pilot explained as he opened our door. we stepped out onto the tarmac. “um …,” he said, “refueling takes about 15 minutes, but we’ve gotta watch that, see what it’s gonna do.” he pointed his thumb over his shoulder. lightning sparked in a black horizon. “which way is el obeid?” i asked. he gestured over his shoulder again.

the tiny airport was full of un soldiers and staff waiting for a plane that, when it arrived, made our plane look like a toy. theirs was big and muscular. ours was made of balsa wood. i joined our pilot outside. we sat, smoking, as the wind gathered, and watched the storm. “what happens if we fly into that?” i asked, over the shh of blowing sand. the pilot made a breaking motion with his two hands.

it came towards us, but never hit the airport. we could see it dash the hills only a kilometer away, feel the weight of it on our skin, but it never crossed the runway. after several minutes, the un plane loaded its passengers, and smoothly lifted off from the runway with a certainty that must have been contagious.

“i think it is blowing itself out,” the pilot said. “let’s give it a shot.”

a shot. perfect. a college try. and if it hasn’t blown itself out, we’ll just …

shhhh …

we lifted off in the wind. this time we were all bolt awake. we flew, certain, straight towards el obeid. the storm had shifted, but had not gone. as we rose past the hills, it stood in front of us, an angry purple bruise. mounds of clouds. flicker. flicker.