With no internet service in his village, he had limited skills with his laptop, but he was learning quickly. If finding his family depended on his technical skills, he would not rest until he mastered the internet. It was a gargantuan, uphill struggle, and he had only the slightest clue of the challenge. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he believed he would find them, somehow, some way.
At night, he covered one wall of his room with maps and made notes on them. He read online for hours. For his entire life he had heard stories of the diaspora of the South Sudanese but had never grasped the enormity of the crisis. Four million people, one third of the country’s population, had been displaced by decades of wars, with half living in camps and settlements inside the country. The surrounding countries were absorbing the other half of a massive and unmanageable overflow. There were 900,000 in Uganda, 200,000 in both Ethiopia and Sudan, another 100,000 in Kenya. Other South Sudanese had scattered even further from home, all in search of safety and food. Bidi Bidi, the largest settlement in Uganda, now held over 200,000 refugees and was beyond the breaking point. The governments of these countries were doing all they could do, and appealing for international help. It was arriving, but there was too little of it.
Eighty percent of the refugees were women and children. The men were either dead or off somewhere fighting. Only Syria and Afghanistan had more refugees. One United Nations study predicted that without a meaningful peace agreement, South Sudan would soon displace more of its people than any other country.
Working late into the night, Samuel marked the location of each refugee camp, and there were dozens of them.
In some of the older settlements in Uganda and Kenya, the refugees were given small tracts of land to grow vegetables and construct shanties. Some residents had been there for years and had lost hope of returning home. Makeshift schools were being run by aid workers. In the camps, which seemed to be newer and less organized, the conditions were often far worse. Cholera outbreaks were common. There was little or no health care. The refugees lived in tents and huts and began each day with the quest for food and water.
When he was exhausted, Samuel said his prayers and asked God to save his family, whatever was left of it.
CHAPTER 19
Beatrice and two other women from their village had managed to stick together and vowed to continue to do so. Three women with eight children, ages four to thirteen. They slept the first night at Rhino Camp in a field on the edge of the sprawling settlement. At dawn they began walking toward the center and soon found a food distribution point, a place where trucks rolled in with vats of warm porridge and rice. The line was long and slow-moving. The women, desperate for information, talked to other women as they waited. They learned there was an area on the far side of the settlement where aid workers from many countries operated under large tents and handed out clothing and medicine. There were a few doctors but getting to see one was difficult. James was having fevers and needed to see a doctor.
The women wanted to bathe and find better clothing. They were wearing rags, and their shoes had been abandoned days ago. After breakfast, they drifted with the crowd, past rows of flimsy dwellings, ramshackle lean-tos, and dirty tents. They noticed small fires where women were cooking and saw hundreds of teenage girls hauling water in pots on their heads. They stepped over a narrow creek choked with sewage and waste, then saw another long line and joined it. There was a food truck far ahead, and food was their priority. Their first days in Rhino Camp were spent waiting in long, slow lines for food, and sleeping on the ground with their children pulled close.
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On August 11, Samuel woke up early and wished himself a happy birthday. He was now eighteen, but he was not in a mood to celebrate. He knew that he would go through the entire day and keep his secret to himself. He said his morning prayers and ached for his mother and family.
After he showered, his phone rang and he grabbed it. Ecko Lam was calling to wish him a happy one, and they talked for half an hour. Ecko was still in South Sudan and would be returning home soon. Samuel was thrilled to learn that his coach was in Rumbek, meeting with the military, looking for Beatrice and her children. But the news was not good. According to survivors in Lotta, the people had fled in all directions. Some had been hunted down and killed by the rebels. The nearest camp was the Yusuf Batil settlement in the state of Upper Nile, a hundred miles from Lotta. There were many camps, some run by the government with basic services, others created by hungry people desperate for protection. In the government camps the refugees were registered and received better care, but it was still the old “needle in a haystack” scenario. Ecko planned to use his time gathering information and making contact with aid groups and military leaders and would report back when he returned to the States.