Ninety-seven percent of the water in Rhino Camp was trucked in, and when those trucks too failed to show there was an uneasiness in the streets. Hungry children bawled as their mothers went door-to-door and begged for food. The tent hospitals, all run by foreign NGOs, were inundated with thousands of desperate people pleading for something to eat.
It rained for a week, nonstop, and the gravel highways used by the trucks flooded and washed out, cutting off food, water, and supplies. The dirt streets turned to mud and the rainwater pooled in puddles and began running down the hills. The narrow creeks rose with raw sewage and spilled out of their banks. The tents leaked around the windows and tore along the roofs and before long the deluge sent filthy water running under the floors of tents. The boreholes used for pumping water collapsed under the weight of the softening soil. The outhouses and crude privies filled and flooded and human waste ran free. It rained until everything—every person, every tent, every shanty, every jeep and truck, every field hospital—was soaked and caked with mud.
When the rain stopped and the skies cleared, the sun bore down on Rhino Camp and before long the mud returned to dirt. The doctors and aid workers braced for another wave of malaria.
* * *
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Bright and early on Wednesday morning, September 30, Samuel eased quietly out of his dorm room, leaving Murray dead to the world, and went outside where he found a park bench. He punched in the number for Christine, the French nurse. He could almost see her and wondered what kind of person leaves behind safety, security, a much easier life, to volunteer in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world? Samuel considered himself to be a compassionate soul, but his sympathy had its limits. He was awed by aid workers willing to risk their health, even their lives. Perhaps it was because he had just escaped the harshness of the developing world that he had such a dim view of going back. Perhaps some privileged people carried a bit of guilt and wanted to get their hands dirty. Or, perhaps they did indeed value every life.
He had a list of things to discuss with his mother, the most important of which was how to send her money. With Murray’s help, he had opened a checking account and applied for a credit card. He was saving his money and proud of the fact that he could handle it himself, just like every other student.
Ms. Keyser at the IRC had come through and referred him to yet another NGO, one that specialized in routing money back to Africa. Each year immigrants scattered around the world remitted home over $2 billion, money desperately needed by their families. Though South Sudan was a small, poor country with a limited number of expats abroad, its immigrants were sending back $300 million a year. Coordinating these payments and making certain the money arrived at its intended destination was a challenge, but Samuel had found a way and couldn’t wait to explain it to his mother.
There was no answer on Christine’s end.
CHAPTER 26
He went to the gym, turned on only one row of lights so he would attract no attention, stretched for all of five minutes, and began shooting. When he thought about his family, he missed. When he concentrated on his form, he hit. An hour passed and he realized how much he enjoyed the solitude of a deserted, semidark gym, with 3,000 empty seats, and not another person around. At 8:30, when the count was at 420 shots, a janitor walked under the backboard and said good morning. Samuel said good morning, said he was on the basketball team and had a key. The janitor didn’t care and disappeared.
Samuel stopped for water at ten o’clock and realized he would miss his first class. He decided he was taking a break from classes, if only for a day, and would do nothing but shoot. He skipped them all and stayed in the gym until noon when a group of alumni appeared for a meeting. He hustled back to his dorm and took a shower.
Coach Britt was old-school and believed that basketball players should be lean, limber, flexible, and quick. He preferred finesse over bulk and muscle. Therefore, he did not stress weight training. As an assistant at DePaul, he’d witnessed an entire team decimated with torn muscles and spasms a year after the program hired a drill sergeant who loved barbells and bench presses. Coach wanted speed over strength.
But Samuel had been mightily impressed with the play, not to mention the physique, of Abol Pach, the U.K. shooting forward who had almost single-handedly sent South Sudan packing in their last game in Orlando. Pach was one of them, a Dinka from Juba, lean and fluid but thicker in the arms and chest than most young African players. The program listed him at 6'7" and 220 pounds.
Though Samuel had watched the final game from the bench and in a dizzying fog of uncertainty over events back home, he vividly recalled Pach’s strength and intimidation around the rim. There was a rumor that he spent an hour a day pumping iron. Samuel also had an indelible memory of the vast and modern weight room where the Magic players lifted when off the court. If the game’s best players wanted strength, then that was good enough for him.