City of Saints & Thieves(52)
“I’m not out here for my health, habibi,” Boyboy says, waving off minibus fumes.
“Fine. I guess I can’t stop you. But I’m not taking the bus.”
“Private car?” Boyboy asks hopefully.
“No.”
“All right, miss expert travel agent, what mode of transportation do you suggest, then?”
I tug the straps on my bag, cinching them down tight over my shoulders. “We’ll take what all the refugees take.”
Boyboy’s mouth drops open when he follows my gaze. “You’re kidding, right? A banana lorry?”
I smirk. “Unless you’ve got a private plane I don’t know about.”
“Michael does,” Boyboy says. “His dad has an arms-smuggling helicopter.”
Michael crosses his arms. “It’s one thing to take my dad’s motorcycle out for a ride. It’s another to steal his chopper. Besides, he’s using it.”
He gives me a pointed look. Does he know that I know his dad is traveling?
Boyboy groans. “I detest banana lorries. I vowed never again.”
“So take the bus and get stopped by border guards and bribe your way across three countries,” I say. “I’m taking the lorry.”
Boyboy removes his hat, gives it an apologetic look, and stows it in his bag. “I’m just putting this out there—this is the most unglamorous thing I will ever do for you, Tiny.”
“I’m not forcing you!” I say, exasperated. “You’re the one who wants to come. You could always stay here.”
Boyboy gives me a funny look. “It’s not that I want to come.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
He starts to answer, then just shakes his head and walks off toward the lorry. Even Michael gives me a weird grimace, like he’s embarrassed for me for some reason.
As he turns to follow Boyboy, Michael says, “For someone so smart, you sure can be an idiot.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Rule 12: Always be ready to bolt.
At some point in your life, you will have to escape from something. Don’t be caught unprepared. Maybe you have a fancy tunnel guarded by monsters, and cars and helicopters waiting outside to whoosh you away. Maybe you have passports and bank accounts in Europe. Maybe you have a motorcycle.
Maybe you’ve just got your feet. And if you’re thusly unprepared, I hope for your sake a big woman with a truck takes pity on you.
But that sort of thing doesn’t usually happen twice.
? ? ?
Mama and I got out of Congo on a banana lorry.
After we left the forest we made for Goma, on the tip of Lake Kivu. I don’t remember much of that part. In Goma, though, there were too many soldiers prowling the streets and pops of gunfire at odd hours, and after sleeping a few nights on the floor at a pastor’s home with a dozen other dazed and bruised bodies, the pastor told us the fighting was getting worse and we needed to leave. He managed to get us a lift with a lorry driver who had a lazy eye and a paunchy belly. He looked Mama up and down with his good eye, smiled and said he’d take us wherever we wanted. We thanked the pastor, and once he was gone, Mama found us another ride. Still a banana lorry, but driven by a huge, fierce woman named Paula Kubwa: “Big Paula.”
Apparently lots of would-be refugees wanted to hitch a ride out of the country with Paula Kubwa. She was said to be the daughter of one of the militia leaders, and she took no guff from militia or police. She paid her bribes at the checkpoints like everyone else and got on her way, and if any man said boo he’d be laid out cold in the dirt, his friends just pissing themselves with laughter.
It wasn’t easy to get a ride with the lady driver. Mama later told me that we included Paula Kubwa in our prayers every night because she had found us. She had rescued us. She had picked us out of the crowd of jostling refugees to act as our lady Moses, parting the sea for our escape into the promised land. I don’t know if I remember her face, or if I’ve conjured it out of what Mama told me. In my mind she was a mountain, something marvelous and terrifying like an angel with a sword.
I’m pretty sure she didn’t need my prayers.
? ? ?
I guess Boyboy, Michael, and I could have taken a bus and found some way to sneak across the borders, but just the idea of sitting in a cramped space for eight hours with all those bodies and all their bags and no one rolling down the windows makes me ill. Everyone eating and farting and talking too loud, little kids peeing in their pants because the bus won’t stop, people sitting practically on top of you. A pirated kung fu movie on a too-small screen blasting too-loud static in the front. Contraband chickens that get loose and run squawking up and down the aisle until some poor guy grabs them and stuffs them back under his sport coat.
I like a crowd—it’s great for pickpocketing—but I need to be able to escape. I’d rather pay a few shillings to sit in the back of a truck full of goods headed for the interior. It might be less comfortable, but at least you can feel the breeze.
Once, because I’m an orphan kid and no one could tell me not to, I went as far as the border checkpoint between Kenya and Uganda. My plan was to go all the way around the north side of Lake Victoria to Congo. I just jumped on a bus because I felt like it, pretending to be one of a family of ten, melting into the pack of loud, wiggly children who were being ushered on board by their overwhelmed father. I slipped under the driver’s eye and slouched into a seat in the back. I didn’t want to return for good, I just . . . wanted to go. To see.