City of Saints & Thieves(53)
But I chickened out before crossing that invisible line that turned Kenya into another country. One foot over and suddenly I’m illegal again, my refugee documents meaningless. Or so the smugglers in the lorries told me.
They call them banana lorries because the big flatbed trucks take stuff bought in Sangui—cooking oil, pots and pans, medical supplies, stuff made in China—into Congo. Then they bring produce (lots of bananas, hence the name) and timber and charcoal and people back out. Sometimes a little smuggled gold if the drivers think they can manage to get through all the checkpoints without getting caught. More often than gold, though, it’s refugees, because they’re easier to come by than gold, and no one wants to steal them.
The lorries go out and back, single file down the disintegrating highway. Like cows heading to pasture in the morning, returning to the barn at night. On that trip I decided to skip the bus and take a lorry back to Sangui. The man I found said I could, but if I had papers to get me across Kenya, why did I want to sit in the open? Why not sit in the nice bus? I just did. He shrugged and told me the fare—nearly as much as the bus after all—but assured me there were other ways if I didn’t have the money. He gazed in unvarnished disappointment at my thighs when I pulled out my cash.
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I look for a big woman among the drivers, but there are only men. We’ll go a different way from my trip before, through Tanzania and Rwanda, around the south end of Lake Victoria. There are more borders to cross this way, but it’s the fastest route to Goma. We want a driver with a good truck that won’t break down, and one who has a wheel boy, who will switch out and drive through the night so we don’t lose precious hours. First we have to talk to the touts, though, the guys who arrange the rides and take a cut. They jostle for our fare, waving and shouting and tugging our arms.
Once we’ve made the arrangements, we’re presented to our driver. He takes one look at us, rounds on the tout, and lets him have it. Their argument is quick and loud and ends with the tout throwing up his hands and stalking off.
“How old are you?” the driver asks me.
“Eighteen.”
“Kwani? Eighteen, my ass; come back when you’re twelve.” He starts to turn away.
“Fine, I’m sixteen.”
He looks from me to Boyboy in his fancy trousers, to pale-faced Michael, and I can see him weighing it all out. We look like runaways. If I were him, I wouldn’t want to take us either and risk getting in trouble at a police checkpoint.
“We’ll pay extra,” Michael says.
The driver’s eyes scan around and he comes in closer. He tells Michael softly how much more he wants, a ridiculous sum.
“We’ll pay half that,” I interject when I can see Michael is ready to agree. I do have my pride.
The driver knows it’s fair. “Be ready in twenty minutes.”
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The wheel boy loads up cooking oil in five-gallon jugs while the driver supervises. They’re a good investment because the jugs will later be used for carrying water and the driver can get extra for them. Big aluminum cooking pots, straight from China, go in next to boxes full of long bars of laundry soap. These will be sliced up like sticks of butter and sold off in squares. Rubber sandals, ladies’ used dress shoes, football jerseys. Gum, cigarettes, plastic kazoos. It all goes in the back, the driver watching with a frown of concentration to see how badly the bottom of the truck sags. He’s still got to put us back there too, after all.
While we’re waiting, I move a few paces away and call up Kiki’s school. I know I’ll be back soon, but I feel guilty just leaving without at least checking on her.
However, “The young ladies are not allowed phone calls unless it is an emergency,” a stern voice tells me. “Is this an emergency?”
“Not exactly, but—”
“No calls unless it’s an emergency,” the woman repeats, and before I can respond, I hear the line go dead. I grumble something uncharitable about the nun and redial the number. It rings and rings but no one answers.
I don’t like the idea of leaving Sangui, much less the country, without talking to Kiki. What if I don’t make it back by Friday? The idea of her sitting there in the washroom waiting on me is enough to give me a stomachache. But I’m not sure what else to do. She’ll be fine, I tell myself. I try to shake off the bad feeling the call leaves, but it sticks with me the rest of the day.
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We are not the only passengers. When it’s time to go, I find myself in a scrum of bodies, all of them tugging overstuffed suitcases and clamoring to jump into the back of the truck at the last minute without paying the touts. Our tout fends them off, sweating and shouting and slapping at the interlopers, with his belly coming loose from under his shirt. I squeeze through the crowd toward the back of the truck, pushing Michael ahead of me, Boyboy close behind. The tout lets us climb on, but not before managing to sidle up close enough to rub his thing on my leg as I pass. He chuckles at my expression, and I can smell whatever garbage he ate for breakfast.
There are six of us in all who’ve secured a ride. Any more and the truck will scrape bottom. I am the only female. The three men who join us are so tall and long faced that they remind me of maize stalks. They look exhausted. One of them has bartered his way on as security and watches carefully to make sure that no one grabs the goods out of the back of the truck while we’re snarled in traffic leaving the city. The others fall asleep immediately. The security man is so light and frail-looking, I can’t imagine he’d be any match for someone determined to loot us. In fact, I’m afraid that if we get going fast enough, these skeleton men might fly right off the truck and blow away like empty shirts.