September 10 2005
As told to me by LumLum's son. He was talking about the years he spent growing up in Eritrea and Sudan, as he remembers them.(When I was 6 years old)
My mother was called LumLum by my father because her skin was lighter than most peoples.. LumLum is our local language for “brown brown”, My father was a car repairman. He worked in a garage out side of our village that was about 60 kilometers south of Asmara. You probably don’t know where that is, and think I live in a weird place, and speak a weird language, just because you don’t know where Asmara is, or how to speak Amharic.
My older sister was 7 and my baby sister was only 6 weeks old. My fathers dream was to put together some broken cars, and make a good one for us to drive around in. My mother said her dream was of us kids growing up healthy.
My mother taught us to hide in secret spots when ever we saw men with guns. It was very hard to tell Ethiopian raiders, from Eritrean rebels, from the Police. All of them carried gun, and hate people like us, because they can never tell which side we supported. My parents didn’t support any side. They had their own dreams.
One morning my sister gave the soldier warning, and I hide under where the chickens sleep. I could hear my father talking to the soldiers. Then I heard my father grunting loud, and my mother scream, and start making pig sounds. I didn’t move, because we had played a game like this before. My sisters and I would hide, and my parents would make all sorts of noises and tell us to come out. But we had to stay still till they actually pulled us out of our hiding places. I fell asleep, and when I woke up it was very hot. I was thirsty and wanted to get up. It was very quiet.
Then I heard my big sister crying. We were supposed to be quiet. She never did what she was told. Her hiding place was in a special sack in the garbage pit. I now heard soldiers talking and going through the garbage. My sister screamed, and the soldiers laughed. My mother made the same sound she makes at funerals. Then the soldier truck started up and they drove off.
Soon my mother came and dragged me out of the chicken house. Her clothes were all torn, and she was covered in blood, like she had just killed a goat. She stank, and hugged me so tight I couldn’t breath. She picked me up and ran to the toilet by the back fence. I saw our two goats were tied up by the gate. She put me down, and went into the toilet and started pulling a rope. My baby sister was tied to the rope. Mother had hid her inside the toilet, under the place where you sit.
My mother carried us both to the well where she washed us off, then took a big piece of wood from our roof, and slowly walked to the goats. One goat broke his rope and ran. She swung the stick and broke the other goats legs, she kept hitting it. Then she went and got the knife from the kitchen and started cutting the goat. She took meat off the legs. I could hear the soldiers shooting their guns at our neighbors house. Mother said the soldiers would come back to our house for the chickens and goats.
She then took the mosquito net off our bed, and wrapped the meat in it. She wrapped some clothes, and food in a blanket that she put over her shoulders. She picked us both up, and started walking.
My mother was walking fast for many hours, it was now almost dark. We hid in some bushes near a big tree. I didn’t want to hide because I wanted my father to find us. My mother said to be very quiet and try to sleep. Later in the dark, I heard soldiers talking and walking close to us. If they can find us then maybe so can my father. My mother told me to be very quiet. My baby sister started to cry. My mother put her hand hard on my sister’s mouth so she couldn’t cry. I was very quiet while the soldiers talked standing close to the bush. I thought it was raining because there was water dripping on me, but it was mothers tears as she cried softly. Soon the soldiers walked away. We didn’t move for a long time then my mother quickly got up and started kissing and blowing into my sisters mouth. She said my sister had stopped breathing. Soon my baby sister cried, and so did my mother. Mother later told me that if my sister had made a noise, all three of us would be dead. It was better for only one to die.
We walked at night, and during the day we would try to sleep in pipes under the road. My mother was afraid to talk or be seen by any other people. She said they may call the soldiers. We ate all the goat meat that Mother had dried out inside the mosquito net. We had a big Coke bottle to keep water in. Once a large swarm of locusts landed near us. We ate locusts till we were full. Some times mother would borrow a chicken from a house we went past, and once a woman came near us with a basket. The woman was talking out loud to herself about where the soldiers were. She left the basket when she walked away. It was full of bread and some cheese.
We arrived at a big place with a big mountain all by itself. It was named Kasala. There were so many people living in tents there. Most were speaking Ahmaric, but many spoke Arabic. Mother told a man in charge of the camp that we had been walking and hiding for 2 months, and that my father and big sister were dead. My mother was happy when we got “Official Refugee Status”.
There was a lot of food to eat, but it wasn’t very good, and was different from what mother used to make. Some of the people feeding us and giving medicine were French speaking, and some wore light blue hats, and some wore a big Red Cross.
(At 9 years old)
For a few years we stayed there in Kasala. Sister learned to walk and talk, and I had been going to school. I learned some math and different languages, and also lots about how to stay healthy.
Mother decided we should leave the camp, and so did some other mothers. A group of us left the camp in a big truck. We went to Khartoum. There were more cars there than I had ever seen. There were shops with more food than I could eat in a life time. Mother kept saying she needed a job. She said you don’t grow food here, you buy it with money. A job gives you money to trade for food.
Most of the houses had the toilet inside the house. That seems very bad to me. Our toilets were always far from the house. Not in the middle of it.
Mother had many jobs, but being an illegal immigrant and not Muslim made it hard. A few years later, she got a job working for some airplane pilots that came from South Africa. They flew airplanes for the UN and the Red Cross. Her job was to clean the big house and do the laundry, and sometimes to cook. We had to learn to speak English in the house, and Arabic outside the house.
(At 14 years old)
Mother raised us well. The money from the pilots was more than most people earned, and the pilots didn’t care that we were Orthodox Christians instead of Muslim. The Pilots paid Mother in US Dollars which was a wonderful thing. Also many of the pilots when they finished their contracts would just leave all their Sudanese money behind for us.
Mother was able to send us to good schools. I had American and Canadian kids in school with me.
I thought the American kids were rude until I got to know them. If you walk up to an American, he will grab your hand and tell you who he is, like it is the most important thing in the world. They do the same when they answer a telephone. The quickly tell you who they are. We were taught that the most important person of the two does the first introduction. Americans assume they are the most important. I gradually learned to like the Americans, but one thing I don’t like is their arrogance about English. A typical American insult is “Don’t you even understand English?” I am learning English, and can speak Ahmaric, Swahili, and Arabic, but that means nothing to an American.
The Sudanese men on the street some times spoke bad things about us as we walked by. They think we are taking jobs from the Sudanese people. My mother never did get a work permit, or a passport.
(At 27 years old)
I barely managed to finish Medical school at the University of Khartoum. Mother saved for years, and sent me to America for my Internship. I now live there, and will soon make Mother a Grandmother. I am saving to bring her and my sister here to see America and meet my wife. My sister is in the University of Khartoum studying to be a translator. She wants to work for the UN.
Yesterday I saw a child at the Mall. He was crying because his mothers wouldn’t buy him the latest version of some video game. There are children in Darfur and Kasala that will experience more misery and pain in a morning than most Americans will in their entire life. Most Americans have never been hungry. I once yearned for the grasshoppers I had eaten the day before. When Americans see the refugee camps on TV they say “There but for the grace of God, go I”. I believe this is not the grace of God, but the Will of God. There is none of God’s grace in a starving child.
When Americans think about someone that is tough. Really tough. They think about Rambo, John Wayne, or the Marines. I think of a small Brown Brown Eritrean Mother.
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