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Kamara was lucky on that unlucky day when the RUF arrived in Koidu. He had woken unusually early, something gnawing at him, growling deep in the pit ofhis soul, disrupted his sleep. He hoped he wasn't falling ill. A walk might help. It was still ten minutes before the sun was up as he headed through town. Thelights from homes picked out the muddy-orange of the deep craters against the black-green of savannah bush, and stopped him falling into one. It was only lastweek that he helped search throughout the night for a lost 4 year old boy, Blimblim. Blimblim was found an hour after sunrise face down in a puddle at thebottom of a five foot deep hollow. The father's early morning wails still fill him with foreboding. Maybe it was that that had disturbed his sleep.
Kamara had clawed out some of the craters, or so his hands told him with their thick muddy-orange, cracked leathery hardness. Digging in the diamond richalluvial soil, all he had wanted was “to take a diamond” which would make him enough money to buy the seeds and tools to start farming, carry on the familytradition. He passed the school playing fields where once he and his best friend Foday entertained proud fantasies of playing football for Sierra Leone, and was now a muddy-orange moonscape of diamond diggings. Football just another memory.
When he reached the banks of the muddy-orange Meya River it was light. No slow lazy dawns - no twilights - in the tropics. Kamara and thousands of bare-backed boys and men used to bend double in the river for hour after hour sifting diamonds. He knew the river well. He turned left before the bridge, keeping the bank and now hippopotamusless Meya to his right. Thirty yards to his left were a row of single story homes, those still occupied fast coming awake with the noises of morning. The empty ones in their quiet loneliness seemed like nests recently fledged, the occupants on annual migration fleeing the harsh sand-laced Harmattan winds. He was heading the two-hundred yards toward a giant baobab tree he had climbed and fell out of more than once as a boy. He came here often to think and reinvigorate his soul, calling up good times with the
baobab and boyhood friends before the diamond rush. This day the baobab saved his life.
Leaning against his old friend, Baobab, gazing the far horizon, Kamara heard
behind him loud, piercing voices and an ominous rumbling of boots on the bridge.
He poked his head around the trunk and time slowed, extended, stretched. Not
in the delicious tastes of love with Christine from Llantrisant that Blunt knew,
but in dread as the steel taloned grip of fear pierced his gut. The Revolutionary
United Front. A muddy-orange stain spread down his trousers.
He had heard the rumours. Who hadn't. But Kamara had thought that they would
be coming for the diamonds and would need diamond-diggers. Always stubborn,
he had argued for two days with his parents and brothers and sister about staying,
looking after their home. In the end he stayed and they left for Freetown and
relative safety. His sister, Mawa, had called him “A fool,” as she hugged him
goodbye. He knew now what had disrupted his sleep. Deep in the convoluted
recesses of his mind, beyond his stubbornness, Kamara knew that Mawa was
right and his reason for not fleeing his home, his Koidu, was wrong. Plain
wrong. What he had seen from behind the baobab made Kamara “Fool".
A hundred boys from 7 years old were pouring over the bridge, followed by
pick-ups mounted with machine guns and gunning their engines. They all seemed
to be waving AK-47's and smoking massive spliffs of ganga. The smallest boys
would be trotting next to their older 'buddy', acting as batman to the officer and
keeping the crack laced spliffs coming.
Some boys were dressed as women in floral frocks, long red wigs andplastic-fruit
adorned hats. Madmen scared Kamara most. His bowels loosened and he smelt
his fear.
He had encountered men dressed as women before from a drawing in an old
school book. English Pirates marauding the African coast. He didn't read the
story, he couldn't then, but the drawing was powerful. The English Pirates -
Slavers under an honest flag - were also dressed as women and had the same
glazed madmens eyes. Blunt remembered Welsh history and the Rebecca riots.
Popular heroes between 1839 and 1844, when men dressed as women attacked
and burned down the Toll Booths, in some places one mile apart along the west
Wales roads. Scared Keepers of Toll Booths, the exploiters of coach and wagon
drivers, farmers and the growing urban poor, ran. But these boy/women weren't
attacking Kamara's exploiters. Those to weak or to poor to flee Koidu were the
target. They were superfluous. Diamond digging would be done by the kidnapped
boyslaves and bush wifes of the RUF. The Revolutionary United Front - pirates
by another name.
Then he retched. Before what he saw registered, Kamara retched and the steel
taloned grip of fear tightened. On an AK-47's bayonet being thrust aloft by the
arm of a 14 year old boy, was a near-term foetus ripped from it's mother's
womb. Skewered through the anus and out the throat. The placenta, hanging
from the umbilical cord swung and slapped the boys arm in beat to his step. The
foetus was the trophy from a bet with another 'rebel' on the gender of a pregnant
woman's unborn child. “We love you”, was the infanticider's demented scream at
Koidu.
The first shots from the Kalashnikovs put time back on course. Kamara literally
leapt into his old friend, the baobab. The tree had hollowed out, as is the way
of old baobabs. He saw a baobab once, twenty miles north - the farthest he had
ever travelled from Koidu - that a whole family had moved into and called home.
This baobab hollow was not that big. 10' x 5' and the top could not be seen. As a
boy Kamara and his friends used to hide in here from angry parents, but his
friends didn't know of the ledge he discovered 9' up inside the trunk. He never
even told Foday. In the gloom, the ledge couldn't beseen from below. Not by
the tallest adult. It was his space. Kamara's place. It was too late to tell Foday
now, he had been kidnapped by the RUF ten years ago aged 11. One of the first.
Kamara had seen them coming and had shouted a warning as he ran. Foday never
was a fast runner, a goalkeeper, and they were on him. Still haunted by Foday's
yells, “Kamara, Kaamaaarraaaa”, he hadn't looked back.
The RUF looked in the baobab of course and Kamara was petrified that the stench
of his fear would betray him to these murderous children. But as always they
were smoking ganga and the pungent smell camouflaged his. A small crack just
above the ledge, a half inch stretch mark on the bark covered in cobwebs,
allowed him to see out. Exactly opposite and thirty yards away was a
white-washed courtyard wall. Six years ago he had looked out this same crack at
the same wall, nobody knowing he was there, when Mariam his first love came
to play. Mariam with the flashing eyes and the flashing smile. She was not with
girl friends, but leading Abbas by the hand. Abbas, the best footballer at school
and the handsomest in Koidu. Leaning against the wall, she kissed him and
Kamara's heart vitrified then cracked. Odd the memories retrieved when the
psyche is tortured.
The organised, systematic slaughter began immediately. He saw it all. The arc of
light is ever with him.
He was so ashamed to watch. The pornography gave him a hard-on and no matter
how he tried he could not not look. It was the same six years ago when he
watched Mariam and Abbas. Aroused and impossible to shift his gaze from so
much pain.
A boy 'rebel' called out “Captain Blood” and an older boy, maybe a man judging
by his height as he straightened up and turned to the boy rebel saying, “What?”
The put-down tone adopted the world over by officers when addressing a lower
rank came easy to him. The voice Kamara knew well, but not the sneer of cold
command.
He saw his face, had to clamp his mouth shut with both hands to throttle the
name “Foday.”
The boy 'rebel' was prodding a soiled and trembling 5 year old girl in the back
with the point of his machete, propelling her towards Foday/Captain Blood.
Fatima, Blimblim's older sister. Her father lay flayed by Foday/Captain Blood's
machete, dead ten yards behind her on the killing floor, his wails for Blimblim
exhausted. Her mother was screaming at the wall, being anally raped as twenty
13 year old 'rebels' in a disciplined queue waiting their turn, giggled and chanted,
“Fuck her in the ass.” “Fuck her in the ass.” Egging each other on as if it was a
playground scrap.
Foday/Captain Blood grabbed Fatima's right arm, laid it on a tree stump and with
one arc of light the machete severed her hand. He picked it up from the dirt and
put it in her grieving left, “Take your hand to Freetown, see if the government
will give you a new one.” His words dripped sarcasm and gore. Foday/Captain
Blood was insane to think a fractured 5 year old's mind could comprehend any
reason for her terror.
Foday/Captain Blood raised his head and looked around, searching. Then he saw
it. The old baobab tree. He walked toward it, placed a hand on the trunk,
ducked and peered into the gloom.
“Still here then old friend.” He said to the baobab, “Its been a long time. Have
you seen Kamara lately? Is he still alive? I hope so. If you see him tell him this
slow runner misses his friend.”
Long years of regret ran deep along his tongue. Even if he wanted to Kamara
couldn't unclamp his mouth, call and reclaim his monster friend. The stark
question “why?” in Fatima's eyes was seared on his every cell. Mouth glued by a
girls eyes. The arc of light and Fatima's question are ever with him.
Strolling back to the wall Foday/Captain Blood was shouting,
“Sergeant Burnhouse.” “Sergeant Burnhouse.”
An 11 year old boy, shorter and fatter than the others came with a waddle,
running in a stutter and wanting to please. Fumbling with his belt and in the lilting
soprano of a still to break boys voice, asked,
“Ay Cap'n?”
Sergeant Burnhouse had taken to calling Foday/Captain Blood, 'Cap'n' after seeing
a tired print of Walt Disney's 1950 film Treasure Island a few weeks before. They
had all been in Monrovia escorting diamonds to Robertsfield Airport, collecting
arms and crack in exchange and the film was being projected on a hanger wall the
first night there. The younger of them like Sergeant Burnhouse watched in silent
awe and enchantment as wafts of pungent smoke flickered through the projected
light. Foday/Captain Blood was Long John Silver and Sergeant Burnhouse in the
supporting role of First Pirate Mate, who always said 'Ay Cap'n'. The ending
wasn't what they wanted and they booed, one shot-up the celluloid image of Jim.
But the thrill of film had them all laughing, feeling good. Odd the ways of Disney
films and child killers on Rest & Recreation.
Foday/Captain Blood spread an arm that embraced all of Koidu.
“Time to do your job. Burn it. Burn Koidu.”
A big, broad grin spread across Sergeant Burnhouse's fat, smooth face. A happy
little boy, he enjoyed using his skill making fire. He was Guardian of Fire.
Sergeant of Flame with a big fire to set today. And a pre-pubescent arsonist is
made legimate in his own eyes by the RUF.
Kamara hid in the baobab for two days. Through the acrid smell of Koidu burning;
the screams of amputees and the constantly raped; the shrill laughter of boy
'rebels'; he stayed put. Snatching sleep when his terror let him. By the second
night the fires had burned out. 80% of Koidu was raised to the ground. (Poor
grinless Sergeant Burnhouse, he was so depressed, his 'Cap'n' wouldn't let him
fire the rest). The screaming had subsided to a low continuous groan. Kamara
had to leave. When he judged it was at its quietest he slipped out of the baobab.
“Thank you my friend,” he mouthed as every stressed nerve taughtened again
trying to help him get out of a treacherous Koidu. He walked hesitently, testing
the ground for craters and bodies, always keeping the sound of the slow flowing
Meya close to his right. As he walked he passed many craters, one a grave for
hands, another a grave for feet, another a grave for five dismembered Blimblim's.
Antwerp, London and Tel Aviv would deal in diamonds mined from the
body-parts of infants.
The last thing he remembered of Koidu was the receeding moans of women and
girls still being gang-raped to death. The finale to Foday/Captain Blood's
psychotic symphony.
Amnesty International reported, “The town of Koidu, in Kono District, Eastern
Province, was virtually destroyed by rebel forces....., and more than 650 bodies
were reported to have been found there.” How many died from their wounds
having fled into the savannah bush, no one will know.
Two miles along the river bank Kamara eased into the water and swam for the
opposite bank emerging covered in silt. He ran. A muddy-orange shimmer
streaking across the savannah, running till day-break on fear's adrenalin. No
more muddy-orange soil to cultivate or prospect. His was an urban future.
It took him two months travelling, skirting villages, stealing scraps, eating
leaves and grubs and carrion. Dodging everybody - especially boy children - to
get away. He washed-up in a refugee camp in a school at Kissidougou in Guinea.
A squalid place with 25, 000 refugees. A quarter of a million people were
corralled in Guinea's Parrots Beak, north-east of Koidu. He still wasn't safe.
The RUF were making cross border raids on the refugee camps near the border
and Guinean militias, young men armed by the government were harrying
refugees not the RUF. He set out for Conakry in a group of 200 to escape again.
When a child Kamara had been clever with the Devil Sticks, holding two sticks
and throwing another across the gap. He always kept the one stick in the air
longer and made more patterns than any of his childhood friends in Kiodu. He
practised obsessively in the refugee camp at Conakry, searching for the physical
rhythm that would put his mind in the zone where he could control the pictures in
his head. He discovered he could do this as a boy when first playing with 'Three
Sticks'. It helped him deal with his childhood worries and maybe it could help him
now. He had to do something or the pictures would derange his mind, make him
mad. This he knew.
Gravity defying concentration helped him suppress their horrors enough to
tentively search their meaning. At first he thought the arc of light was a sign from
Allah, a crescent signifer of sin, but through his concentration and against the
pictures seering power, religious doubts unfolded. The RUF were Muslim too.
Was not your fellow believer your friend? What transgression from faith, what
sin had Fatima at five done to see her hand fall to earth? He nervously aired his
doubts at the Friday prays once, looking for help in understanding and coming to
terms with his trauma. Assuage the guilt of complicity he felt at seeing a terrible
beauty in an arc of light. The Imam was young. He only had quotes from the
Quran delivered with a rehearsed charismatic, but empty, oratory. When
Kamara insisted, pressed his questions he was denounced. He was close to
exposing the callow intellect of an Imam who could not afford to lose his
worshippers leadership. Their donations and the 'gifts' from the Saudi Wahabbi
sect feed him. Kamara found himself ostracised from the Mosque. The Imam's
faithful followers had experienced his experience but buried their own pictures in
the rituals of obsessive/compulsive chants to blind faith. The Mosque as anchor
in a world of pain. They had not seen Fatama's 'Why?'.
He survived Koidu on his own, he would survive the Mosque on his own. He had
the ritual of juggling and religion fell from him. Doubt one monotheism, you
doubt them all. He was Apostate. The quest for Fatima's 'Why?' would not be
via faith.
The UNHCR had processed him on arrival at Conakry. Taken his story and said
they would try and find the whereabouts of his parents. He was asked what he
would say to them if he met them now. He ask the UNHCR to tell his parents he
was still alive, was missing them but was thinking of travelling to London. And
that Foday was Captain Blood. Then he broke down. Collapsed and writhed,
spoke in voices, saw only colours in a kaliedoscope. A physical and emotional
wreck. Medecins sans Frontieres looked after him and a day or two later he
started to talk sense and his vision cleared, but he was considered touched. A
month of nursing and regular but rationed food brought his strength back.
He spoke to Human Rights Watch who filed a report. The story of Koidu was
made public around the world. 20 words even saw the light of day in the
Antipodean Neanderthal's Sun.
He was practising juggling, a three ball cascade and a stick balanced on his chin,
when he next met the UNHCR. The stick and stones tumbled making dust puffs
in the dirt. They had found his family in Freetown. He was elated at first,
thinking they were all safe. But as the UNHCR talked to him it slowly dawned
that things had not been good. The RUF and Foday/Captain Blood had penetrated
Freetown. Mother was dead. As was Mawa. His wails joined the demented choir
of wails past and wails future all the camp feared to hear. Other than Kamara's,
no voice was heard and all eyes turned in empathy toward that wailing keene.
The next day he asked the UNHCR for the details in the news. It hurt him to
hear, but knowing was preferable to not. Enquiry had lost a faith but curiosity
had found a ledge in the dark in a baobab. He had to know.
Mawa met Foday/Captain Blood and had died without hands and a foot. As her
blood drained from her to dirt, she whispered 'Foday?' His father said that
Foday/Captain Blood's eyes were blank until mother recognised him from the
dinner table and screamed his name. “FODAY". He stopped his hacking and his
eyes cleared then welled as he looked to Kamara's mother. He turned to Mawa
and moaned, “Mawa". The muse of his adolescent desires before the RUF. He
had killed her. Recognition was there but a moment. A fog returned to him as he
stared at his contingent of boy soldiers. “Leave them". He heard a murmur from
his boys but it stopped abruptly as he shifted his weight to turn in its direction.
The welling in his eyes had been noticed. A weakness seen. Clarity and
recognition would never again show in the eyes of Captain Blood. Ten years in
the RUF had obliterated his future and his past.
Kamara's mother died a few days after Mawa. She walked into a fire-fight.
Whether she knew where she was no one knows.
For Kamara, Foday was dead. If he ever saw Captain Blood again he would kill
him, burn him to ash and dance to the melody of his screams. He would never
get the opportunity. Captain Blood was sprayed in the back with a clip from an
AK-47. A 17 year old, called Viper led a mutiny on their retreat from Freetown.
From a city that was devastated, traumatised by amputation and 5, 000 dead.
Viper proclaimed, “Captain Blood is old and weak. He can't lead anymore. And
he takes the biggest share. I will be fair.”
Captain Blood would have recognised those words if had heard Viper, he had said
them, word for word, when he had killed his own leader and seized control.
Sergeant Burnhouse joined the mutiny, still angry with Captain Blood for
stopping the total burning of Koidu. He also died that night. As he slept petrol
was thrown over him and lit by his arsonist assistant, 9 year old Mega Flame. If
you change the Captain, then why not change the Sergeant. His comrades thought
he would appreciate being cremated knowing his love of fire and were suprised by
his screams for “Mother”, asking him “Didn't you kill her?”
Kamara's father and brothers said they would miss him but that it would be better
if he went to London. If he got a job there he could help them by sending money.
He surrepticiously left the camp not long after the news of Mother and Mawa,
juggling in Conakry's Marche du Niger to earn money. A leanto behind a cafe his
bed. His first savings were spent on buying three juggling balls. He acquired a
costume; a pair of lincoln green trousers, a dark red shirt and a Derby hat to
make him visible amongst the market crowd. The Derby he discovered covered in
gunge lying in the markets end-of-day rubbish. The body of the hat was starting to
seperate from the rim. After cleaning and cureing the smell he used heavy, shiny
black tape to mend it. He had another piece of juggling equipment and tried to
learn a contact juggling pattern. Rolling the Derby up and down his arms and
across his shoulders. Kamara found it difficult. 'Practise', he thought.
Children flocked around him making him nervous, his forced smiles, the clownish
antics and gurning face he had adopted, fooling most. He had no problem acting,
after all he was 'touched'. The mothers were pleased he was there and usually
donated a centime or two for the child care. More than once he had to fend of
pick-pockets after his takings. Two months after finding the derby and he had
enough to set off for Dakar.
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