MAGWI WASN’T paradise, but it also wasn’t hell on earth. There were cattle raids, but so far, there had been no massacres. Nonstop rain made conditions ripe for infectious disease, but fortunately we had antibiotics. The buildings didn’t have electricity, but we had fuel for the generator.
People got sick from diseases no longer seen in most of the world, but families stayed on in the tent village outside the clinic and helped care for their loved ones. Often, they sang and danced. I was able to follow up with my patients, and helping them get well helped me, too.
One day during my first weeks in Magwi, I was injecting babies in the midst of a scene of controlled chaos. Kala-azar is a horrific insect-borne disease. Left untreated, it’s often fatal. We had enough amphotericin and miltefosine for now, and we had patients’ families filling the tents in front of the clinic, helping with patient care. But the shots hurt.
The serum was thick. We had to use big needles, and injections had to be continued every day for a month. Toddlers screamed when they saw me coming, and they fought back. It took two people to keep an angry child still.
That morning, Obit, a boy of twelve, sat down next to me on the blanket as I worked. We had been treating him for an infected foot, and he liked hanging out at the clinic. He was good with the younger children, and now he assisted me and the mothers by holding their infants and distracting them with toys he made out of brush and twigs.
During a rare peaceful moment, he said to me, “Your hair. I have never seen hair like this.”
“Red, you mean?”
He asked to touch my hair, and I said, “Sure.” I told Obit that I had Irish roots, that my mother had had red hair. Obit became quiet.
“What are you thinking, Obit?”
He teared up and told me that he had no family left, that Zuberi had come to his village and killed everyone.
“They even took down my old grandmother,” he told me. “With knives. I saw this. She love everyone. She die hard.”
“I’m so sorry, Obit. What was her name?”
“Joya. Grandmother Joya.”
There is a radio station in Magwi, and that day I heard that Zuberi’s people had attacked the city of Juba. They had captured a hundred and twenty-nine children. They castrated the boys and left them to bleed to death. They had gang-raped the little girls before killing them. Little boys who had been unable to run were roped together, and their throats had been slit.
I couldn’t stop thinking about this horror.
God, why? Why didn’t You stop this?
That night, I wrote in my journal about the attack on Juba, and then I created a new section and a new page. I called the first entry “This Was Joya.” I wrote down what Obit had told me about what his grandmother had taught him, and anecdotes about his parents and siblings, who had been brutally slaughtered.
Since “Joya,” I’ve written sixty memorial stories in my journal. As I recorded Zuberi’s crimes against humanity, one real person at a time, I became a historian of bloody murder in South Sudan. I prayed every day that soon, the eyes of the world would be fixed on Colonel Zuberi. And that he would pay on this earth for what he had done to these poor people.
Chapter 38
MY FIRST three months in Magwi passed like a med school dream. I worked with Sabeena, and since we could just about read each other’s minds, we made an excellent team.
Medical supplies were delivered to the Magwi post office directly from Juba. We received virgin bandages, saline solution, and an autoclave for sterilizing equipment. Most important, we got cases of medicine for kala-azar.
A new doctor joined us from Connecticut. Dr. Susan Gregan was an emergency doctor and as committed as we were. She brought her bubbly personality, a trunk full of paperback thrillers, and a soothing way with the most fearful of patients. Susan liked working the night shift, leaving Sabeena and Albert to their newly wedded bliss in their room at the end of the clinic. I spent my long, lovely nights writing in my room under the eaves.
On this particular day, about three months after my arrival, I noticed that doors closed and conversation stopped at my approach. What was happening?
I found Albert repairing a motor behind the clinic.
Albert was Egyptian, with a degree in electrical engineering. He loved Sabeena madly, and she was wildly in love with him. Albert was in charge of the clinic’s mechanicals, especially the critically important generator and water pump. He made up stories for his own amusement and had a truly great laugh. He also cooked.
That morning, a delicious aroma came from the clay oven in the patch of ground beyond the back porch. When I asked Albert what he was baking, he said, “The queen of England is coming. It’s special for her.”
“Really, Albert? Come on.”
He let out a deep, rolling laugh, and when he finally took a breath, I said, “Al, people are acting weird. What’s up?”
He smiled up at me. “How old are you, Brigid?”
The scurrying and whispering suddenly made sense. Sabeena trotted down the steps and into the yard. She looked at Albert’s face, then mine.