Mark Lee - The Canal House

In the second photograph, you can see that I’m frowning slightly. I liked Paul and Tobias, but I’ve always been cautious around journalists. Most of them only spend a few hours in a relief camp, then trivialize our work into little vignettes of brave doctors and sick babies. If you were tired and said something emotional, they smiled and wrote it all down. Later, if I was unlucky enough to read the article, they usually got the facts wrong. It was better not to tell them much of anything.

Paul and Tobias had started to give out candy to keep people away from the airplane propeller. It had become a popular ritual during their visits to the camp. Tobias pulled some lemon drops out of a paper bag and began to toss them to the children. They laughed and held up their hands.

“Good afternoon, Julia,” Paul said. “You look quite wonderful today.”

“Aren’t you supposed to say that to Ellen?”

Tobias laughed. “He’s practicing his lines.”

Paul reached into his flight bag and pulled out a brass-and-steel fixture about the size of a child’s hand. “Some men give women chocolates. Others give roses. I bring more sophisticated presents.”

“How thoughtful of you, Paul. I’ve always loved connector valves.”

Paul turned to the journalists. “This is Nicky Bettencourt and Daniel McFarland. They work for Newsweek and the Daily Telegraph .”

I shook hands. “Welcome to Kosana.”

“This is a fairly large camp,” Daniel said. “How long have you been here?”

“About three months.”

“There was nothing in this area until Julia arrived with her trucks,” Tobias said. “She organized everything.”

“I’m fortunate to have a very good staff.”

“Especially the nurses,” Paul said. “Is Ellen around?”

“Ellen is sterilizing instruments right now. You can’t take her flying. Not today. I need her for inoculations.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll just say hello.”

Paul and Tobias wandered off together while I was left with the two visitors. I decided to pass them off to Richard. “I assume you’re here to interview Mr. Seaton,” I said. “He’s probably over in the staff tent.”

“We can meet Mr. Seaton later on today,” Daniel said. “Right now, we’re looking for people who’ve had contact with the Lord’s Righteous Army.”

“You’re writing an article about Samuel Okello?”

“That’s right. Has anyone in the camp ever met him?”

“Most of the people here are Karamojong, but we’re also sheltering thirty-one persons from the Acholi tribe who had to flee when Okello burned down their villages.”

“Can we talk to them?”

Three Karamojong children stood a few feet away, staring at us and sucking blissfully on their lemon drops. “I don’t suppose it would do any harm,” I said. “We put the Acholi families in five tents next to each other. They’re all farmers. Fairly conservative. They don’t like the Karamojong.”

It was about three o’clock in the afternoon. The Karamojong women were boiling the day’s cornmeal over fires made of twigs and thorn-bush. The Karamojong men stood separately, staring at the horizon. More children followed us as I led the two Americans through the rows of tents.

Nicky raised his camera and took a few more photographs. I knew that he was looking for dramatic shots, but the images couldn’t show what was really going on at Kosana. A news photo of a hungry child drinking a cup of milk wouldn’t tell you who was giving out the food, where the money came from and if there was going to be any food three days later.

I walked them over to the tents where the Acholi farmers were living. All of them had seen their homes destroyed by the Lord’s Righteous Army, and they looked dazed and fragile, as if they had been in a car wreck. I explained that these two men were journalists working for an American magazine. The Acholis were shy at first, but then they began to tell their stories, how the guerrillas had killed their families, burned their crops and their houses. And though I knew all this, it was painful to hear it again. Daniel wrote down their names in his notebook. “Did you ever see Samuel Okello?” he asked, and everyone shook their heads.

Daniel took off his sunglasses and I watched his face as he talked to the people in the tent. There was an intensity about him, an ability to ignore the confusion, which reminded me of a trained physician in an emergency room. I couldn’t help noticing that he was attractive in a rangy sort of way. But something about him made me nervous. I had the feeling that he always held back, his true emotions protected and concealed—the same qualities I most disliked in myself.

Daniel closed his notebook and we went into the second tent. I had moved Isaac, a ten-year-old orphan, into this group, hoping that he would form an attachment with one of the four women there, but Isaac was so troubled that the other Acholis refused to talk to him. Now he’d taken his blanket and draped it over a length of string, creating his own private shelter. I had a broken water pump and a shortage of tents and four new cases of tuberculosis, but I all I could think about was Isaac. I had failed to help him.

I knelt down beside the little tent and pushed back the folds of the blanket. “Hello. How are you feeling, Isaac?”

He didn’t answer, but he crawled out of the tent. Isaac wore shorts and a torn T-shirt and carried his most valuable possessions: pink flip-flop sandals. At first, he had reminded me of a little old man. Then I looked into his eyes and saw nothing; they were as flat and expressionless as two brown stones. Isaac had seen his parents killed and it was quite possible that he’d been forced to pull the trigger.

“We just got a shipment of oranges and we’re giving one to every child in the camp at five o’clock. Do you like oranges, Isaac? I’ll save the biggest one for you.”

Isaac considered the oranges for a few seconds, then crawled back into his tent. I turned away from Nicky and Daniel so they wouldn’t see the expression on my face.

“He speaks English?” Daniel asked.

“Yes. Sometimes. Isaac’s father was a schoolteacher. The Lord’s Righteous Army killed his parents and probably forced him to be a soldier. Somehow, Isaac escaped and wandered into the camp about two weeks ago.”

We went outside and they scrutinized a three-meter-high steel tower near the tent. A video camera powered by a photoelectric panel was mounted on the tower. Other towers were placed around the camp. I hated them.

“What’s that?” Nicky asked.

“It’s one of Richard’s ideas. You really should go and talk to him.”

“Maybe later,” Daniel said. “I’ll stay here and ask some more questions. What are you going to do, Nicky?”

“Wander around aimlessly.”

“If you’d both excuse me, I need to fix a water pump.”

I headed back across the camp. Nicky tagged along, his camera bag bumping against his hip. “I thought you were going to wander aimlessly,” I said.

“Aimless people like to follow decisive people.”

“It’s a facade, Mr. Bettencourt. I just react to the current problem.”

“It’s a good facade, Dr. Cadell. You do it well.”

KOSANA WAS COMPLETELY dependent on the two water wells drilled by the Kenyan firm that had helped us set up the camp. The well pump on the northern edge of the camp was still working, but the southern pump had been disabled by sand. If the northern pump broke down, the next available water was a border outpost about eighty kilometers away. Possibilities like this forced their way into my dreams and woke me up at three o’clock in the morning.

I got the toolbox out of the supply tent and Nicky followed me over to the broken pump. Kneeling beside the machinery, I took a wrench and began to remove the coupling.