Dave Eggers - What Is The What

Iam in the parking lot of the Century Club and there are twenty minutes before the gym opens. There is not enough time to nap, even if I were able, so I turn on the radio and find the BBC World News. This program has been a part of my life for so long, since Pinyudo, when the SPLA commanders would blast its reports from Africa across the camp. In the past few years, it seems that no BBC World News broadcast has been complete without an item on Sudan. This morning there is first a predictable story about Darfur; an expert on African affairs notes that seven thousand African Union troops patrolling a region the size of France have been ineffectual in preventing continued janjaweed terror. Funding for the troops is about to run out, and it seems that no one, including the United States, is ready to put forth more money or come up with new ideas to stop the killing and displacement. This is not surprising to those of us who lived through twenty years of oppression by the hands of Khartoum and its militias.

The second Sudan story is more fascinating; it concerns a yacht. It seems that the African Union was to meet in Khartoum, and el-Bashir, the president of Sudan, wanted to impress the heads of state with an extravagant boat, which would be docked in the Nile and would carry the dignitaries up and down the river during their stay. The vessel was ordered from Slovenia, and Bashir paid $4.5 million for it. It goes without saying that $4.5 million would be useful in feeding the poor of Sudan.

The yacht was transported from Slovenia to the Red Sea, where it sailed to Port Sudan. From Port Sudan, it needed to be transported overland to Khartoum in time for the conference. But getting it to the capitol proved far more difficult than anticipated. The 172-ton boat challenged the bridges it had to be driven over, and the overhead electrical wires along the way were problematic; 132 of them had to be cut down and reassembled after the yacht had passed. By the time the yacht was within sight of the Nile, the leaders of Africa had come and gone. They had somehow managed without the yacht and its satellite TVs, fine china, and staterooms.

But before the boat reached Khartoum, it had become a symbol for how decadent and callous Bashir is. The man has enemies from all sides-it is not only the southern Sudanese who despise him. Moderate Muslims do, too, and have formed a number of political parties and coalitions to oppose him. In Darfur it was a non-Arab Muslim group, after all, who rose up against his government, with a variety of demands for the region. If genocide does not incite the people of Sudan to replace this madman, and the whole National Islamic Front that controls Khartoum, perhaps the boat will.

As I have been listening to the radio report, I have been staring across the parking lot to a pay phone, and now I see it as an invitation. I decide that I should call my own number, to ring my stolen phone. I have nothing to lose in doing so.

I use one of the phone cards I bought from Achor Achor's cousin in Nashville. He sells $5 phone cards that in fact give the user $100 worth of international long distance. I don't know how it works, but these cards are bought by all the refugees I know. The one I have is very strange, and was probably not made by Africans: it bears an unusual montage: a Maori tribesman in full regalia, spear in hand, with an American buffalo in the background. Over the images are the words AFRICA CALIFORNIA.

It takes me a moment to remember my own number; I have not called it often. When I do remember it, I dial the first six digits quickly and pause for a long moment before finishing the cycle. I often cannot believe the things I do.

It rings. My throat pounds. Two rings, three. A click.

'Hello?' A boy's voice. Michael. TV Boy.

'Michael. It is the man you stole from last night.'

A quick small gasp, then silence.

'Michael, let me talk to you. I just want you to see that-'

The phone is dropped, and I hear the sound of Michael speaking in an echo-giving room. I hear muffled voices and then 'Gimme that.' A button is pushed and the call ends.

I gave the police officer this number and now I know that they did not try to call it even once. The phone is still in possession of the people who stole it, those who robbed and beat me, and this phone is still working. The police did not bother to investigate the crime, and the criminals knew the police would do nothing. This is the moment, above any other, when I wonder if I actually exist. If one of the parties involved, the police or the criminals, believed that I had worth or a voice, then this phone would have been disposed of. But it seems clear that there has been no acknowledgment of my existence on either side of this crime.

Five minutes later, after I have returned to my car to catch my breath, I return to the pay phone to try my number again. I am not surprised when the call goes directly to voicemail. Out of habit, I type in my access code to listen to my own messages.

There are three. The first is from Madelena, the admissions officer at a small Jesuit college I visited months ago and which all but promised me entry at that time. Since then, they seem to have arrived at a dozen or more reasons why my application is incomplete. First, they said, my transcript was not official enough; I had sent a copy, when they needed a certified original. Then I had failed to take a certain test that earlier they told me was unnecessary. And all the while, every time I have tried to reach Madelena on the phone, she has been gone. Periodically, though, she calls me back, always at an hour when she knows I will not pick up. I am not sure how she does it. She is a master at this. This message is more informative than any other:

'Valentine, I've talked to my colleagues here at the college and we think you should get some more credits under your belt from the community college'-and here she fumbles with her papers, finding the name-'Georgia Perimeter College. The last thing anyone wants to happen is for you to come all the way out here only to be unsuccessful. So let's get back in touch after a few more semesters, and see where you're at…' This continues for a while, and when she hangs up I can hear the relief in her voice. She will not have to deal with me, she assumes, for another year.

In much the same way as happened at Kakuma, people have been astonished by my difficulty achieving some objectives that they imagine would be easy for me to reach. I have been in the United States five years and I am not much closer to college than I was when I arrived. Through assistance from Phil Mays and the Lost Boys Foundation, I was able to quit my fabric-sample job and study full-time at Georgia Perimeter College, taking the classes I had been told that I would need to apply to a four-year college. But it has not gone as planned. My grades have been inconsistent, and my teachers not always encouraging. Is college really for me? they asked. I did not answer this question. My Foundation money ran out and I had to take this job, at the health club, but I am still determined to attend college. A respected college where I can be a legitimate student. I will not rest until I do.

This fall it seemed I had finally reached a place where I was ready. I had four solid semesters of community college under my belt and my grades were on the whole fine. They dipped after the death of Bobby Newmyer but I did not think these few mis-steps would hamper my applications. And yet they did. I applied to Jesuit colleges all over the country and their response was confusing and conflicted.

First I toured. I visited seven colleges and always did my best to take notes, to make sure I knew exactly what it was that they were looking for in a prospective student. Gerald Newton had told me to ask them point-blank, 'What will it take to make sure I am a student here in the fall?' I said exactly those words at every school I visited. And they were very encouraging. They were friendly, they seemed to want me. But my applications were rejected by all of these schools, and in some cases the admissions officers did not respond at all.