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Authors: Charles London
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and flames around them, the two boys decided they must escape on their own. They made their way to the lake still clutching their schoolbooks to their chests. “They were our only possessions when we fled. I still have them after all these years.
“We went first to Fizi, a place near where I am from, and there we found crowds of people. There we found my father’s brother. He said we should leave the Congo, but he wasn’t prepared to flee. We were later told that that uncle, who did not come with us, had been burnt to death in his house.”
In Fizi, the boys found their mother again. “I don’t know what happened to my father—I have not seen him again—but my mother took us to Kibrizi, where refugees go when they get to Tanzania, and then we spent three years in the Nyaragusu refugee camp. Mom died in Nyaragusu. We heard lots of things…that mom died of AIDS, but I was young and didn’t understand. People were scared to care for us; they thought that I had AIDS, so we stayed with another uncle, but he left at the repatriation, went back to the Congo.”
“Excuse me,” I interrupted. I looked at the translator. “Did he say ‘repatriation’?”
“Yes, he did,” my translator told me. “Some children learn all the words used by the UN, especially the unaccompanied minors. This one speaks very well, is very smart.”
I turned back to Keto. I was amazed at the vocabulary that refugee life gave this kid. Words like “repatriation,” “transit center,” “food rationing,” and “distribution.” These terms are a reality for millions of the world’s children, and they learn them in order to survive. They are magic words, words that open doors. Conflict creates a new vocabulary, and the dependence these children have on international aid teaches them to speak its language. I was reminded of the sisters, six and nine years old, that Anna Freud mentions in her writings on the Hampstead Nurseries during World War II. Walking down a London street after an air raid, the girls would look at houses and declare “Incendiary Bomb” or “High Explosive” based on the damage. It was not a morbid interest in the weapons of mass destruction around them that made these two British girls munitions experts, it was just the world they lived in. For Keto, his world was humanitarian policy.
Keto’s story sounded not rehearsed but performed, as if he already knew that part of living as a refugee was telling your story to foreigners, the price of admission to refuge.
The asylum narrative is part biography, part myth, part plea, and part propaganda. It is how one person places himself, his terrible ordeals, in a larger context; how he makes the unreal real to those who can only imagine, how he becomes more than an individual suffering, part of a movement, a refugee, and in adding his story to the larger story of a people, of the displaced, he is simultaneously unique and not alone.
“Ready?” my translator asked. “He wants to know if he can continue.”
“Um, yes,” I said, flipping the page in my notebook and dropping my pen. He waited for me with his chin resting on his hand—his default position it seemed—while I got ready again. Keto was clearly the one in control here. “What did you do after your uncle left?”
“We stayed with his girlfriend. My older brother didn’t like this woman, so he went back to the Congo, and when I was alone with her, she started hating me. That’s when Christian Outreach transferred me to this camp.”
In Congo, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS is destroying many of the normal structures that ensure children are not abandoned. In the past, in Congolese society, when a child’s parents died, the community took the child in and provided for him. The fear of AIDS, combined with intense poverty, disrupted this practice. Many children who lose relatives to AIDS are discriminated against, harassed, and often turned away. Besides the emotional turmoil of losing a
“We went first to Fizi, a place near where I am from, and there we found crowds of people. There we found my father’s brother. He said we should leave the Congo, but he wasn’t prepared to flee. We were later told that that uncle, who did not come with us, had been burnt to death in his house.”
In Fizi, the boys found their mother again. “I don’t know what happened to my father—I have not seen him again—but my mother took us to Kibrizi, where refugees go when they get to Tanzania, and then we spent three years in the Nyaragusu refugee camp. Mom died in Nyaragusu. We heard lots of things…that mom died of AIDS, but I was young and didn’t understand. People were scared to care for us; they thought that I had AIDS, so we stayed with another uncle, but he left at the repatriation, went back to the Congo.”
“Excuse me,” I interrupted. I looked at the translator. “Did he say ‘repatriation’?”
“Yes, he did,” my translator told me. “Some children learn all the words used by the UN, especially the unaccompanied minors. This one speaks very well, is very smart.”
I turned back to Keto. I was amazed at the vocabulary that refugee life gave this kid. Words like “repatriation,” “transit center,” “food rationing,” and “distribution.” These terms are a reality for millions of the world’s children, and they learn them in order to survive. They are magic words, words that open doors. Conflict creates a new vocabulary, and the dependence these children have on international aid teaches them to speak its language. I was reminded of the sisters, six and nine years old, that Anna Freud mentions in her writings on the Hampstead Nurseries during World War II. Walking down a London street after an air raid, the girls would look at houses and declare “Incendiary Bomb” or “High Explosive” based on the damage. It was not a morbid interest in the weapons of mass destruction around them that made these two British girls munitions experts, it was just the world they lived in. For Keto, his world was humanitarian policy.
Keto’s story sounded not rehearsed but performed, as if he already knew that part of living as a refugee was telling your story to foreigners, the price of admission to refuge.
The asylum narrative is part biography, part myth, part plea, and part propaganda. It is how one person places himself, his terrible ordeals, in a larger context; how he makes the unreal real to those who can only imagine, how he becomes more than an individual suffering, part of a movement, a refugee, and in adding his story to the larger story of a people, of the displaced, he is simultaneously unique and not alone.
“Ready?” my translator asked. “He wants to know if he can continue.”
“Um, yes,” I said, flipping the page in my notebook and dropping my pen. He waited for me with his chin resting on his hand—his default position it seemed—while I got ready again. Keto was clearly the one in control here. “What did you do after your uncle left?”
“We stayed with his girlfriend. My older brother didn’t like this woman, so he went back to the Congo, and when I was alone with her, she started hating me. That’s when Christian Outreach transferred me to this camp.”
In Congo, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS is destroying many of the normal structures that ensure children are not abandoned. In the past, in Congolese society, when a child’s parents died, the community took the child in and provided for him. The fear of AIDS, combined with intense poverty, disrupted this practice. Many children who lose relatives to AIDS are discriminated against, harassed, and often turned away. Besides the emotional turmoil of losing a
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