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naked, as there had been some food and clothes at Itang. Most of the other boys were naked. Many of the others were in rags.
    More and more people arrived at the camp area. There were many languages. It was difficult to tell who was going to help us. There was no food, and there was no other support.
    Finally after about a month, we were told to gather in certain areas, and they created several large groups: boys, girls, and then adults, including adults who had young children with them. We were considered “unaccompanied minors,” as we had no adults with us. My uncle I could not see, but later I understood he was in a group with the adults.
    As many as 300 people at a time came to the camp, but they could not stay together—the organizers wanted to mingle the tribes among themselves so that they would have better cooperation. This way we had to live with people who were not like us, but we learned to work out how we communicated and got tasks done.
    Group leaders, many of whom later became our teachers, were selected to be in charge of each subgroup of minors. We were organized into groups based on our age. Among the unaccompanied minors, there were 12 groups, and I was in Group 9. Further designations were made so that each subgroup leader looked after 10 boys.
    In this area there were more trees, and we camped under these. We did not have blankets, we did not have food, and there were snakes and scorpions to look out for. The young children were not able to survive that way—no food or blankets, and their stomachs were empty all the time.
    By this time it was the rainy season, and we heard trucks of aid could not get through because of the deep mud caused by rains on roads from their headquarters in Gambela, Ethiopia. The aid was to come from the United Nations through its aid agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). We were aware of UNHCR personnel in the camp from the beginning. Their compound was being constructed and they were erecting a big tent to distribute the food.
    People in the camp began dying of starvation, or disease, or exposure. They had walked, like us, for hundreds of miles, through the desert and hostile lands where some were killed by native tribes afraid they were coming to take their territory. They’d run from areas where soldiers were, but some fell to soldiers’ bullets when they went too close to a town. They’d escaped wild animal attacks, snakes, and poisonous bites. They kept walking without food and water until their feet were bloody. They’d lost companions, their families. Their hope was the refugee camps in Ethiopia. Now that they had arrived, it was safe, and they didn’t have to walk; there were not soldiers or hostile people that would kill people. But there was great hunger, there was no food, they were naked, and there weren’t even blankets on which to lie on the ground.
    Finally, a truck arrived, but by this time there were thousands of people lying or sitting under trees and all over the camp. Our large groups of unaccompanied minors were in one area, adults in another, but there were so many.
    The one truck that got through came with 20 bags of corn or maize, but that cannot feed 15,000 children. It was really bad because when they came to distribute that corn, some people ended up with one kernel of corn and that’s all the person had to eat. Now children were thinking about their mothers and how they served them with their food, thinking that if they were back home, they could get food anytime. So that is the reason people died—loss of hope.
    This is the only reason I can think that I did not die. I remembered my grandmother’s lesson from long ago: not to long for the food that she used to feed me and that my mother used to feed me. There was no food. People had to hope there would be food the next day. Many could not do that.
    Many boys were dying because of lack of food, cold weather, and diseases.