Devil’s Harvest (16 page)

Gabriel’s stomach churned. Some military low-life this time. He pondered sourly how ‘serious’ sex might differ from intercourse that was somehow more flippant.

He wrote a smarting reply: ‘Is Frank also married? Does he share your lack of loyalty to his marriage vows?’, then pictured Jane laughing at his choice of words. He deleted it and shut down the computer. He should have expected this. Indeed, they had all but agreed that their marriage had self-destructed and he could see no way out of the rubble of its aftermath. And yet the assuredness of her tone, the reference to ‘arrangements’, it all tore at him afresh.

He left the camp in a state of distraction. Rasta sensed his moroseness and drove slowly through the mud-filled pools, saying nothing. Shadows of marabou storks and vultures swooped over the car as the huge birds circled above them, smaller hawks and kites skittishly among them. Crows the size of spaniels stalked over the mounds of rubbish like undertakers. Whores sat on crates outside the compound entrances, waving to him as they spotted him watching them from the open window. At one point, a herd of longhorn cattle blocked the vehicle’s path, their enormous bodies steaming in the morning sun, horns like the tusks of elephants pointed at erratic angles. Rasta turned into the UN Aid compound where Gabriel was to meet Ms Hillary Preston, a UN Development Programme employee. Professor Ismail from Khartoum had given him a letter of invitation and had set up the initial contact. Her email response had not been overly enthusiastic:

Gabriel was directed to her office – a prefabricated building in the centre of the sprawling compound – and found her sitting behind a cluttered desk, a youngish woman with short hair pulled back off her face.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked, her accent Canadian, her tone officious.

‘It’s … I’m Professor Cockburn.’

‘Yes?’

‘From Bristol. We exchanged emails last week?’

‘Oh right. Mr Cockburn. Yes, I remember the email. I wasn’t sure you were going to bother making the trip.’ Clearly, Ms Preston wasn’t expecting him to show up. For someone so young, she had a world-weary look. Her skin showed the ravages of the heat and her lips looked cracked. A rash of freckles covered her nose and the skin beneath her eyes. Her use of the word ‘bother’, spoken with a jaundiced tone, was discouraging as was her dismissal of his academic title.

‘So you want to travel north to look at a plant?’ she asked. Described in these flat tones, it sounded a particularly dubious undertaking – perhaps accurately so.

‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

‘And you want me to arrange transport?’

‘You did say you would be able to help—’

‘I said I
might
be able to advise you. It’s not exactly easy to get to Bahr el Ghazal province.’

‘I realise that. Which is why I need your help.’

‘Mr Cockburn, forgive me if I sound … unhelpful. We rotate the stints of our personnel in places like South Sudan, to avoid burnout. I have been here longer than most. Perhaps I seem unsympathetic. But I can tell you, the world has moved on; no one is interested any more. There was a time when, as an NGO, if you weren’t in South Sudan, you were no one. Before South Sudan, Darfur was the place to be. Now that place is Damascus. The journalists have all left to cover Mali. And Haiti, again. Here, only the scavengers are left.’ She looked him squarely in the eye. ‘Picking at the carrion.’

‘I understand that you might question my motives—’

‘It’s not for me to enquire, nor to question,’ she interrupted. ‘But there’s a phrase – Juba slang, if you like – for people like you, for the hundreds of people that float through disaster scenes like this: briefcase NGOs. They have the briefcase for the money, but nothing else. They bring paperwork and statistics and bank account details, but give nothing of meaning.’

‘Look, I—’ Gabriel tried to staunch her tirade.

She raised her hand to prevent him from speaking: ‘Plus, the UNDP operates in difficult terrain. It would be naive to think that we don’t need to concern ourselves with the political will of influential people. We need, by way of example, to straddle both Khartoum and Juba, given that our work is critical to both, and the camps are populated by people crossing borders. Have you heard of aid farming, Mr Cockburn?’

‘No, but I don’t see what—’

‘I thought not. Simply put, aid farming involves influencing where and how aid is disbursed. You can dictate where people live, for example. With the stroke of a pen, the powers that be can force a hundred thousand people to pick up their measly belongings, leave a famine-struck camp and journey hundreds of kilometres to the new piece of dirt where aid is now delivered. Like starved bees following the honey. At its most cynical, you can divert aid to your own militias so that they can continue massacring people without having to worry about farming – living off Western aid while they perpetrate their atrocities.’

‘That sounds appalling, Ms Preston,’ Gabriel said, ‘but it’s really got nothing to do with my project. I’m not here to deliver aid or farm. I’m a scientist. And I’m very sorry that all this is going on here—’

‘I didn’t say that.’ Ms Preston eyed him for a moment. ‘What I’m saying is that, for all these reasons, the UNDP really has to consider its alliances and who we decide to help. We have to keep focused on our goals.’

‘And research on a non-crop-related plant is not one of your goals. I recognise that. I could try to explain to you why, in fact, this research might ultimately be exactly one of the developing world’s goals, but—’

‘But the situation we face is immediate.’ Ms Preston had an annoying habit of completing his sentences, her inserted conclusion not quite what he had intended. Still, he nodded in agreement. His inclination was to apologise for taking up her time and to leave, but instead he waited for her to make the next move. He had, after all, travelled all the way to meet her; he could not leave empty-handed.

Her next statement, though a while in coming, led Gabriel to believe that she had, all along, anticipated his possible arrival and had a back-up plan to get rid of him.

‘There is someone who comes from that region, up north, who we have used recently as an interpreter because their English is good, educated in Uganda and now … they’re here in Juba.’

For the first time Gabriel noted discomfort in her, a caution in choosing her words. Was he to be palmed off onto some drunk ex-SPLA child soldier with five words of English and an axe to grind with the British, he wondered.

‘Come back on Monday, at ten o’clock, and I’ll introduce you. Whether Alek will be willing to help you is another matter. That’s the best I can do for now.’ Ms Preston rose and gestured rather rudely to the door. Still reliant on her favour, Gabriel resisted the urge to put her in her place. He paused at the door to say goodbye, but she’d already turned back to her paperwork.

‘I hope this plant is worth it,’ she said, still looking down.

It started raining as Gabriel and Rasta headed back towards the lodge. Lazy drops splattered against the windscreen, making crater patterns in the dust on the bonnet. They were passing through the central area where the government administration and embassies were located and the road was tarred, although it petered out on the sides into dirt. They passed an official-looking building with high walls and an equally tall and solid gate; outside a number of policemen, or perhaps soldiers, lounged in their navy-and-white camouflage outfits. One was pulling a tarpaulin over the large machine gun mounted on the back of a flatbed truck, belts of bullets hanging from its sides like spilt intestines. A ‘technical’, Rasta explained, a standard combat vehicle. The pace of the rain started to increase and the clouds bloomed overhead. Yet the air remained sticky and unbearable.

‘We will stop for tea,’ Rasta announced, pulling over to the side of the road without ceremony and ignoring the screeching hooter of a motorcyclist they had cut off.

Gabriel wondered why the necessity for tea had suddenly imposed itself on his driver, and felt mildly annoyed that his wishes were simply assumed. But, given the brevity of his meeting with Ms Preston, he was in fact in no rush to get back to his small, overheated room.

A flat roof had been fixed to the wall of a dilapidated building, providing shelter to a crowd of men, now sitting on plastic chairs and sipping tea from glasses rather than cups. A huge neem tree provided cover to those clustered around its base, its dark-green leaves rustling together like foil. A few seed pods, dislodged by the deepening rainfall, clattered to the ground.

The men all murmured their greetings to Gabriel in typically reserved Sudanese style. A young girl with delicate scars in the shape of multiple v’s radiating from between her eyebrows was pouring a clear brown liquid through a strainer into a glass. She added some small sticks, cinnamon perhaps, and brought this to one of the men. Gabriel could smell the spice from where he sat, his salivary glands piqued. Rasta and the tea girl had a short conversation, her eyes flitting to her unexpected guest, then cast away demurely.

‘
Akondi ti momondu inasiku ko ponda tinate
. Tea will come now,’ Rasta advised him. The man seemed annoyingly at peace with the world, his default a warm smile and twinkle in the eye, as if he knew something amusing that everyone else was yet to grasp. ‘I will drink
kerekede
, but it is bitter, so you will have tea.’ Again, Gabriel felt his irritation rise at having his choices made on his behalf. What he actually wanted was coffee, but he knew better than to request this. In Juba, he was learning, it was best to submit.

He watched the girl tip a heaped spoon of milk powder into a glass and, with a little boiled tea added, reduce it to a thick paste that attached itself to the sides of the glass like builder’s putty. Then a generous amount of sugar was added, followed by more brown tea from the kettle. She stirred it vigorously into a milky, discoloured liquid. She filled another glass with a red-brown liquid, poured cold from a plastic jug, and brought them on a metal tray.

‘We English like a bit of milk in our tea, but this is a bit ridiculous,’ Gabriel said in what he hoped was a joking tone.

‘No, no, try it.’ Rasta made a clucking sound with his tongue, as one would if annoyed. ‘You will like it. It is tea.’

Gabriel regretted incurring his amiable host’s displeasure and took a healthy sip to appease him. The milky appearance had led him to expect something lukewarm, but the tea was piping hot and yet, in the muggy heat, deliciously sweet and creamy. Unlike coffee, it didn’t heat him further, but rather settled his stomach in an agreeable manner. He sat sipping at his tea, momentarily contented, while the men around him conducted a serious conversation, sometimes in English but mostly in a language that he couldn’t follow. It appeared that the conduct of the local police was under discussion, as the editor-in-chief of the
Citizen
newspaper had been arrested and assaulted in front of all of his staff. One man in the group seemed to believe that the editor got what he’d deserved, while the majority felt the police had exceeded their powers. Rasta kept a low profile on the issue.

Gabriel picked up a discarded newspaper. The
Citizen
had as its byline ‘Fighting Corruption and Dictatorship Every Day’, which seemed noble if a little ambitious. The quality of the printing was atrocious and the black-and-white photographs were so faded as to be barely discernible, but the English articles gave Gabriel some insight into the issues of the world’s newest country. It didn’t make for entirely happy reading and he thought again of Jane’s smug words: I did warn you.

There was a thunderclap and the rain started to come down with intent. Gabriel soon realised the reason for Rasta’s sudden tea stop. The ditches, blocked by rubbish, took none of the water away and the road surface was quickly submerged under an inch of water. The sides turned into two brown rivers, plastic bottles and other rubbish swirling along in eddies. One or two motorcycles kept going, sending out waves of dirty water, but most people parked their cars or jumped off their bikes, and headed for the tea houses. They ran as if the deluge was about to sweep them away, their sandals sending sprays of dirty water in all directions. The parallel rivers grew, stretching out across the camber of the road until they touched in the middle, the road becoming a single watercourse. Soon, the rain obscured the building on the other side, an almost impenetrable sheet of water lashing down along the length of the road.

The water pushed up against the side of the neem tree and then flowed under the chairs, an edge of brown foam marking its advance. Some took off their shoes, but most sat unconcerned, continuing their conversation. The young woman serving tea tossed a handful of papers and used tea into the maelstrom, a ritual followed by other people. From here it would flow downhill to the Nile, he realised. The once mighty river must be clogged with garbage.

Just as he was draining the last sweetness from his glass, the rain halted. As with the sudden advent of sunrise, there was no misty drizzle as transition. Rather it was as if someone had simply turned off the tap. Within minutes, the road appeared again, rising at the centre and rapidly extending until there was a drivable surface once more. Steam rose off it and the humidity in the air became palpable, making his armpits and the backs of his knees feel clammy once more. He immediately longed for a cold shower.

People emerged and clambered back on their bikes; cars rumbled back to life; Juba went back to its business after a brief interlude.

Back at the compound, Gabriel settled down at the bar counter with a Nile Lager, another local beer that came in a quart bottle. The freckled Ms Preston and the UNDP had fobbed him off; that was clear. If he wanted to proceed, he would probably have to find a different source of assistance. The British Council, which was active in Juba, had already advised him that they did not have any programmes outside of the city. The American agencies had not bothered to reply to his emails. Médecins Sans Frontières wanted to know if he had a medical degree. Samaritan’s Purse was very active – Gabriel had already spotted a number of their vehicles – but without a church reference they were unlikely to help.