Walking North

Margaret O'Donnell 2011©

Note: This story continues from the story entitled Lost, the May 2, 2011 posting below.

Pierre expected that his wife would come out onto the road when the sound of the truck faded, but she didn’t. He called to her, softly at first but then more loudly when she didn’t reply. He crawled through the bushes on both sides of the road, and then became frantic, screaming her name and that of the boys. He berated her, shouting, “This isn’t funny, Marie! Where are you? Please, please answer!” but he heard nothing. After a time, he stopped shouting, and sat in the bush, letting the mosquitos bite him. He felt blank. The sun was at its height by the time he realized how hot and thirsty he was. He was carrying half of their water supply, about a half gallon. He took a small sip. It could be a long time before he found water again.

He began his search along the sides of the road again; this time, he was methodical. He went back about a half mile, and then forward a half mile from the place he saw her last. He searched until almost nightfall, then walked to a tiny collection of huts he’d seen in a clearing a mile or so up the road. At this point in his story, Pierre’s memory goes dim. Was it because of the fear and loss? Or because what happened to him in the next five years was too awful to tell? All he will tell is that he moved deeper and deeper into Congo, asking for his wife, searching for anyone who looked like her, who looked like his sons. He never found them.

He remembers that he lived with a band of pygmies for a long time, hunting with them, and fleeing war with them. They fled consistently to the north, away from the violent, crazed path of war in central Africa. They were experts at fleeing the terror of modernity, of surviving where no one else could. He remembers thinking in the first years that surely the wars could not last long, and that of all people, he should be able to find a way back to normal life. He was educated, spoke English and French, and knew how to operate a car. But after a time, he forgot about those things.

In about 1998 the band was in Sudan, close to Egypt’s southern border. Pierre remembers that when he saw a truck loaded with migrant workers stopped for a rest break, he walked without thinking up to the truck and swung himself onto the flat bed with the other migrants. He watched his companions of the last five years fade from sight as the truck pulled away. He worked on a dam project in Egypt as a laborer, and earned a bit of money. He made his way to Cairo, and found Burundians in exile who helped him get a false Egyptian passport. Some remembered his family, and gave him enough money to fly to Mexico.

There, in Mexico City, he found a bus to the border with the US. When he got to Cuidad Juarez, sister city with El Paso, Texas, he walked to the border crossing and asked for asylum in the US. He was immediately arrested and placed in immigration detention Texas. He was detained for six months before he won his asylum hearing with an immigration judge in detention, in January 2000. He was one of the few detainees that got lucky: he had a pro bono attorney assigned to him through an immigrant legal project. After he won, the guards put him out of the detention center, where he sat on a speed bump in the parking lot for hours until one of the guards, on his way home, gave him a ride to a homeless shelter.

Pierre got a job in Houston as a day laborer, and earned enough money to take a bus to Seattle, where some Burundians he knew from the university lived. He lived with a couple and their young children for a year, then got a place of his own. He worked as a nurse’s aide, and then a translator in a hospital. In 2010, he heard through the Burundian social network that his wife might be in Tanzania, and that his children might either be in Congo or in Tanzania. He is saving his money to go look for them, and he is hopeful.