The Incredible True Story of Blondy Baruti Read online

  The toll of the journey was overwhelming as I fell sick frequently and repeatedly. I remember many nights falling asleep in my mother’s arms, listening to her whisper to me softly as I melted into a fever dream.

  “Always keep the faith and spirit of our ancestors with you. Keep the flame of the love of The Creator near you no matter what befalls you in your life. No matter where you go or what you become, always call upon the one who gives us life and thank the great spirit for the blessings bestowed and never waver in the knowledge that you were spared the carnage of this horrendous journey for a reason. We won’t die here . . . we will survive.”

  And then again . . . over and over, until the words faded away and I fell asleep.

  “We won’t die here!”

  Her words were my strength, bringing hope when hope felt lost. And after she would tell me something like this, I would look her straight in the eye and tell her, “Mama, one day everything will be all right. One day I will buy you a big house and a nice car like the cars we see on TV from America.”

  She would simply smile and stroke my forehead.

  In Africa it is often said that a mother holds a knife by the blade side. Loosely translated, this proverb implies that there isn’t anything a mother would not do to protect her children, and my mother’s unwavering spirit is proof of this adage. Despite having no medication with which to nurse her gravely ailing children, and neither the physical strength nor the tools to fight off potential aggressors, my mother kept her children safe. Simply by staying alive, she ensured that we, too, would have the best chance for survival. So she gave every ounce of her being, going for long periods without food or sustenance so that we would have enough to live. Always she promised that there was light around the corner, that the worst was behind us. Even if this was not true (and really, how could she know one way or the other), it was enough to simply hear it. If my mother said we would be okay, then we would be okay. How could it possibly be otherwise?

  It seemed like my mother rarely slept, for in sleep there was isolation and danger. I worried every night that if I fell asleep, I would not ever wake. My mother assured me that this was not the case, for she would watch over me and make sure that no harm would befall me or my sister. To that end, she would often stay up all night, watchful and vigilant, repeatedly checking on us to be sure of our safety and good health. She trained herself to get by on the briefest of naps, often during daylight hours when others were around. She would sleep, quite literally, with one eye open. I saw her do this! It was both disconcerting and awe-inspiring. She would lean back against a tree and seem to drift away, almost as if under a spell. One eyelid would droop to half-mast, while the other would remain open, gazing off into the distance.

  “Mama,” I would say, fearful that she had fallen into a trance, or that some sort of odd sickness had overtaken her. “Are you all right?”

  With that she would open both eyes and smile.

  We had to be aware of the faintest of noises. A ruffle in the brush might be nothing more than a wandering animal; or, it might signal the approach of rebel soldiers. The slightest commotion could, and often did, erupt at any moment into mass hysteria.

  Even within our own ranks, safety and security were fragile concepts. There were bad people embedded in our group—not rebels, perhaps, but men of questionable morality. They were thieves and opportunists, and they were to be viewed with suspicion. I remember quite vividly striking up a friendship with another boy, slightly older than me, whose family was part of our pack. Together we found distractions from the endless trek, sometimes through conversation or games, and occasionally through mischief. There were two men in our group who both were mean-spirited and opportunistic. They would bully other members of the group or steal food and supplies. They were, I realized even at that young age, dangerous and despicable men concerned only with themselves.

  My friend suggested we teach the men a lesson.

  “We’ll start a fight between them,” he said. “Let them tear each other apart.”

  I will admit that while there was a certain cruelty to his scheme, it was oddly appealing. A great many good people from our group had died. Why were these two selfish and hateful men drawing breath? It seemed unfair.

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  My friend smiled. “You’ll see.”

  That night, while the two men were sleeping, my friend and I exchanged some of their belongings, so that each would wake to discover that something was missing, and was in the possession of the other man. This was an extremely dangerous stunt, as either of the men would surely have beaten us had they caught us in the act. But I don’t remember being scared; I remember mainly the thrill of executing the act perfectly, and of anticipating its outcome.

  The next day, just as we hoped, the two men confronted each other. They accused each other of stealing and wound up getting into a nasty argument that escalated into physical violence. Neither of them was seriously injured, but by engaging in a ridiculous fight that produced no winner but rather two losers, they both were made to look foolish and pathetic in front of everyone else, which was exactly what they deserved. It was a small victory, but it tasted so sweet!

  On the days that we felt up to it, my friend and I had a lot of fun together. We would play soccer, or climb in the trees, or just sit around and talk. Unfortunately, he did not complete the journey. I don’t even know what happened to him. One day he was just . . . gone. As were his parents.

  “What became of them?” I asked my mother.

  She shook her head.

  “It is better not to think about it.”

  A month or so passed after we left Kisangani. Eventually we came to a village where my mother was able to secure for us a ride on a boat that would take us the rest of the way downriver to Kinshasa. Refugee boats were common along the river by this point, but as often as not, there was no room. Somehow my mother was able to get us on one of the boats. It was not a safe way to travel, as the boats were rickety and overcrowded and open to the elements. Children would run about the deck and their parents were always trying to grab them and make sure they did not tumble overboard. Nevertheless, it happened with some frequency. If the child knew how to swim and the current was not too strong, and an adult was close enough to jump in and rescue him, a tragedy could be averted. But sometimes the child did not know how to swim and would be pulled beneath the water in the blink of an eye. Regardless, the boat would not slow down or change direction. What was lost was lost. Forever.

  We spent an additional three months on the boat, traveling hundreds of miles to Kinshasa. It was a long and slow journey. We stopped most nights to rest. If we were lucky, we might also get a small piece of fruit to quiet our grumbling bellies.

  Sometimes we would leave the next morning. Sometimes we would stay in one place for several days, presumably because the river had become dangerous. Most of the time we slept on the boat, for fear of giving up a spot that we could never reclaim. Eventually we reached Kinshasa. After not hearing from us for so long, my grandmother had assumed we were dead. So imagine her surprise and happiness when we showed up at her door, bedraggled but alive! That day there was a big celebration, lots of hugs, and food. Plenty of food. So much food I almost did not know how to react. It had been a year and a half since I’d eaten much more than a few bites of mango or rice in one sitting. It was a miracle! We were alive.

  And we were home.

  CHAPTER 4

  * * *

  I guess you’d call it post-traumatic stress disorder. I had celebrated (or endured) my eleventh birthday in the jungle, and so, for many weeks, even months, after we arrived in Kinshasa, I did not want to venture beyond the walls of my grandmother’s home. Unlike most boys my age, I just wanted to sit in my room all day. I was happy to do nothing but eat, and to stay close to the side of my mother or grandmother. I was like a puppy fearful of being weaned. After so much time in the jungle, sleeping beneath the stars, with death never more than a few fe
et away, I found comfort in staying indoors. Here it was safe. Outside? Who knew?

  A couple weeks after we settled in, a strange thing happened. Instead of growing stronger, I began to weaken. I would sleep for twelve hours at a time. My appetite diminished. It’s not as though my grandmother was able to fatten us like lambs for slaughter, but certainly there was enough food to keep us happy and healthy, a revelation after so many months on the brink of starvation. Oddly, though, I lost interest in eating. I found it difficult to get out of bed in the morning. At first these were the only symptoms, but soon came the fevers, the torrential night sweats, and then the persistent bouts of nausea and diarrhea. Often, I could not even make it to the bathroom; I would simply lay in my own waste until my mother came to clean me up.

  Days passed in a dreamlike state. I thought I was back in the jungle. In the safety of my own room I could hear the staccato chatter of approaching soldiers, and the thwacking of machetes as they sank into flesh. I saw things in my mind that had happened months before—the lifeless eyes of a friend cut down by gunfire; the bloated carcasses that chased our boat down the Congo River. I tried to scream, but not a sound came forth. I could not speak. I could not move.

  One morning I woke in a hospital bed, with a nurse standing over me, offering a cup of water.

  “Welcome back,” she said with a smile.

  My mother later told me that I had spent several days in the hospital and had come perilously close to dying. Whatever infection had taken root in my body had weakened me to the point of my being comatose. How ironic it would have been to survive a year and a half in the jungle and on the river, under the worst of circumstances, and then die after finally making it home; to pass away despite the love and sustenance of my family, and the care of trained medical professionals. But life is nothing if not strange and unpredictable.

  “God must have a plan for you, Blondy,” my mother said in the hospital. “There is a reason he has not yet taken you.”

  EVENTUALLY MY MOTHER MADE me go to school, but I was socially awkward and had trouble making friends. I had spent a year and a half mostly in the company of adults, running through the jungle, battered by death and destruction. As devastating as the civil wars had been, the fighting had been mostly confined to the eastern portion of the country, so many of the children with whom I now went to school had been spared the worst of it. They could not imagine the horror I had witnessed, and I certainly did not want to share this with them. I was a nervous, anxious boy, my head always on a swivel, trying to look in all directions at once, in anticipation of harm. To this day, if someone approaches me from behind, I respond with alarm. I’m not sure that will ever change, but I’ve learned to live with it.

  Childhood can be a lonely time for even the most well-adjusted boy. I was damaged and maladjusted. In the safety of my grandmother’s home, surrounded by relatives, I was okay, but once pushed out the door I struggled terribly to fit in. War had changed me; the jungle had changed me. While I was quick to adapt to some of the comforts of civilization, like having a bed on which to sleep and good food to eat, there were other aspects of life in Kinshasa that left me cold and isolated.

  For one thing, I had grown accustomed to a spartan existence. Like my warrior ancestors, I had traipsed through the jungle barefoot and nearly naked, left only with the tattered remnants of the clothes I had worn when we escaped from Goma. Although there might have been a degree of discomfort to this exposure in the beginning, by the time we reached Kinshasa, it seemed normal to me. The soles of my feet were as hard as bamboo and callused to the point of numbness—I could walk across creek beds or shimmy up a tree using my toes like fingers. And there was no pain at all. In the first few months our bodies were so ravaged by insect bites and scratches from various plant life that my skin seemed to be covered with a type of pox; the itching was maddening. By the end I barely noticed the bites or the bugs that inflicted them.

  I had become part of the jungle, and the jungle had become part of me.

  And so, owing to a combination of familiarity and boyhood stubbornness, I resisted the efforts to acclimate that were foisted upon me. I walked around the house either naked or nearly naked. When I went outside I wore only ragged shorts. No shoes, no shirt. Even then it was all I could do to resist the urge to peel away the layers and sprint into the jungle, unprotected, exposed . . . free.

  This behavior alone would have been sufficient to arouse suspicions and provoke contempt from other children in the neighborhood, but what really set me apart was an almost pathological aversion to hygiene. On our exodus from Goma, we cared not in the least if we were clean or dirty—the stink allowed us to blend in with the surroundings and provided a measure of safety from human and animal predators alike, although, to be honest, I didn’t even think about that. After a while, I just got used to being dirty; it seemed natural. The occasional Congo River bath was short and dangerous, as the river teemed with crocodiles and snakes, as well as parasites looking for a warm host. Better to be mud-caked and fetid than eaten.

  Unfortunately, while it might have been perfectly acceptable to smell like a wild beast while living in the jungle, a more traditional approach to personal hygiene was required in order to blend in with other children. My reluctance to shower or bathe made this a bit of a challenge. In school, other kids would laugh at me, or run away while scrunching up their faces and pinching their nostrils closed in mock disgust (or actual disgust).

  “Here comes Shaka!” they would shout. “Stay away from Shaka!”

  “Shaka” was a reference to Shaka Zulu, an early-nineteenth-century warrior. There was at the time a South African Broadcasting Corporation television miniseries airing about his life that was enormously popular throughout the continent, and particularly in the Congo. The series was set more than a hundred years earlier, and told the story of the tribal leader, so of course he appeared frequently on-screen wearing very little clothing or warrior garb; moreover, his skin was quite dark, even by African standards. The other kids at school got a whiff of me, and a look at my own dark skin, and in that uniquely cruel way of childhood bestowed upon me a nickname.

  “Shaka!”

  I suppose there are worse things than being mocked for resembling a legendary African warrior, but certainly the nickname was not a term of endearment but rather of derision, intended to make me feel lonely and isolated and weird. And it worked.

  “Do not listen to them,” my mother would say. “They are foolish children. They know nothing of your past.”

  She also suggested I take a shower and put on some clothes; both messages were slow to sink in.

  At school I barely spoke, which led to further ostracization from my fellow students, and frustration on the part of my teachers. School in the Congo, you see, was very traditional, consisting of lessons often taught in a Socratic manner. The teacher, or professor, as he was often known, would stand at the front of the room and ask questions of the students. Sometimes he would wait for volunteers, but just as often he would simply call on someone and demand an answer. It was a tense environment in which students were expected to be prepared for class by having read the assigned material and completed all other homework. To show up for class unprepared was to risk humiliation. Yet, I was often unprepared, and even when I had done the work, and knew the answers to whatever questions were asked, I was incapable of sharing this information with my classmates. It was almost as if a temporary paralysis came over me when I would try to speak in front of others.

  While my teachers were generally sympathetic to my plight, there were limits to what they would tolerate. Periodically they would show up at my grandmother’s home to speak with her or my uncle Joseph, and sometimes to my mother, about concerns over whether I was even educable.

  My family insisted I was in fact a reasonably intelligent child, but that our experience on the long trek had left me traumatized.

  “Give the boy time,” they would explain. “He will come around.”

  T
he truth? I did not want to “come around.” I did not care. I wanted no part of school or even a life that others considered normal. In some strange way, I think, I wanted only to return to the jungle, where at least I would be accepted. My family, thank God, would not let this happen and went to great lengths to make sure I had top-notch schooling.

  In the Congo, when I was growing up, good education was not free. Tuition was paid to schools, and naturally the better the school, the higher the tuition. I was fortunate to be raised in a home where education was treasured; unfortunately, it was also a home of meager means. The burden of tuition fell on my mother, and she did the best she could to come up with the necessary funds. But it was a never-ending struggle. It wasn’t long after we settled into my grandmother’s home that my mother began building a small business selling goods to the locals. This was a common way for people to make a living in the Congo. It required little formal education or equity (if you were willing to start small), but it did require a significant amount of energy and resourcefulness.

  My mother was not lacking in either of those traits. She began by buying and selling products locally—clothing, food, and basic home goods. But there was tremendous competition for this type of business in Kinshasa, and my mother did not have the means to expand her business and compete effectively. We frequently missed tuition payments, which resulted in my being discharged from school on numerous occasions. Again, this did not bother me in the least; I was content to stay home and avoid the stress and pressure of school. But my mother was not so easily dissuaded.

  She expanded her business in the only way possible: by taking it on the road. She would purchase goods in Kinshasa for a reasonable price—mostly shoes and clothing for children—and then travel to provinces closer to the central or eastern part of the country, places that had been hit much harder by war. These were poorer towns and villages to begin with, less civilized places that suffered from extreme poverty even in times of peace. My mother would pack as much as she could carry and bring it to the provinces. These were long and arduous journeys, if not as dangerous as our trek from Goma, still far from safe for a woman traveling on her own. But my mother was both fearless and smart. Once she had sold her stock in the provinces, she would take most of the money and purchase goods that would be valuable and less available in the city: corn, beans, other types of food. These she would haul back to Kinshasa and sell at a substantial profit.