Beneath the Darkening Sky by Majok Tulba

Here there is no rest
for the sick. I’ve seen boys fall over during a run and just fill their pants with the rice-water diarrhoea. I had it myself once, and had to keep running out to the latrine. The latrine is a
big crater where a mine had gone off in a clearing in the jungle, who knows how long ago. We use it because it’s away from camp, and a crater always means safety. Priest is not like Akot, he
takes me out in the dark when I wake him at night.
    He tells me to be strong. If I’m strong I can beat anything that comes my way here in the camp. If I’m not, then I’m like that kid from yesterday. He had the cholera. He lay
under shade, curled up with his hands clutched around his stomach. He never got up.
    When the Captain came he kicked him in the side with the tip of his boot. ‘This one is gone.’
    They don’t care about the weak that die from the diseases. They only care about the heroes of the revolution. When a soldier dies at the hands of the government forces, our officers remove
their hats for a minute’s silence, before we spend many hours singing revolution songs.
    A lot of the kids drink water right out of the creek. My mother ground it into me that you always boil water first, get it bubbling for a while before you even think about drinking it. But these
kids get up first thing in the morning and go to the creek. They get cholera. They shit so much that they get weak from dehydration, and what do they drink? More creek water!
    Our commanding officers have wives who make sure they always have boiled water. The rest of us have to boil our own. Of course, even if you always drink boiled water, you’re still going to
get something from the beans. Beans for breakfast. Beans for lunch. Beans for dinner. My first night, some of the boys tried to have a farting contest, but the superiors in the barracks thrashed
them for it.
    ‘We’re all farting!’ they yelled. ‘We all fart a hundred times a day! Shut up and let us sleep.’
    I met Priest on my first day. He’d heard about my vomiting over the Captain and the idea made him laugh. I’d seen a group of bigger boys from the barracks walk into a patch of jungle
to relieve themselves. We’d been warned that the jungle around the training camp had a lot of mines, but somehow these boys had found a safe spot, away from the stinking latrine. I decided to
use their spot as well.
    Just as I dropped my pants I heard someone say, ‘Hey, what do you think you’re doing?’
    I looked up and saw the four big boys walking towards me.
    ‘Who the hell are you?’ one yelled. ‘Who gave you permission to shit here? This isn’t your village where you can just walk around and shit wherever you want.’
    I pulled my pants up and backed away. The leader charged and tried to kick me in the ribs, but I was already running, with my bad knees. We were right at the edge of the jungle, and even though
I was terrified of mines, somehow I was more petrified of the leaders.
    The path was through a thick bunch of trees, leading away from the camp down to a banana grove. Before I got beaten I was always pretty good at climbing the trees, so I was thinking, If I can
get to the grove and up a tree, I’ll be safe. As I reached the head of the path, I slammed into an even bigger man. My legs turned to mush. I’d get beaten for this, for sure.
    From the ground I looked back, and the boys were frozen, staring wide-eyed.
    ‘Enough,’ Priest’s voice boomed.
    The boys stood like petrified wood.
    ‘Go! Or I will shoot you where you stand!’ His hand was on the gun slung at his side.
    My attackers didn’t know what to do. ‘But —’ one of them said.
    ‘Are you arguing with me?’ Priest bellowed, then in a quiet, dark tone, ‘I’m going to count to three.’ He raised the rifle to his shoulder. ‘One
—’
    They ran. I watched them go a few metres, then I sighed and collapsed to the ground. Priest let the gun swing back against his thick leg. He turned his