I was sitting outside in our compound of square mud houses in Giada. Two mud houses, to be precise: the one right by the bamboo gate belonged to my older brother, and the other one was for me and my other brothers. The “boys’ house” was at the back of the compound, which left a big open area in the middle. My friends Ador and Kur came over that night with excited expressions.
“Jima, Chol and Makuei reached Italy this evening,” Ador said as he threw his arms around my shoulders.
I was confused for a moment because last I heard Jima and Chol had joined Military Intelligence and Makuei had joined the Special Forces. I didn’t know they had left for Italy.
“Didn’t they join the MI and Special Forces?” I asked.
“Don’t be stupid. Who joins the MI or Special Forces without everyone around here knowing?” Kur said, shaking his head.
“Malesh!” I said.
We all burst into laughter. Then Ador turned serious and said, “We will leave tomorrow for Chad. We heard it’s cheaper to go there than to go to Tunisia. We want you to come with us. We’re going to try our luck in Europe. What do you think?”
“I don’t know about all that, bro. I can’t leave Juba and go to Europe just like that. Anyway, I don’t have the money,” I replied.
Ador is a tall, slim, dark-skinned guy with no lower teeth—they were removed in his youth as a rite of passage. Kur is short and fat, so we nicknamed him Oily. A bad choice of friends, some would say, but I would go to war for them, and they would do the same for me.
We met at Juba Academy Secondary School in 2021, and we’ve been friends ever since. Ador is short-tempered, you could even say he has anger issues, while Kur is very diplomatic. If we need something done diplomatically, we usually rely on Kur; if we’re bored and want to fight, we go out and cause chaos, knowing Ador will have our backs.
Ador said, “What money? Oily and I sold our cows and collected a total of three thousand dollars, enough to get us across Chad and Tunisia and to Italy. We’ll take the WFP plane going to Chad. My brother-in-law, the one who married my older sis, works with the UN, and he has arranged our passage. This is a sure deal, bro. Don’t be left out.”
He added, “If you stay here, don’t ever call us for financial assistance when we make it to Europe. Remember we asked you to come along and you declined.”
I kept quiet for a moment, rethinking my decision. If you stay in this country, you’ll die sooner or later—probably sooner. And if you try to leave this country, you’ll probably die too, but there’s a chance that you could make it out alive and live a good life.
After playing Ludo for about an hour, Ador and Kur both left. I went to bed, and the idea of leaving Juba and going on a journey I hadn’t planned kept replaying in my mind until sleep stole me away. I dreamed about travelling through foreign countries.
At eight in the morning, Ador and Kur showed up at my house again, wearing backpacks and carrying two bottles of water each. I looked at them, confused, before Kur broke the silence.
“Bro, you don’t look like you’ve packed. We’re leaving, or have you forgotten?”
“I’m ready. Let’s go!”
We left the house and headed to Juba International Airport. We passed through Suk-Sita, then took a tuk-tuk from there. It was thirty thousand South Sudanese pounds. Sounds like a lot, right? Well, that’s a negligible amount of money. We went through the Juba University roundabout and headed to Hai Thora; we then took a left turn at the T-junction. The left road led to parliament, then to Custom Market, but it was blocked for tuk-tuks; the right road led to Juba town.
The boys were talking excitedly about what they would do in Europe and how their lives would change in just a few months. I was quiet, as if I wasn’t in the tuk-tuk with them. When we reached another T-junction, we turned right onto Airport Road, and within no time we alighted at the entrance to the airport. Ador paid the driver, and we walked to the UN section near the VIP lounge, where Mabor was waiting for us. Mabor was Ador’s brother-in-law.
We greeted him, and he introduced us to a light-skinned man. He looked like a broker, and my curiosity got the better of me.
“Is this guy the pilot or does he work here?” I asked.
Mabor ignored my question and continued chatting with the guy. I asked another question, this time with frustration.
“It’s you I’m asking. Why are you ignoring my question? Are you part of the airline crew, or are you someone else?”
Ador answered, “Bro, this is the guy who will help us get on the plane. You know these UN planes don’t carry unauthorised persons, weapons, or men with big dicks.”
Everyone burst into laughter.
I started to get a bad feeling about the flight, but I was still going to board the plane. We were given instructions for when we got to Chad: we would wear fake UN IDs and pretend to be engineers. We had already paid these guys one thousand five hundred dollars out of the three thousand Ador and Kur had. Then we were loaded into the hold of the plane like cargo. We crouched behind some large containers. Thirty minutes later, the plane took off.
There was a two-hour layover in Addis Ababa. We stayed put behind the containers, too afraid to risk being seen. We didn’t make a sound until the plane was cleared for takeoff.
After being in the hold for nearly twenty hours, we finally touched down at N’Djamena International Airport, in the capital of Chad. We put our fake IDs around our necks and walked out with our bags. Ador and Kur walked with a confidence I’d never seen them have. I was afraid security would identify us as frauds and deport us back to Juba.
We went through the security check for UN staff, where they scanned our cards. Mine and Kur’s were approved, but Ador’s had issues.
“Sorry, sir, your work ID isn’t recognised by our system. Would you mind showing us your passport?” the lady said, holding his card.
Ador got annoyed and started being rude. “What’s wrong with these people? After all these years of working with them, now they send me to Chad to be imprisoned.”
Kur heard him, came back, approached the lady, and worked his magic. “Excuse me, madam. This gentleman here lost his card when we were in the field a few days ago, and when we got back, he was given another one, but I’m not sure it’s registered in the system yet. You know how the South Sudan network is. You can call the coordinator in the Juba office and talk to him.”
The lady looked at a very irritated Ador, then at Kur, then nodded. She called the Juba office, and Mabor picked up. After a brief conversation, she handed Ador his ID, and we walked out of the airport.
We didn’t know where to go or whom to talk to. We stared at the public transport vehicles, wondering where to start. One guy was shouting, “Massaguet! Massaguet!”
“That’s our destination. The guy said that when we get here, we should go to Massaguet,” Ador said.
“Okay. We go then,” I said.
We walked up to the guy and asked him how much it was to Massaguet. He only spoke Arabic and French. The funny thing was that the Arabic spoken in Chad is a pidgin dialect, just like the Arabic spoken in Juba. But our Arabic and his Arabic were totally different languages. None of us knew French. It was extremely difficult to discuss prices with him.
A Nigerian man who was passing by came to our rescue. We told him where we were going, and he told us how much it would cost to get there. He then pulled Kur aside and asked, “Are you guys looking to cross the desert to Libya?”
Kur hesitated. “No, we are going to Massaguet.”
“Don’t worry, my guy. Calm down. Na me dey plug person for brokers, na my job be that. I don look you well well. I take you to another motor; na there we fit take one for Massaguet. Prices dey low there. Follow me,” the Nigerian said.
Ador agreed immediately to the Nigerian’s proposal, but Kur was hesitant to follow him. Ador persuaded him. We got into the minibus and paid seventy-five dollars, twenty-five each. We didn’t see how much the Nigerian guy paid. He started speaking that bad Arabic we didn’t fully understand. Kur got angry.
“I think this guy is playing us. I don’t think he knows this place that well, or else he’s a conman.”
I didn’t dare say anything. Instead I looked out the window. I like observing the place I’m traveling through, seeing all the landmarks and other things I’ll remember later on. Kur and Ador continued arguing until we reached Massaguet. It took us an hour and a half to get there. When we got out of the minibus, our Nigerian friend finally introduced himself to us.
“My name be Ahmed Ayoola from Nigeria. Na you be Sudanese, abi?”
“We are South Sudanese, oga,” Kur said aggressively.
“Ooh, my brodas from South Sudan.”
It was getting late, and we needed a place to sleep. Ahmed got us a guest house for fifteen dollars; it wasn’t a good place, but anything would do after such a tiring trip. He went out and got us food, tagalia with sorghum ugali, and three Coca-Colas. We ate, then slept through the night, the three of us squeezed in a six-by-four bed.
The next morning, we heard a loud knock on the door, followed by a voice. “We go miss the first motor. That person no get patience.”
I got up and opened the door. I asked Ahmed what time it was. He said it was 6 a.m. I went back and woke the guys up. Ten minutes later, we left the house and followed Ahmed down the street. I asked him where we were going, and he said we were heading to the bus stop to catch a bus to Massakory, where we would meet the brokers who would take us to the border.
We got to the station and took a minibus for eight dollars each. An hour later, we were in Massakory. Kur saw a woman cooking fish and suggested we eat something before meeting the brokers. Ahmed assured us he already had everything figured out; we could see the brokers anytime. We went into the woman’s small shop and sat down. Since we didn’t know the local language, Ahmed did the talking. We all ordered tilapia with soup and sorghum balls. When everyone ate their fill, we paid and walked to where the brokers were.
The place is hidden in a slum in Massakory; you can’t find it without a guide. When we entered, we found so many illegal migrants: women with children, some with very young children; women who were pregnant; young men; Africans from all walks of life. Some of them were sitting, others were standing. There were some brothers from South Sudan there as well, trying their luck. One of them approached us and greeted us with a big smile on his face, as if he already knew us.
“Salaam! My name is Changkuoth, and that one there is Ruai, my younger brother.”
“I’m Majun, this is Ador, and this one is Kur. We’re friends and brothers,” I answered.
“And that guy you were with?”
“Oh, that guy there? He’s a Nigerian guy who helped us yesterday at the airport. He said he works with the brokers too. He’s the one who brought us here.”
“Okay. At least now there are five of us here.”
He then walked back to his brother. After a short while, Ahmed came back and said he needed nine hundred dollars for the three of us, and then the brokers would transport us all the way to the border with enough supplies.
“The journey will not be easy; it’s long, so buy enough food and water, and also painkillers for the road. You understand me?” he said.
We nodded in agreement. Kur handed him the money, and he walked away. He went up to a guy who looked West African, and they had a conversation, and then he pointed at us. He handed him the money and walked back to us.
“My brodas, na this far I dey reach. You have a safe journey.” He shook our hands and then disappeared. Where he went, we didn’t know.
After about thirty minutes, the brokers came and divided us into five groups, one for each Land Cruiser that awaited us. Those with young children were put in the passenger seats; the pregnant women were put in the middle rows; and the men were put wherever there was space, facing this way and that. The cars were crammed full of people. If you wanted to scratch your buttocks, you would end up scratching your neighbour’s. The heat was unbearable, it was about thirty-five degrees out, and it was only eleven in the morning. One of the brokers stepped out of a car and began to talk.
“Can I have your attention? We are going to take a long journey to the border, and I hope you have enough food and water for yourself and your children; if not, please say so, so that we can buy it now.”
When he was satisfied that no one had raised their hands, he walked back to his car, and the journey started. We crossed the Bahr el Ghazal River. The river has dried up; no water flows there anymore. The trip from Massakory to Faya-Largeau took us two and a half days. We stopped in Moussoro for about forty-five minutes before we proceeded to Faya-Largeau. The sun was beating down, and the desert sand threatened to swallow us.
At Faya-Largeau, we rested for an hour. The brokers checked the car engines and made repairs. Then we got ready to leave. We headed northwest, and just before we disappeared into the dunes of the Sahara, our vehicles were met by a wave of armed militia.
