From that moment I just ran. I planted the soles of my feet firmly into the ground as my father had taught me but I kept my speed up the whole time. I was so afraid I did not even stop by your grave, Alemwa. I don’t think anyone can really understand what it means to have to flee. To leave everything behind, forced to run for your life. The night I left my village it felt as if all my thoughts and memories hung behind me like a bloody umbilical cord that refused to break until I was a long, long way away. I doubt that anyone who has not been forced to flee and has run from people or weapons or dark shadows threatening to kill them can understand what that means. The most desperate fear can never be described or told in words. One can never quite say what it is like to run into the darkness with death and pain and denigration only a step behind.
I remember nothing of my escape, only the incredible fear I felt until I arrived in Lagos and was sucked into a world I had never known existed. I had no money, no food and no idea whom I could turn to. As soon as I saw a soldier I hid and thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest. I tried to talk to you, Alemwa. But it was the only time I was not able to hear your voice. Perhaps you were sick. I tried to feel your breath but there was nothing there. The breath I felt on my neck at last stank of alcohol and smoke.
How long I was in that city I don’t know. But at that point I was so deep in my desperation that I had decided to find a man who would give me enough money to continue my journey. I knew the price I would have to pay. It just had to be a man with enough money, whatever ‘enough’ was. Where was I headed? I had no idea which direction was safest.
During all of the days and nights I starved in Lagos I met other people who were also fleeing. It was as if we gave off a special smell that only other refugees could smell, drawn to each other like blind animals. Everyone had dreams and plans. Some had decided to head to South Africa. Others wanted to get to the harbour cities in Kenya and Tanzania in order to smuggle themselves onto a ship. But there were also those who had already given up. They had managed to reach Lagos but did not think they would ever be able to leave. Everyone was afraid of the military, of the laughing soldiers. Many had terrible stories to tell, some had escaped from prisons with mortal wounds to their bodies and souls.
