After hearing the news of the al Shabab bombings in Uganda during the World Cup finals, I wondered if Africa would ever be free of violence. I thought back to my time in Africa in 2006, when I visited Congo from Uganda during the Africa Cup, and the sense of hope that had pervaded the continent.

My mother taught me a song when I was little. It was meant, I suppose, to teach rhyming skills. It went like this:

Bongo, bongo, bongo,

I don’t want to leave the Congo,

No, no, no, no, no, no

Bingo bango bongo

I’m so happy in the jungle

I refuse to go.

My dreams of Africa were shaped by Hollywood: vast grasslands teeming with wildlife, noisy jungles, and dancing and singing villagers. Even the words of that song belied a happy existence that seemed more myth than reality when I visited Congo. While I was living in Uganda, as many as 30,000 refugees a month were walking across the porous border into Uganda fleeing a civil war. Today, four years later, the killing continues.

I bounced in a Jeep wheeled by a hired driver named Aziz with my journalist husband Peter, and a Ugandan journalist named Good Luck, a reedy intellectual of Tutsi stock, whose glasses swallowed his delicate face. We drove along the rough roads, winding up the mountains with breathtaking views of the volcanic lakes and gorges, en route to the breaking story. The steep hillsides were terraced into farms with connecting dirt paths weaving their way up and down the fields. Corn, pole beans, and “Irish,” the Ugandan name for potatoes, grew in the rich volcanic soil.

As we drove I wondered why it is we humans feel the necessity to bear witness to suffering. More to the point, I wondered why I was there. I could have stayed home to bear witness to my mother’s suffering. After spending six weeks with her after her release from the hospital during another battle in her war with cancer, I had joined Peter as we had originally planned in Uganda. Mom’s setback had derailed me for a few months, and I was unable to think about leaving or anything else. I had driven two days across the country from Denver to Ohio to be with her, not wanting to be anywhere else. But after her release from the hospital, whether it was because I was getting on her nerves -- “hovering,” as she put it -- or because she didn’t want me to miss out on a lifelong dream to see Africa, she said, “You have always wanted to go to Africa. Go.”

A few weeks later I was on the bone-jarring drive to the Uganda-Congo border, wondering what it was that I thought I could do to make a difference in Africa. At home, at least, I knew I could help alleviate my mother’s suffering. But here? There was the vain hope, of course, that as a writer, something might be done if I beat the drum long and loudly enough, but the truth is often the opposite: people grow weary of suffering. Donor fatigue devolves to apathy, and the overfed plead, “Can’t you write about something good for a change?” Regardless, I was heading to another disaster. In this case, the cause was the butterfly theory of chaos: one atrocity led to another.

The refugees were Hutus (Inter Hamre, meaning “One Cut” for the machetes they used to kill Tutsis, who they called “cockroaches”), who fled Rwanda after the Tutsis regained power after the genocide there. In Congo, the Hutus took up their traditional farming. But the Congolese had also incorporated many Hutus and Tutsis into its army, keeping ethnic groups separate in its divisions. So the Tutsi Congolese Army units declared war on the Hutu Congolese Army units and Hutu people with the alleged backing of the Rwandan government.

As the Hutu people came into conflict with Congo’s native herders, the herders enlisted the support of the Tutsis to run out the Hutus.

The Ugandan government couldn’t do anything for the people streaming over its borders until they registered with the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHCR) refugee camps. And the Congolese refused to do so, saying they were afraid to go to the camps, saying they had heard about the diseases there, the crowding, and worried that if they went into the camps, they would lose their homes.

The “camp” we visited was an unofficial place where the refugees erected makeshift tents with plastic tarps and sticks, most sleeping on the bare ground without even a blanket in the chilly high altitude valley in the shadow of the Virungas, the volcanoes where Dian Fossey observed her mountain gorillas that she made famous. (I wondered what was happening to the gorillas in the wake of this violence.) 

Fortunately for the refugees, it was the dry season, but it was still cold at night.  They slept in nothing but the clothes on their back, rags mostly, some naked, and barefoot. They had survived a long and tough journey across the mountains and through jungle. Many walked as many as ten days without food. People died or were killed in ambushes by the rebels on the way. The telltale traces of the survivors’ diseases littered the grass in the rocky valley: piles of vomit were splashed about with fecal matter. Aziz whispered, “Cover your mouth.”

As we picked our way through the crowds, many of the people surged around UN officials, who were handing out one blanket, one plastic cup, one package of biscuits, and one yellow plastic jerry can for water per family. It seemed sparse, but this was not intended to be a camp. The goal was to get the people to move to the camps, where they were equipped to feed the people and provide shelter. Otherwise mayhem would erupt: people had already been stealing from Ugandan’s gardens tensions were escalating. In a place where people live on the slimmest of margins, the starving were stealing from the hungry, straining the communal African ethic.

People crowded around us like bees. It was stifling. So many faces looked up at me, kids touching me, and many started shouting in Swahili and their own tribal languages. One woman sounded very angry.  I told her I didn’t understand her language, and she switched to French. My French is spotty at best. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak French,” I said. My Spanish and stock phrases from my first and only semester of college French were useless. Frustrated, she resorted to hand gestures, and getting nowhere, burst into loud, frustrated laughter. I, on the other hand, wanted to burst into tears. I was going into emotional overload, shocked by the suffering. But I was determined not to break down in front of people who had been through so much and were trying to make the best of it while I was going home to a hotel room and hot shower. The woman’s laughter was joined by other women’s titters, then loud laughter. A young girl of about 14 stepped forward from their circle. She had a delicate long neck and short-cropped hair. She was wearing a rosary and gold-studded earrings and spoke rudimentary English, introducing herself as Bernadette.  “Why are those men (she pointed to Peter and Good Luck, who were recording an interview with several people) asking so many questions when we have no food?” She patted her stomach. “Do you understand? We have no food.” 

“I understand. But I have no food for you. They are here doing a story. We want people to understand what is happening here so maybe they can help you.”

What appeared to be an old woman pulled out a leathery teat for the baby she carried that I initially had thought was her grandchild. Her son suckled without satisfaction; she wasn’t producing milk due to hunger. She grinned at me and shrugged, and said what I knew was probably, “What can you do?”

Another woman whose eternal face was writ by sun who could have been 30 or 80, pulled a corn cob pipe out of the folds of her skirt, lit it, and laughed, exposing her tobacco-stained teeth.

The growing crowd eyed my fanny pack, which contained my eyeglasses, a first aid kid, a notebook, and a pen. “We think you have food in that bag,” one girl said, in French I was able to understand. I told her the truth: I was not carrying anything edible.

As a foreigner, a “muzungu,” I was used to being seen as the one with the answer to problems in countries where I had worked.  In Armenia I was told, “You are walking wallets,” in Afghanistan, “You can help. You are American.” That I could pick money off trees or miraculously solve problems was often the view when it came to many things during my stay in Africa: war, poverty, hunger, AIDS. Nothing could be further from the truth. I had no magic wand, magical powers, wisdom, or unlimited stores of cash that can make any problem disappear. I was asked by a tribal king to design irrigation systems. I was asked to pay children’s school fees, buy shoes, take people’s kids (or them) back to America, and even ask George Bush to send more condoms for an AIDS program. And there at the camp, faced by a mob of hungry people, I was being asked to feed a crowd with a pair of glasses and a first aid kid. It was overwhelming.

Many African leaders, including the presidents of Zimbabwe and Uganda, say, “Why doesn’t the West just give us money and let us solve the problems?” Yet many ministers and other government officials had stolen that money and placed it in their private accounts, while continuing to point fingers westerners, saying they are rich and greedy and refuse to help. Kenya was in the midst of a huge scandal in which $600 million was stolen. Chad lost funding for an oil project because it refused to follow strict accounting procedures. A Ugandan official was tried for pocketing World Bank funds intended for medicines for AIDS victims. And of course, even if the money was well-used, it isn’t limitless. Africa’s problems, on the other hand, are infinite.

So what are the solutions for Africa? And who is responsible for implementing them?

Aziz had the instincts of a border collie. He gently led me away whenever things got uncomfortable or threatening. As the people began to press too close, he pulled me from the crowd to the car. “This is a very desperate situation,” he whispered, shaking his head.

“I would give food, but I don’t have any,” I said.

“No, wait, we can give what food we have in the car from the windows. You will create problems. They could knock us down.” We walked to the car and distributed cookies we had inside to some kids standing along the road. We had three spare bottles of water and a box of mango juice and handed that out, too, as I watched in horror as the bigger kids beat the smaller ones for another share. It was life or death, and survival instincts had kicked in.

Aziz put the car in gear and drove across the field to where Peter and Good Luck had drifted. They jumped in and we drove off to the border. A Hutu boy of about eight was running down the road swinging a machete. Not always a weapon, usually a tool, Peter said, trying to comfort me. Pygmies walked alongside the forested road and signaled for us to honk our horn. Aziz leaned out the window and hollered a greeting, while Good Luck explained that Aziz was asking if the road was clear. The forest road was dangerous, especially at night. Bandits held up cars and even buses at gunpoint. A bus heading from Kibale to Congo was stopped and Congolese rebels took hostage its passengers, Aziz said. After that, Uganda ceased bus service to Congo for a while.

After we arrived at the border, Peter and Good Luck interviewed border officials while Aziz and I waited, watching women streaming down the red clay dirt road balancing firewood, yellow plastic jerry cans filled with water, food bundled in rags, and even empty steel drums, used as stills to make home brew and support their families, on their heads . Babies were strapped to their backs with colorful bits of cloth with their feet poking out front. Little girls carried water with leather straps and strung extra jerry cans across their backs. The men carried hoes, if anything. Even as they fled a war, the women were beasts of burden. Boys did their part by pushing homemade wooden scooters laden with water cans and tools.

Two little boys struggled to push a homemade scooter, which served as a cart laden with three jerry cans of water up the hill back into Congo, where Aziz said they would get food to carry back to their families at the camp before nightfall.

The cargo was too heavy and the boys struggled to keep it upright. I walked over to them, took the handlebars and motioned for them to jump aboard by bending and patting the running board area, which was made from a recycled flip-flop glued to the wood. The older boy understood and jumped aboard, while his little brother tagged alongside, hanging back, as I pushed the contraption for them.  Once we reached the border, we encountered some men walking and the older boy jumped off. He resumed pushing the vehicle up the hill, his bare legs poking out from under an oversized men’s suit coat.

The worn dirt footpath threaded its way through a wooden fence strung with barbed wire and between two lush banyan trees, which Africans believe was the source of life. Someone had gone to the trouble to plant corn, cabbage, and pole beans in a garden behind the Uganda customs office. The Congolese streamed past the office, ignoring it. Most were peasants and had no passports or papers. Their sheer numbers overwhelmed the officials, who could do nothing.

Aziz and I approached the path. Peter and Good Luck were still interviewing the border officials in the office. We stood at the border, watching the parade of desperation wending its way into Uganda. I took a few photos, but the men grew angry with me and the women covered their faces. 

“Beyond that fence is No-Man’s land,” Aziz said. I thought of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the atrocities at the hands of the Belgians, and the atrocities since.

I walked to the border, put one foot across.  “I’m now in two countries,” I said to Aziz.  We stepped across, walked to the Banyan trees to see if we could find the mythical river than separated the countries. Not a sign of it. “It must be dry now,” Aziz said. “Let’s go back,” I said. An old man in a purple pup tent camped on the Uganda side of the border peeked his head out to watch. “Crazy muzungu,” he muttered.

I had no desire to go deeper into No-Man’s Land.

Later Peter and Good Luck decided to try to locate some Congo officials and a general in the rebel army on the Congo side of the border. Good Luck, in a pressed shirt and tie, with his microphone and recorder, stood out, as did Peter and I, probably the only white people for hundreds of miles. I smelled disaster looming.

Aziz and I reluctantly went along, with Aziz hanging back a bit with me. As we walked deeper into Congo, it was as if we really had entered a different country, even though we only walked a few miles. The clearing disappeared and we entered a deep forest, where decrepit barracks were crumbling, the plaster and foundations devoured by plants and moisture. Peter and Good Luck found a few officials and attempted to interview them on the stoop of a collapsed porch of a hollowed-out building despite the language barrier and their lack of cooperation. The men had their arms crossed over their chests, and their voices were terse. Aziz, who could catch some of the tribal language, said they were being told what to say by walkie-talkie as they regularly accepted messages.

“Who is the commander of the rebels?” Peter asked.

“I know him but I don’t know his name,” the official said after Good Luck translated Peter's question.

“What? You don’t know his name?” Peter pressed.

“I cannot tell you what I don’t know.”

A second man with a transistor radio in one hand and a walkie-talkie in another approached, and asked Peter who we were and who sent us. 

“Why are all of these people leaving?” Peter asked.

“They aren’t leaving. They want to stay,” the Congolese official said, waving his hand as a stream of people made their way past us in one direction: east to Uganda. They were clearly not intent on staying.

 “Why do they keep pressing them?” I whispered to Aziz.

“I think they want the name of the commander so they can talk to him,” he said.

“That guy is just lying, and they are going to make him angry. I am not standing around listening to someone lying. Let’s go stand in the shade,” I replied, feeling light-headed in the intense equatorial sun, even at such a high, cool altitude.

Peter’s questions drifted over to where I stood under the shade of a banyan tree. His voice sounded agitated. “Why are the soldiers fighting?” he pressed.

“There are no problems here. There is no fighting,” the official said.

Lies.  He had just told Peter that there was a rebel commander. Then why was he saying there was no fighting?

Aziz said quietly, “No one is in charge here. I think this is a bad place.”

Just then, three men, all wearing bandoliers, two armed with machine guns and a third with an RPG, approached us. They glared at us, staggered a little too close, then deliberately bumped into us as they brushed by, as if to say “We have guns and you don’t. We can kill you.”  Aziz folded his arms across his chest and put his hands under his armpits and looked into the distance, careful not to make eye contact with the men.

“Guys with guns!” I hissed. “I’m out of here. How long do you think they’ll be?”  I asked, nodding towards Peter.

“I think awhile.”

“I don’t even have my papers with me. I think it’s a bad idea to be in Congo illegally with no papers. In fact, I think it’s a bad idea to be in Congo.”

“Yes, this is a bad place,” Aziz said.

“Are you thirsty?”

“Yes.”

“Me too.  Let’s go get a Coke!” Aziz loved soda of all kinds. He understood my meaning. Only the Ugandan side of the border still had stores and electricity. Everything we saw in Congo had been obliterated by war, poverty, and neglect.

We walked back to Uganda, passing the guys with guns, who glanced over their backs as we came behind them on the footpath. We waved goodbye to Peter without interrupting the interview, and continued past the people who’d trekked ten days across the steep slopes of Sabine, one of the three dramatic volcanoes of the Virungas, and through heavy artillery. They looked exhausted, but grim and determined, so close to their goal.

Things felt terribly amiss. No one knew who was in charge, and everyone was slightly deranged. I felt a sense of teetering desperation among the rebels and the people, and knew anything could spark someone’s anger. Who were the rebels fighting for? Why? They didn’t seem to know or care.

They were government forces, Aziz said the men had told Peter and Good Luck. But the Congolese government, based on the Atlantic side of the continent, hadn’t sent them. The conflict was too far out in the provinces, and there was nothing there to protect.

“Where are the government trucks? The police? The camps? The battalions?  This is no government force,” Good Luck had said. “These people are rebels.”

There is no need for the devil when there are the steaming jungles, multitudes of young ready to pick up arms and fight.

As we walked back, I knew Peter would stay because he was trailing a story. But he and Good Luck would have to return to the car if they wanted to make the long, slow drive down the mountain into town before nightfall. I rationalized that if something bad did happen, I would be of more use back at the car, parked in Uganda, where I could wait with phones at the ready to call the American embassy.

Aziz and I crossed into Uganda, where we bought overpriced Cokes (“there’s a war,” the proprietor apologized, acknowledging what the Congolese would not) –four in all, one for Peter and Good Luck, too, I said, in a gesture of faith that they would be back. Aziz broke into a broad smile at the gesture.

We climbed into our car, where I scribbled notes for several hours while Aziz dozed with the seat reclined. We listened to Chameleon, the Uganda hip-hop rap star who wears blond cornrows and a Masai robe. The sun got to be too hot in the car, so I moved into the shade on the immigration office stoop. I sat next to a large black water tank, which a worker told me was empty because government corruption in Kampala had siphoned off the money meant to purchase water for the office. I removed my sandals and sighed contentedly, reading a book, intent on my mental escapism.

As I worked my way through a chapter, several officials approached me. I was a barefoot, sunburned white woman, perched like an orphan on their steps. “Do you need help, madam?” they asked. I was touched by their concern.

“Oh, no, thank you very much. I am just waiting for my husband who is in Congo.  But thank you for asking!”

After getting through one more chapter, then looking up to see the equatorial sun casting long shadows, worry crept into my heart. Peter and Good Luck had been gone for three hours. It would be dark in two. So much for my attempts at escapism.

I put my sandals on and woke Aziz. “I’m worried! I’m going to call Peter!” I said. Earlier when I had tried, they were too deep in the jungle to get a signal. I was hoping they were close.

“Good idea!” he agreed. “We have to leave before it is dark. Bandits use that road.”

After six rings, Peter’s voice came on the line.

“Where are you?” I asked, not even saying hello, too worried to be polite.

“Behind you,” he answered.

I turned and saw him approaching the barbed-wire fence with Good Luck and two officials.

Aziz and I laughed with relief.

That night at dinner, the truth the rebels had been trying to hide was revealed. Peter and Good Luck had been instructed by the rebel officials to walk two more kilometers into the jungle, where there was another town in the clearing.

“You thought it was grim before,” Peter said. “This place was worse.”

They had gone to meet a commander, but were detained by their escorts for 30 minutes. Then they were taken further into the jungle, into a cinder block building where the commander was supposed to arrive.

“Are you crazy?” I asked. “They could have locked you up or worse!”

“I was scared,” Good Luck said. “I knew no one was in control and it was a very bad situation. And I don’t understand all of the tribal language. But I could tell what they were saying on the radio. They were saying, ‘Let them come. But don’t say too much.’”

The cat and mouse game continued while Aziz and I drank, slept, and read.  Each step Peter and Good Luck took, they were told that someone waited ahead who could answer their questions. They were drawn deeper into the jungle, to find another person who told them the same story.

“Quivera,” I said. “The Pueblo Indians told the conquistadores what they wanted to hear: that the Seven Cities of Cibola were further to the East. Quivera was the name of a fantastical place they described, the Indian word for Kansas. The Spanish traveled all the way to the Great Plains, looking for the fabled cities of gold, and each tribe they encountered sent them further east with more fantastic tales to get them away from them.”

Fortunately, Peter and Good Luck were quicker on the uptake than the Spanish. They only walked a few kilometers before they realized they were being had.

“There were men with RPGs on their back and machine guns,” Good Luck said. “I knew they could kill me if they wanted to. I looked back and didn’t see Peter coming and worried. And then I saw him coming with another man. I resolved that whatever would happen would happen.”

“And I saw machine guns on tripods along the path,” Peter said.

“I saw guys with guns, too, and said…” I started.

“…guys with guns! I’m outta here!” Aziz cut in.

“I wasn’t staying around for that freak show,” I admitted. Everyone laughed.

“You didn’t say goodbye! I looked and you were gone.” Peter said.

“We waved! You saw us leaving. Those guys with guns were menacing!” I replied.

“Thanks a lot,” Peter said.

“Trust me, you were better off with us here, manning the phone lines. I could have called the embassy,” I said.

“You’re probably right. I never thought of that,” he said.

“Besides, don’t get all macho on me. I was the first to go into Congo,” I laughed.

“What?”

“It’s true,” Aziz said. “She went first. While you were talking to officials.”

Peter and I play a game when we travel. We joke when we take cold showers in the morning or cook in the dark when there is no electricity or kill giant cockroaches or take potty breaks alongside the jeep while scanning the horizon for lions and cheetahs that we are contestants in a game show, “Quien Es Mas Macho?” 

I had to say it. “Today Dina es mas macho!”

We all shared a good laugh. Life in Africa is dust and downpours, flies and fiery heat, boredom and bravado, wealth and wretched poverty, the clarity born of equatorial sun bathing thousands of birds fluttering in the sky, oblivious to the desperation on the ground punctuated by terror. At the end of the day, there is nothing left but laughter.  It is the great equalizer, common ground, the shared antidote to too much “real” life.

Later that night, in the lounge of The White Horse Inn, watching the Africa Cup (Angola versus Congo) in front of a warm fire to ward off the evening chill, I wondered: Do any of the refugees, from Congo, give a damn if Congo wins the Africa Cup? Had they even heard of it? They were less than 100 miles away, but in another world.

A mascot dressed as a witch doctor menaced the camera with a spear as Congo scored the tying goal, putting them in the finals. “Who needs the witch doctors in Congo?” I said to Peter. “The evil does fine on its own.”

            I saw Good Luck a few months later in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, at a seminar. I was feeling ill with fever and was making my way to find a place to lie down. He caught my eye at a break and cut across the garden to greet me. “Hello, madam,” he said. “I have some news. Do you remember the refugees we met in the camp?”

            “Of course!” I replied.

“They are dead now. They were killed. They were told it was safe to return, and they were ambushed as they crossed the mountains,” Good Luck said.

            Despite my fever I went cold in the hot sun. I thought of Bernadette’s limpid eyes, her gold cross, her faith unable to protect her from the demons that lurked in that forest, and my inability to help her. I remembered my own days as a child playing in the woods, something that I looked back on as an idyll, not a terror. I grieved the fact that Bernadette had never known the simple luxury of a childhood, like most African children, where generations are being squandered to war, and that she would never live to grow old.

            I told Good Luck it was wonderful to see him again and excused myself. I went upstairs, where, instead of lying down, I took some Ibuprofen and began to write. It was only a small gesture, but I decided to keep writing, in hopes that someone might pay attention.

Postscript: Today, four years later, as I write this in memory of those killed in the bombings in Kampala, Uganda,on the day of the World Cup finals, I am saddened that the violence in Congo continues, and that Africa is still not free from the shackles of hatred and violence, the vision of unity for the World Cup and beyond still just that—a distant vision.