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10 My Life for Ten Dollars After two days at Ingende I left, still sick and exhausted. I could no longer carry my bundle and I had to lean on a cane to walk. It took us three days to go from Ingende to the little town of Bonde. The day of our arrival we took our noonday rest in Bokatola, a village a dozen kilometers from there. After this pause, Assumpta and Zuzu left about fifteen minutes before the rest of us, walking slowly. They were deteriorating rapidly and Assumpta had pains in her feet. Around two o’clock, we caught up with Assumpta. Zuzu was not with her. Since we hadn’t seen her anywhere on the road we thought that she had gone ahead, and we would find her traveling with other refugees. We didn’t ask Assumpta right away. Zuzu’s absence was completely understandable , and we economized with our strength and our words. After two kilometers we realized we had probably passed her at a time when she had left the road to go to the bathroom. I stopped to wait for her with Marcelline and Virginie. Because it was difficult for her to walk fast enough to keep up with us, Assumpta had gone on ahead. We thought that it wouldn’t be long before we found Zuzu and were sure that we would catch up with Assumpta before nightfall, but we never saw her again. Around ten, when Zuzu still hadn’t arrived, we had to leave without her to find a village where we could spend the night and not be at the mercy of the young thugs who assaulted isolated refugees and robbed them. That same day we had almost fallen into their hands. When we were going through one of the abandoned villages, we found ourselves surrounded by four young men armed with clubs. The looks on their faces didn’t give us much hope that we would get out of it 196 unharmed. They were beginning to close in on us, but when other refugees arrived, they disappeared into the forest like a bad dream. It was while looking for a village to spend the night in that we came to Bonde, which is in the area of Bokatola, in Ingende zone in the province of Equateur. The Mongo are the main ethnic group inhabiting the area. Virginie devoted herself to finding a place to stay, since she spoke Swahili and French well. Lingala was spoken in the Bokatola area, but many men in the villages understood French. She had no trouble finding us a place to stay with a Zairian family whose eldest son, Cyprien, immediately declared his love for her. His family gave us a warm welcome. That night I took a hot shower with soap, my first real bath since Tingi-Tingi. The next day, since Zuzu hadn’t turned up, Cyprien offered to go with Virginie to hunt for her. The little one hadn’t left the village of Bokatola, where we had taken our midday rest the day before. When she left with Assumpta, she stopped to go to the bathroom a few houses farther along and felt too weak to walk any farther. That night she had shared supper and sheeting with a sympathetic refugee . Virginie and Cyprien found her at about one o’clock. She had spent the entire morning sitting by the side of the road. Even though many people had passed by, no one had offered to help her. Everyone knew that she was close to the end, and no one wanted to be burdened with a sick child who would slow them down. She was so exhausted that she refused to walk and kept repeating that she would rather die right away than take one more step. Cyprien and Virginie carried her to Bonde on their backs. I was very relieved to see her. They got to the village around four o’clock, and it was too late to travel farther. Cyprien, whose nickname was Sipi, offered to take us by pirogue to Mbandaka the next week. I gratefully accepted his offer. Neither I nor Zuzu had enough strength to travel the one hundred and thirty kilometers that separated us from Mbandaka on foot. We needed to rest and I tried to take advantage of this providential stop to regain my strength. Sipi’s family made it all possible. They gave us free oranges and cassava. Morning, noon...

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