“Your tea, mah-dam,” the Dinka said with a mock bow. “I was one time a waiter in the hotel in Wau.” “Wow?”
-Acts of Faith, Philip Caputo, 2006
I beat Caputo by twenty years to this juvenile word play. I am not proud of my mockery. In January 1984 I was on a high and heavy leaf suspension bus from Umdurman to El Obeid following a sand track the whole way to Kordofan. I met a guy named Bau sharing my seat. It was a long day’s journey and we were really tossed when we arrived near dark.
On to Wau, home, he said. How far? I asked. It depends, he answered. On the track, on the engine, on the mazaaj, the mood, of the driver, maybe days, maybe a week. I just checked the internet. Fourteen hours, 535 miles on south. That seems short even today.
Wau is now in another country, Republic of South Sudan. At the time I laughed at the alliteration of his name and his hometown. Knowing now what I know, I should have felt sorry for him. But at the time, just as the civil war was restarting, with an attack on a Chevron oil rig not far from Wau that I heard about on the BBC while riding north a few weeks later, being a young American in Sudan was still a lark. Caputo’s American should have known not to make the same joke. There have been two million deaths since then and they continue.