Hold onto your seats, Part 6 "The Page"
"The Page" ©
by John S LES
16 hours. That's how long our direct flight from Dulles International airport in Washington, to Jomo Kenyatta International in Kenya took us. During the first 8 hours, my father was part of several briefings by phone and several short meetings on the commercial plane that was chartered for us. They wanted him in charge of identifying and coordinating the security of the members of the first and this second UN delegation. The 50 man elite unit of Marines flying over with us, and the 1,000 more Marines that would meet us in Bustani were all responsible for the actual carrying out of our security and safety.
Since it was my phone using a cross platform messaging application, I was officially listed as one of three staff member to Hollingsworth. However, there was others flying with us. There was a CIA analyst who was the point person responsible for US intelligence on Bustani. She had my phone cloned for both her and the US military intelligence officer also was with us. Between the two of them and their sophisticated electronics, they could pinpoint and lock the signal to any additional messages to my phone from Jamila, should she be able to send one out.
Two additional Congressmen with past experience in eastern Africa joined us, as well as Hollingsworth himself. There was also Jack Lyons, a lawyer and a special advisor to the President and two UN diplomats from Kenya and Tanzania, Bustani's border countries.
For the first 8 hours of the flight, my father and the UN officials had briefings with the UN and US military officials. Our arrival there was not going to be part of an intervention in civil war. We were going simply to evacuate Americans. The African diplomats were concerned that this was going to be another Rwanda, where Western nations leave a leadership vacuum, by cutting their losses and removing all military and economic resources once a full scale civil war erupted. The African ambassadors didn't want that to happen. On the American side Washington wasn't interested in becoming embroiled in a war where the loss of American military lives could prove to be politically damaging.
As I overheard some of the discussions and issues, all I kept thinking about was wanting to be awake for Jamila's next message to my phone. Every now and again I would also think about how I would I be able to explain to my classmates and teachers what I did for the summer when school started again in the fall. I didn't think any other classmate would have a story that could top this.
Looking back now it all seems so surreal. As soon as we landed in Kenya, we were then flown another 45 minutes into Bustani's, Karibu airport. US marines from the 5th fleet had already landed and taken over the airport. Everyone in our party had expected to be flying into chaos and flying bullets, but that wasn't the case. Although the airport clearly was not it's sprawling self, it was not under any siege of civil warfare of any kind. The only activity was the US Marines and the UN forces that were already in place.
Communications with the UN forces had been reestablished nearly 7 hours before our arrival when a US Special Forces came in and took out all radio and satellite signal jamming defenses. Once that happened it was just a matter of formulating how a convoy of American troops would come in, assist the UN forces and then evacuate all Americans and UN personnel. But to the surprise of everyone, Masamba had simply played another trick on the world. He harassed and terrorized the original delegation to get rid of them. He wanted to show his following that he had the power to stir up the world.
By the time our convoy had reached Mbegu, the capital city in Bustani, it was nothing of what I expected. Mbegu City was just five miles west of the airport. It was actually fairly large and modern. There were brick buildings, mostly three to five stories high everywhere. It looked like a cleaned up Lower Manhattan or downtown Brooklyn must have looked like 70 years ago, before the Skyscraper buildings came in. Although there were many cars and pickup trucks moving about the city, it appeared that the people traveled mostly by bicycle or foot throughout the city. The people walked about the streets dressed in mostly khaki or white colored trousers and bright colored shirt ranging from greens, to red to purple and yellow.
It was a beautiful and vibrant looking city. Only the occasional passing of Tumbili military police in their Humvee driving through the city began to stand out. From all of our briefings, Mbegu city was supposed to be overwhelmingly inhabited by Simba, who known to dress more uniformly in blues and white. The more we drove around and through the city unchallenged, the more it became obvious that Mbegu City now belonged to the Tumbili people. It was as if there had been a coup, but not a single sign of genocide. Everyone in our group, including my father and Hollingsworth were baffled. None of the military police even challenged our presence...a 1,000 strong convoy of US Marines rolling into their city.
Masamba had been masterful. In the 48 hours it took us to get to Bustani, he had convinced all remaining factional Simba leaders to abandon Mbegu City and move into the forest and bungalow cities outside of all the major cities to avoid bloodshed. He had used his now overwhelming army numbers, as well as his black magic to kill opposition leaders with merely the touch of the body, using members of the Simba tribe who had defected to his side. He captured and secluded members of the first delegation, and cut off their communication with the rest of the world so that they could not see his mysterious powers. It was the art of war. He had won the battle without having to an all out civil war.
Contact was made with the first delegation. They were just twenty five minutes outside of the city. I stayed in the background trying to call Jamila's cell phone, but it would go directly to voice mail. Her father spoke to my father. He and a few others had been kept virtual prisoners in another city, but had been released by dawn and were walking their way back to village to the same village that his family and others from the party had been moved to. When we arrived at the village, it was composed mostly of small brick houses surrounded by thick, but beautiful forestry. The villagers inhabiting it were clearly taller, and leaner in their build on average, but not in all cases. The overwhelming majority also had the distinctive green eyes. Almost immediately we could feel that our presence was not desired there and the tension level was high.
Once we arrived at the house that Jamila's family was forced to stay at, my thoughts became like a music video. I don't quite remember how I got out of the truck we were in, and left both my father and my boss in the dust behind me, but somehow I had pushed through a crowd of about ten Marines and fifteen villagers and delegates and picked Jamila up off the ground kissing her. For a few minutes in that one moment, the world around us seemed to stop as we continued to kiss and embrace.
It wasn't until our father's made it over to us that we finally let go of each other. Even as some Red Cross workers moved in and began inspecting the health of everyone in the delegation, Jamila and I could not stop looking at each other. Our hearts beating in our chests, both of us feeling the same love for one another. Our eyes said it all.
Several hours later, more details came out as to what had transpired over the 60 hours. As my father was being debriefed by the delegates, Jamila and I laid together in a hammock like bed hanging in the backyard of the house. She told me of how the delegation was staying at a hotel in Mbegu, when Masamba rolled in with his army and met with the remaining leaders of the crumbling hierarchy of the Simba tribe within Mbegu and the other five major cities in Bustani.
He had built up such a fearsome reputation, and word had spread that he used black magic, or human bombs, an ancient warrior practice known as mwili mipuko, body explosion, a secret art of assassination which had been used hundred if not thousands of years ago.
"Only the Simba have the body chemistry to do this and he has convinced or coerced some Simba radicals to join him and carry out these assassinations. No one has witnessed them, only the aftermath."
Then she told went on to tell me that her father and a group of about 25 others, including mission delegates, the leader of the UN forces, General Paul Bigqouette of Canada and 12 soldiers of American or Canadian origin - had all been taken into custody by Masamba's soldiers. They were initially to be executed to incite the Canadian and American forces to leave, Bustani. Once gone, Masamba would then expel the remaining African forces that were in the UN army and conduct his civil war with zero interference from the outside world. However, a quick thinking UN army captain, from Senegal, a Captain Amari Kanyomozi, secured their release by arranging what was supposed to be a friendly negotiation meeting with Masamba. However, Kanyomozi broke his UN orders and turned the tables on Masamba by appearing at the meeting with several hidden explosives strapped to his own body, as well as two grenades with the pins pulled.
"Captain Kanyomozi was responsible for the safe release of my father, the general and the 23 others. He also convinced Masamba that the UN forces would be forced to leave if there was no civilian casualties while the two tribes peacefully changed power within Mbegu City. Once the UN was gone, the two sides could fight it out. That ploy gave Kanyomozi and the UN troops time to help move women and children out of the war zone and into the country's outer borderline or become refugees into Kenya and Tanzania. No matter what happens now, there will be a war."
I couldn't help but wonder out loud to her, "But what happened to your father's delegation and their efforts to restore moderates here?"
She bluntly replied, "The Simba do not want us here. They called us all 'Americans'. They consider us medling outsiders to both the Simba and the Tumbili. They said Americans have no oil, no diamonds, no military base and therefore interests or reason to be here to decide the fate of Bustani. My uncle is free to leave with my father."
And she was right. With innocent civilians moving to the country's borderline, and both UN delegations free to leave, there was no longer a need for any outside military force to be in Bustani. Both the UN troops and Red Cross were moved to encampments outside the major city borderlines to protect the innocent. Neither the United States nor Canada had a political reason to stay there anymore. The remaining UN forces would be made up of mostly participating African nations. Unless there was apparent genocide, interceding in the civil warfare would not be in any country's interest. The conflict could spread out into the bordering countries.
As I sat holding Jamila's hand on our long plane ride back home, I couldn't help but think that Heaven had began us, but for the beautiful people I saw in Bustani, Hell had began for them...And the seeds for a threat to the rest of the Super Power nations were being sowed...
COMING NEXT...THE CONCLUSION TO "THE PAGE". ©
.
"The Page" ©
by John S LES
16 hours. That's how long our direct flight from Dulles International airport in Washington, to Jomo Kenyatta International in Kenya took us. During the first 8 hours, my father was part of several briefings by phone and several short meetings on the commercial plane that was chartered for us. They wanted him in charge of identifying and coordinating the security of the members of the first and this second UN delegation. The 50 man elite unit of Marines flying over with us, and the 1,000 more Marines that would meet us in Bustani were all responsible for the actual carrying out of our security and safety.
Since it was my phone using a cross platform messaging application, I was officially listed as one of three staff member to Hollingsworth. However, there was others flying with us. There was a CIA analyst who was the point person responsible for US intelligence on Bustani. She had my phone cloned for both her and the US military intelligence officer also was with us. Between the two of them and their sophisticated electronics, they could pinpoint and lock the signal to any additional messages to my phone from Jamila, should she be able to send one out.
Two additional Congressmen with past experience in eastern Africa joined us, as well as Hollingsworth himself. There was also Jack Lyons, a lawyer and a special advisor to the President and two UN diplomats from Kenya and Tanzania, Bustani's border countries.
For the first 8 hours of the flight, my father and the UN officials had briefings with the UN and US military officials. Our arrival there was not going to be part of an intervention in civil war. We were going simply to evacuate Americans. The African diplomats were concerned that this was going to be another Rwanda, where Western nations leave a leadership vacuum, by cutting their losses and removing all military and economic resources once a full scale civil war erupted. The African ambassadors didn't want that to happen. On the American side Washington wasn't interested in becoming embroiled in a war where the loss of American military lives could prove to be politically damaging.
As I overheard some of the discussions and issues, all I kept thinking about was wanting to be awake for Jamila's next message to my phone. Every now and again I would also think about how I would I be able to explain to my classmates and teachers what I did for the summer when school started again in the fall. I didn't think any other classmate would have a story that could top this.
Looking back now it all seems so surreal. As soon as we landed in Kenya, we were then flown another 45 minutes into Bustani's, Karibu airport. US marines from the 5th fleet had already landed and taken over the airport. Everyone in our party had expected to be flying into chaos and flying bullets, but that wasn't the case. Although the airport clearly was not it's sprawling self, it was not under any siege of civil warfare of any kind. The only activity was the US Marines and the UN forces that were already in place.
Communications with the UN forces had been reestablished nearly 7 hours before our arrival when a US Special Forces came in and took out all radio and satellite signal jamming defenses. Once that happened it was just a matter of formulating how a convoy of American troops would come in, assist the UN forces and then evacuate all Americans and UN personnel. But to the surprise of everyone, Masamba had simply played another trick on the world. He harassed and terrorized the original delegation to get rid of them. He wanted to show his following that he had the power to stir up the world.
By the time our convoy had reached Mbegu, the capital city in Bustani, it was nothing of what I expected. Mbegu City was just five miles west of the airport. It was actually fairly large and modern. There were brick buildings, mostly three to five stories high everywhere. It looked like a cleaned up Lower Manhattan or downtown Brooklyn must have looked like 70 years ago, before the Skyscraper buildings came in. Although there were many cars and pickup trucks moving about the city, it appeared that the people traveled mostly by bicycle or foot throughout the city. The people walked about the streets dressed in mostly khaki or white colored trousers and bright colored shirt ranging from greens, to red to purple and yellow.
It was a beautiful and vibrant looking city. Only the occasional passing of Tumbili military police in their Humvee driving through the city began to stand out. From all of our briefings, Mbegu city was supposed to be overwhelmingly inhabited by Simba, who known to dress more uniformly in blues and white. The more we drove around and through the city unchallenged, the more it became obvious that Mbegu City now belonged to the Tumbili people. It was as if there had been a coup, but not a single sign of genocide. Everyone in our group, including my father and Hollingsworth were baffled. None of the military police even challenged our presence...a 1,000 strong convoy of US Marines rolling into their city.
Masamba had been masterful. In the 48 hours it took us to get to Bustani, he had convinced all remaining factional Simba leaders to abandon Mbegu City and move into the forest and bungalow cities outside of all the major cities to avoid bloodshed. He had used his now overwhelming army numbers, as well as his black magic to kill opposition leaders with merely the touch of the body, using members of the Simba tribe who had defected to his side. He captured and secluded members of the first delegation, and cut off their communication with the rest of the world so that they could not see his mysterious powers. It was the art of war. He had won the battle without having to an all out civil war.
Contact was made with the first delegation. They were just twenty five minutes outside of the city. I stayed in the background trying to call Jamila's cell phone, but it would go directly to voice mail. Her father spoke to my father. He and a few others had been kept virtual prisoners in another city, but had been released by dawn and were walking their way back to village to the same village that his family and others from the party had been moved to. When we arrived at the village, it was composed mostly of small brick houses surrounded by thick, but beautiful forestry. The villagers inhabiting it were clearly taller, and leaner in their build on average, but not in all cases. The overwhelming majority also had the distinctive green eyes. Almost immediately we could feel that our presence was not desired there and the tension level was high.
Once we arrived at the house that Jamila's family was forced to stay at, my thoughts became like a music video. I don't quite remember how I got out of the truck we were in, and left both my father and my boss in the dust behind me, but somehow I had pushed through a crowd of about ten Marines and fifteen villagers and delegates and picked Jamila up off the ground kissing her. For a few minutes in that one moment, the world around us seemed to stop as we continued to kiss and embrace.
It wasn't until our father's made it over to us that we finally let go of each other. Even as some Red Cross workers moved in and began inspecting the health of everyone in the delegation, Jamila and I could not stop looking at each other. Our hearts beating in our chests, both of us feeling the same love for one another. Our eyes said it all.
Several hours later, more details came out as to what had transpired over the 60 hours. As my father was being debriefed by the delegates, Jamila and I laid together in a hammock like bed hanging in the backyard of the house. She told me of how the delegation was staying at a hotel in Mbegu, when Masamba rolled in with his army and met with the remaining leaders of the crumbling hierarchy of the Simba tribe within Mbegu and the other five major cities in Bustani.
He had built up such a fearsome reputation, and word had spread that he used black magic, or human bombs, an ancient warrior practice known as mwili mipuko, body explosion, a secret art of assassination which had been used hundred if not thousands of years ago.
"Only the Simba have the body chemistry to do this and he has convinced or coerced some Simba radicals to join him and carry out these assassinations. No one has witnessed them, only the aftermath."
Then she told went on to tell me that her father and a group of about 25 others, including mission delegates, the leader of the UN forces, General Paul Bigqouette of Canada and 12 soldiers of American or Canadian origin - had all been taken into custody by Masamba's soldiers. They were initially to be executed to incite the Canadian and American forces to leave, Bustani. Once gone, Masamba would then expel the remaining African forces that were in the UN army and conduct his civil war with zero interference from the outside world. However, a quick thinking UN army captain, from Senegal, a Captain Amari Kanyomozi, secured their release by arranging what was supposed to be a friendly negotiation meeting with Masamba. However, Kanyomozi broke his UN orders and turned the tables on Masamba by appearing at the meeting with several hidden explosives strapped to his own body, as well as two grenades with the pins pulled.
"Captain Kanyomozi was responsible for the safe release of my father, the general and the 23 others. He also convinced Masamba that the UN forces would be forced to leave if there was no civilian casualties while the two tribes peacefully changed power within Mbegu City. Once the UN was gone, the two sides could fight it out. That ploy gave Kanyomozi and the UN troops time to help move women and children out of the war zone and into the country's outer borderline or become refugees into Kenya and Tanzania. No matter what happens now, there will be a war."
I couldn't help but wonder out loud to her, "But what happened to your father's delegation and their efforts to restore moderates here?"
She bluntly replied, "The Simba do not want us here. They called us all 'Americans'. They consider us medling outsiders to both the Simba and the Tumbili. They said Americans have no oil, no diamonds, no military base and therefore interests or reason to be here to decide the fate of Bustani. My uncle is free to leave with my father."
And she was right. With innocent civilians moving to the country's borderline, and both UN delegations free to leave, there was no longer a need for any outside military force to be in Bustani. Both the UN troops and Red Cross were moved to encampments outside the major city borderlines to protect the innocent. Neither the United States nor Canada had a political reason to stay there anymore. The remaining UN forces would be made up of mostly participating African nations. Unless there was apparent genocide, interceding in the civil warfare would not be in any country's interest. The conflict could spread out into the bordering countries.
As I sat holding Jamila's hand on our long plane ride back home, I couldn't help but think that Heaven had began us, but for the beautiful people I saw in Bustani, Hell had began for them...And the seeds for a threat to the rest of the Super Power nations were being sowed...
COMING NEXT...THE CONCLUSION TO "THE PAGE". ©
.
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