Augustus Bill's Niche: Letters From the War

Dearest SoMe,

My mouth is filled with words but I can’t speak because I have been gagged and I am afraid that they might be listening to even my muffles. My hands are itching to write but I can’t because they are tied and I am afraid they might be reading anything I send you. Somehow I have untied myself just to write these few words to explain to you the current situation of things in our camp over here. As I etch each word on this white and blue lines of Hav paper that a guard smuggled in for me, I am very cautious, anticipating their footsteps as they may be coming anytime. I pray they spare me some time to write enough words that you could understand before they arrest me.

Remember those old stories Dad told us about how big a world this place could be? Yes, he was right, but his truth lasted only for few months and here suddenly became as confined and small as the space in our elementary school where we had our morning devotion. Now, I know almost everybody, somehow only few know me. I know their faces, how they smile and how they frown and the more I get to know them the more interesting here becomes and the more careful I get, now I don’t want to know more.

For the past 1464 days we have been under intense training and grilling as they prepare us for the war ahead. After every 563 days, a new crop of soldiers are sent to the war front, but quite a pity we barely hear about any of them, we hear some are crushed and crumbled like the water melon when it falls from a height. The success of these soldiers in the war zone was supposed to give us hope here in the training camp, but their continued failure has sapped from us the remaining juice of courage we had in our fibres.

I am scared, not because the war, but because of the training, I feel we are not getting enough. I feel our armoury is quite outdated and nobody is saying anything about it, otherwise why would our so called well trained soldiers be dying daily in the hands of the enemy. The commandants here, have realised that we know the truth and they are making efforts to stop us from saying them.

We train with guns without bullets, how then are we supposed to use the gun in the battle field when most of us have not seen the different kinds of bullets for the kinds of old guns they gave us.

They said they are trying, of course they are, we don’t doubt that they have taught us a lot of things, my fear is that what they have not taught us is quite bigger than what we have learnt from them, and I am scared because those things they fail to teach us might be things we need to win this war. But how can we win when we don’t know the winning strategies. They teach us the basics and leave the strategies, it’s just like eating the white part of an egg and leaving the yoke.

They think we know too much and might spill their secrets, so they initiated this 24/7 surveillance system to watch all our moves; it monitors who we talk to and what we tell them. They didn’t stop at that, they also planted moles in our camp. These moles are more dangerous than cancer, at least cancer starts eating you up from an area, and you can chose to cut that area out and end the cancer, but in this case of moles, you won’t even know there are moles around you until your bones are the only things left from what they have eaten. I no longer want to know the moles, because knowing that they are around is just enough knowledge to guard myself from their infiltration.

We are being arrested and detained. You know Sergeant Sansido Kudirat Kwankwaso, the one that always visited us at home and brought you mangoes each time she visited, she has been arrested. They said she was selling confidential information to the enemies. She is currently being detained and probably tortured to reveal her accomplices and after that she would face summary execution.

My feet are wobbling, they can no longer stand the treatment meted on us here, but they have less options than to endure the pain till the end, since we are almost there. Sometimes I wish I disobeyed Dad and went elsewhere but here, though somehow I know he sent me here not just to be trained but to me moulded, and he would always add each time we are allowed to visit home that the frustrations are the best potters that mould us into what would stand the test of time.

*****SHHHH SHHHH******

I hear footsteps, they are coming, I need to hide, even though there isn’t anywhere to hide. You can’t hide from the commandants not with these moles in our midst.

***

Oh! It’s Major Okon, he is among the few that understands our plight and wishes he could help, but he has various Majors and General to face, and Okon wouldn’t want any problem. He keeps promising us that things would be better when he is made a General, but we know that’s not coming soon, we may even be out of here before he dreams of adding another medal to his ranks.

I am tired of the fact that I know little and those that know more would not want to let me into their hall of knowledge, either because they are busy or just want me to stay on the corridors of knowledge and never get into the main hall. I can’t continue being like this, I somehow managed to smuggle books into the camp, Colonel Devuki helped me, you may not know him, he is just a silent soldier, one of the most dangerous and he is currently training to be a Sniper. I heard he has never missed a shot in training. He doesn’t like the way we are treated, but somehow he doesn’t care. I am reading about great bio and autobiographies that rewrote history. Remember Gandhi? We always said we would read about him from elementary school, but we never got to. I have read about him; I have read about Nelson Mandela, I read about John F. Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher, I am beginning to know more than when it was just the training. I could lead a battalion now and can safely bring them back to base using the strategies I read about on those books, but please don’t recommend me to head one, because we would definitely go without good bullets.

*****SHHHH SHHHH******

I heard a voice, the pitch is increasing, it must be coming closer, and there are many of them. I have to stop here, they may be coming for me. This time I may be arrested and confined within the thick walls of a solitary confinement. They would gag and torture me, but I would endure all because I know I am close to the end of the tunnel.

Should you not hear from me in a long while, you already know my condition. I have to send this through Internet Courier, because I no longer trust the traditional couriers, the commandants have taken over that, always reading our messages, and I don’t know what actually scares them.

Greet Uncle Dakore for me, greet Aunt M…

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