Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In the morning, after making yet more statements at a police station which seemed ripped
straight out of the pages of some farce, we made arrangements for Matt's body to be re-
turned to Kampala - and, thereafter, to be handed over to the US Embassy. I couldn't bear
to think about the shockwaves his death was sending around the world to his friends and
family, so instead lost myself in the practicalities of his trip. There would be no helicopter
to take Matt back to Kampala, but - after much haranguing - we sourced a coffin and per-
suaded the police to take him there themselves. Jason was to join the convoy. Before he
left, he shook my hand, and made us a gift of the last of the ration packs he and Matt had
packed for the trip. As they left, I got to thinking how well Jason was handling it; to me,
Matt was a stranger, but to Jason a close friend. I was glad it was Jason who would see him
back home.
We spent the day in long silences. Boston walked, for hours, alone. At the hotel, I toyed
with my phone. Half of me itched to pick it up, tell everyone I was coming back to Eng-
land, that the expedition was over - but half of me wanted nothing more than to get back
on the road, anything to put miles between me and the memory of Matt's eyes rolling back
in his head. Today, night approached so much more swiftly than it had the day before. That
was what the days were now: an endless succession of hours, each blurring indistinctly
into the last. I tried to write in my journal, but I did not have the words to capture how this
felt.
On 13 March, three days after Matt Power died, I emerged from a dream. As I woke, the
memory of being beneath those trees as the fire advanced and we tried to beat life back
into Matt's chest receded, and I staggered down to meet the day. Dawn was breaking in
the west, and in the corner of the hotel lobby a grainy television set broadcast news of the
intensifying fighting in South Sudan. In the shade outside, Boston was already waiting. It
was the hundredth day of our expedition and, in that moment, every one of them felt like a
sentence.
'How are you feeling, Lev?' Boston asked, without emotion.
I didn't know how to reply to that. I was feeling as cold as Boston sounded. But
everything about Arua was bearing down on me this morning: the hotel walls, the empty,
endless sky. There was only one thing I could think of that would break this spell, but it
seemed sacrilegious to suggest it. I still did not know whether I wanted to complete the ex-
pedition, whether I wanted to go even as far as South Sudan, whether there was anything I
could have done differently for Matt Power. The only thing I knew with any certainty was
there was only one thing in the world that could bring me out of myself for the moment:
the simple, blunt, monotony of putting one foot in front of another, empty and unthinking,
for hours on end.
'I think we need to walk.'
