Camp Five, The Five Provinces
The way to the camp was packed. Thousands of people were moving in trucks, on foot, on bicycles, and the detritus of the evacuees was so high in some cases it blocked the view of the sides of the road. There were government workers wearing masks and coveralls going through this stuff. And there were bodies hanging at the approach to the camp, with signs reading "Looter" "Rebel" "Black Marketeer". They twisted in the wind with birds and flies at them. People tried to look away, Some stopped and stared. The people from Goram were met by sentries on the road leading to the camp who suspiciously checked their identification before checking with an officer who waved them on.
The camp was encircled, and most of the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Motorized Rifle Division was involved in encirclement, and not within the camp. There was a headquarters for the brigade and a supply depot connected to the camp but separated by barbed wire and gates, with armed sentries and locally constructed bunkers protecting it. The camp was vast, and surrounded by nearly a city's width and length of barbed wire and stones and ditches. While it was possible for a person to sneak through this (and they did) they were also detectable by watch posts that overlapped for security. This, it was explained to visitors from Goram, by a polite, almost effete officer, was to not merely prevent people from escaping but to prevent Thonists and others angry at the Wenchuanese from getting in. The only entrances and exits were controlled by the brigade, with two layers of gates surrounded by tall barbed wire fences. The officer was an aide to Colonel Dangar Korsk, the now rather reclusive brigade commander. He was not available to be spoken to by the aide workers but had ordered his officers to extend them every courtesy as allies. The aide spoke excellent English, but with an accent, and was often offering them tea, soft drinks and other refreshments. In a somewhat convoluted story the aide explained a complex web of patron and client relations in the caste system that granted the officers beverages from a bottling factory that was from a foreign country and was not far from the camp. In spite of rationing, they had extra drinks due to what was described as gifts from the foreign company.
The roads and streets in the camp were swamped by mud, and where possible these were covered by planks which nevertheless oozed mud between the cracks. Efforts had been made by some to make their tents and shelters habitable and neat, but it was clearly a struggle. A number of people were working at scavenging in an organized way. There was a great line up for food. A donation of catfish had arrived in the camp from a local NGO, and the catfish had been divided up carefully and everyone expected a little at least with their cracked wheat.
Cho Jing, a graceful, attractive woman wearing a white shirt and long black skirt she clearly took great pains to keep neat, her hair tied and braided tightly and wearing a finely woven straw hat, explained to the visitors that They were doing their best to keep the camp neat and clean, to make sure food was evenly distributed, and that sick and injured people had access to the clinic, but it was hard. She explained, in her quiet, dignified way, "There is only one clinic for nearly 100,000 people. I have spoken to Colonel Lorsk about this, and he has said that everything is short. He has said that the government is rationing food for everyone, and that the needs of we...refugees...are swamping the system when it comes to our medical needs and housing needs. I observed to the Colonel that this would not have happened had we been permitted to wait for emigration in the homes we had built. The Colonel does not discuss policy with me, will not. He said that is for the courtly caste to decide."
The clinic, she was proud of that, not just for herself but for the community. However, there was virtually a sub camp around the big tent, which was the size of a house, and there were only 3 doctors and 11 nurses, along with about two dozen volunteers, most of whom were working in the shelters and open spaces around the clinic tent, checking on injuries and the ill.
"Most of our sick are really malnourished," Cho Jing went on. "A lack of vitamins and minerals key to nutrition. The Brigade's Chief Medical Officer is a good man, risking his caste to help where he can, and also, I suspect, risking the bad opinion of his comrades in arms. I will not name him here, but he may be helpful to you. We need vegetables, fruit, and salt."
She spoke of crime in the camp. There were prostitutes, gamblers, smugglers, black marketeers and simply thugs, many of them men barely old enough to shave. "If they were in our traditional society, they would have been brought up by elders properly, but we have been disrupted by many moves and by older men imprisoned or executed for political accusations. I am not a Marxist, many of us are not, but we do not have caste, and we have those among us who believe in a different approach to deciding on politics and other such things. I am not even political. I just want to help my community. I do not know if we will be shipped out of the country or not."
She did not know if she feared the government or the Thonists more. She felt, as an educated woman, that the government had blundered but stubbornly stuck by its blunder. Many of the more charitable Sombrelanders she had spoken to spoke of this sadly, and said that the Regent didn't know what was happening, and had bad advisors who hated the Wenchuanese and feared the Thonists. The Princess-Regent was spoken of as the kindest person in the world, and if only she knew what was happening, she would stop it. Cho Jing did not know if this was true or not.
"What it does tell me," she said, "Is that there are Sombrelandes who still like us Wenchuanese. They lived beside us, thought us strange but bought our goods, hired our services, shopped alongside us, even sent their children to the same schools sometimes. They have, as you've seen, been charitable in some cases. But others do not like us at all. I dream of taking my children and going to another place where we are welcome. I wish more than that that we could stay where my family has lived for nearly 20 years, but that may be a foolish hope..."
