Chapter 15 Finished — Where the Nile Divides

Chapter 15 of Memoir of a Wandering Spirit is now complete. This one felt wide and weighty — a bridge between the intensity of Afghanistan and the long stretch of years that Kacper would spend in Sudan.

The chapter begins with return: quiet holidays in Poland, where life slows to the rhythm of coffee in his mother’s kitchen, winter walks in Biegonice, and gossip with neighbours who still see him as the boy who once disappeared into hospitals and far-off countries. But soon, the pace quickens again.

In New York City, at the headquarters of GNI, Kacper finds himself in the fluorescent hum of logistics — budgets, procurement, contingency planning. The Hudson shimmers beyond glass windows as staff prepare for what comes next. It is here, in a map-lined meeting room, that he learns his next destination: Sudan. A deployment planned for three years, though no one pretends to know what “three years” will mean in a country at war.

From there, Paris becomes once again the threshold. At Rue Niepce, the air smells of coffee, paper, and the accumulated dust of countless departures. Briefings are thick with dossiers, maps pierced by coloured pins marking fragile humanitarian footprints. Sudan is no single dot on a map, but a scatter across vast, uneven terrain — Khartoum, Wau, Bentiu, Rubkona, and beyond. Paris prepares him with its cafés and quiet lessons, but the weight of what is coming is clear.

Then, Khartoum.
When Kacper steps from the plane, the air strikes him like a wall — dry, close, dazzling with heat. The light is too sharp for winter, too brilliant to soften. Beyond the runway, the Nile curves through the city, broad and unhurried, carrying centuries of struggle and survival.

The city unfolds in layers: whitewashed ministries, wide boulevards lined with acacias, roadside tea stalls shaded by scraps of cloth. Traffic is a coexistence of battered taxis, overcrowded buses, and donkey carts weaving stubbornly into modern flow. Soldiers linger near government buildings, watching. It is a place where history and present tense collide in every glance.

At last, the compound — a villa in Al Amarat with high walls, green grass improbably kept alive by careful watering, a patch of order in the midst of dust. Offices and residence under one roof, colleagues above and below, lives lived between files, meetings, and midnight conversations about a war that seemed endless.

From Khartoum, the story carries him further south — to Wau, a town marked by hardship and resilience. Here, the reality of humanitarian work comes into sharp relief: days spent in the TFC among children wasted by hunger, their fragile breaths a reminder of the war’s silent toll; coordination with local staff at the hospital, ensuring supplies of therapeutic milk never ran out. The town was a fragile hub, always one rumour away from violence.

Fear was never far. The Janjaweed — known here as the Murahaleen — sometimes swept through, their presence announced by sudden panic, by stories of raids and burnt-out villages. At times, bombs fell in the distance, dull thuds that turned the air heavy, reminding everyone of how precarious safety really was. Evenings on the rooftop of the guesthouse, Kacper and the nurses would sip tea and listen for the echoes, wondering if the next explosion would be closer.

Where the Nile Divides is about arrivals — not only into a new country, but into a new role, a heavier responsibility. It marks the start of Kacper’s Sudan years, a time that will stretch him in ways Afghanistan only hinted at.

“Beyond the runway, the Nile curved through the city, broad and unhurried, carrying with it the weight of a war that refused to end.”

With this chapter complete, the memoir now turns to Chapter 16 — a closer look at life in Wau, and the crossings, borders, and burdens that came with it.

Photo Album Related to this Chapter.