by Ger Duany
A cloth wrapped around my mother’s hips was the only piece of clothing among us. We had no food, no cattle, nothing but each other. Mum placed Nyandit on her shoulder, Nyakuar took my hand in hers—infuriating, filthy blanket glued inside her other one—and we walked.
This was the day our lives as Sudanese villagers ended. We were now refugees.
WE WALKED TOWARD ETHIOPIA, EVERYONE growing frail. I couldn’t keep count of the days and nights we traveled through villages and across unsettled, untamed lands. There was little to eat, but we survived on the sheer generosity of villagers through whose territory we passed.
We came upon one such village, called Macbany, on the outskirts of historical Thiayjak Town. We were famished, tired, and dirty. But the amazing thing was, we were not treated like the unwanted homeless people you often come across in Western countries. We were not shunned or ignored. No one pretended we didn’t exist. Instead, it was like we were marathoners huffing and puffing through the seventeenth mile. People lined up along the bank of the beautiful White Nile River, and they offered us cow’s milk, handfuls of catfish, and, sometimes, a place to rest our heads at night. There was a strange man in his sixties, with a few teeth missing, who went by the name Gatnoor Kombör.
GATNOOR: Where are you headed? Why have you walked so long your feet are both raw and callused?
MUM: We were caught in the battle at Bukteng.
GATNOOR: Oh, yes, I heard many civilians lost their livestock.
MUM: And we were run out of our summer camps.
GATNOOR: There was an intense fight here in Thiayjak too. Some of us were able to come back, but I sent many of my children to the Ethiopian refugee camp in Itang.
MUM: We are headed that way ourselves.
GATNOOR: You might no longer have a village, but you are not without a home. As long as you have family, home can never be far away, and my doors are open to you.
My Nuer people lived on both sides of the Sudan-Ethiopia border, which made it safe for us to cross into Ethiopia, despite the 1894 colonial demarcation that split communities and gave them different nationalities. Older folk had always spoken about the camp at Itang, where the United Nations helped people, where there was food and no gunshots, and—the most fascinating part—where kids could enroll in school and receive an education and—get this—not be taught in Arabic, as they were in Sudan. But I did not believe such a place existed, given the realities of my childhood.
Word was that the soldiers from Anya Anya II were pursuing us from a distance, seeking out SPLA soldiers suspected of hiding within the civilian population. Some of the soldiers who had managed to escape the attack at Bukteng hid within the herds of cattle with which we were walking, so there was an ever-present risk of infiltration, a permanent fear of the enemy within.
At one point, I did what I knew I shouldn’t and asked my mum about Oder.
ME: Mum, do you believe Oder is alive?
MUM: Shh, Ger. You are never to speak of those we are missing. We will eventually hear one way or another. Do not tempt fate. And do not open wounds.
In order to survive psychologically, you had to either push the people out of your mind or assume they were dead if you hadn’t seen them for a long time. Imagine having to believe your loved one was dead in order to live yourself.
Once on Ethiopian territory, we got to a place called Bilpam, which was a famous SPLA training ground set up with the Ethiopian Communist Party under Mengistu Haile Mariam, who was a strong supporter of the southern Sudanese liberation struggle. Civilians passing by the huge encampment waved at the soldiers. The SPLA at Bilpam was in effect our people’s government-in-waiting, and the sense of respect for it was palpable.
This area of Ethiopia was seen as part of Sudan, separated by a porous border. Bilpam was predominantly occupied by people from southern Sudan, who moved fluidly between the two nations. To some, changing nationality was like swapping clothes, and I too felt like an Ethiopian once I crossed the border, since there was no physical difference between myself and the people I met there. They were tall and dark like those of us coming from Sudan.
Everyone around the SPLA, including little kids like me, knew that Bilpam was the place where the guns came from. Anyone who joined the SPLA rebellion had to go to Bilpam for training. The irony was that Anya Anya II was the originator of the Bilpam operation in 1978, but they had been kicked out by the SPLA under Dr. Garang through what some considered unsavory means.
We passed Bilpam just after the crack of dawn, and we arrived at midday at another significant location in the history of my people’s struggle: the Itang refugee camp.
The sun was hot over our heads. To my probing eyes, the place was uncharacteristically green and beautiful, located on the banks of the Baro River, which flowed into the White Nile. Even when people fled in times of war, we tried to move along the banks of rivers, since our lives were dependent on water for ourselves and our cattle.
For the first time in my life, I saw in one area a large, diverse group of people with different languages. Some came from as far as central Sudan—the Nuba Mountains, the Blue Nile, and Darfur. The fact that all of them were from Sudan made me realize how huge my country was, and how different its inhabitants were from one another, even though, united in our crisis, we all spoke Arabic.
I was tempted to make a new friend among the thousands of people crowded together in our new surroundings. But it was just so overwhelming. There were so many stranded kids to choose from, and besides, my mother kept me and my siblings close to her side. She’d “lost” sons and her husband to war thus far. She was not about to lose another child, least of all in a crowd.
WE REGISTERED AT A UNITED NATIONS office, where they took details of our family. As we headed out, my mother ushered us quickly toward Tielul I, a division of the camp, where my stepmother Elizabeth (my father’s second wife) was to be our host and guardian. She had been there since our family had gotten split up in Luääl and had been elected to the head office in her section of Tielul I.
I recognized Elizabeth right away. She had already established a home here and welcomed us with open arms.
ELIZABETH: Nyathak, I will make sure to write a letter this week so that you all can secure your ration cards.
MUM: I heard the local director of the United Nations failed many families in that regard.
ELIZABETH: I will have my letter inside his office before morning.
MUM: Thank you, mother of our children. We are lucky, Ger. Oftentimes when you lose one family member, another one pops up at just the right time.
Elizabeth was an Anyuak from Sudan and had lived in Itang in the 1970s during the civil war. She was a well-known leader among the Sudanese within the camp and welcomed all refugees. She was educated and outspoken, and people looked up to her. Possibly thanks to her clout, my family received a larger portion of food than we anticipated.
Elizabeth’s son, my elder brother Ruot, had escaped to Khartoum, where he went to school before proceeding to Egypt. He would go to America in 1989. In 1986, her daughter had been taken from Bilpam to Cuba, where the SPLA sent young Sudanese refugees to get a military or other specialized education. Many ten-to-thirteen-year-olds hoped for the opportunity to go to Cuba, since we all believed life would be better there. And Elizabeth had happy news for us.
ELIZABETH: Oder is in Cuba as well. Safe, though injured. He was shot—got a broken collarbone. Now he is recuperating. Such a brave young man.
My mum took in the news quietly. While the twins remained oblivious to any of the trauma she internalized, I, on the other hand, let out a scream. Oder was safe, perhaps getting an education, maybe never having to fight again. The family was now closer together, with wives receiving news of their children, even as the wars had kept us apart. Maybe the tides were turning for us.
I COULDN‘T SLEEP. NOT BECAUSE we lay on the ground
behind a fence on blankets we’d been given by the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, but because in the morning, I was going to enroll in school.
I arose before everyone else and woke up my sister Nyakuar and my cousins.
ME: We are going to school. We will be together with a lot of boys and girls. So it is better we wash our faces so that we can look presentable like city people.
NYAKUAR: Yes, it is true. We have to stick together to protect ourselves.
We dressed quickly and headed out without a bite to eat. First, we had to gather at an assembly point, where a group of SPLA soldiers, moonlighting as volunteer teachers and receiving a small salary from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, led us kids in a mock military parade. We marched for more than an hour in a grand display, singing the Sudanese national anthem, which was the SPLA’s way of indoctrinating even the youngest children into their ideology. This would happen every morning, rain or shine.
STUDENTS (SINGING IN BOTH NUER AND DINKA): Sudan our country, Sudan our country, Sudan our country, Sudan our country, we are, we are forever!
Then came the main event. There was no building yet, so class was held in the shade under a tree. The truth is, I had never been to a proper school, so I had nothing to compare it to.
Each of us had to get innovative and make a clearing on the sand using our feet and hands. There were no books, pens, or other school supplies, so we used the flat, soft surface on the ground as a page on which to scribble the alphabet with branches or our fingers, and no one dared mess up another’s clearing. This fleeting opportunity for formal learning was too precious to most of us.
I met a little Nuer boy named Moses Chot, and he became a friend of mine. He was always playful and giggling, with the physical strength of an old man. During our break, we spent a lot of time kicking around a soccer ball made out of rubbish—a sock stuffed with plastic bags, ripped-up clothes, and paper.
MOSES: My uncle adopted me when I was four, because my family was burned in their hut right before the civil war broke out.
ME: I am lucky my father and brothers are still alive. Though I guess fear unites us all.
* * *
—
Friendships mounted—some that would last a lifetime, others cut short.
Peter Gatkuoth was three years older than me, had big lips and unusually light hair. Not a minute went by without him horsing around, trying to turn every little thing into a joke. My other lifelong friend, Jangjuol Biel Jangjuol, was a lot like me: young but forced to be grown-up by circumstance. Though he wasn’t as tall and physically strong as most of us, whenever he wanted to achieve something—anything—nothing would get in his way.
After school, around two or three each day, I tended to my precious cattle. Sometime between marching in mock military parades, exercising, and going to the cattle camp, I received one daily meal and a small taste of education.
The refugee camp was meant to be free from arms, but the SPLA had infiltrated it and even set up a secret armory where guns and uniforms were hidden. The camp was always under SPLA protection whenever the UN officials were not around. Tens of SPLA soldiers would move around with their guns, dressed in their uniforms. But the moment the UN staffers reappeared, the guns and uniforms vanished instantly. It was an open secret among the Sudanese. The camp was viewed as an ideal recruiting ground for the SPLA. It was generally peaceful, but sometimes fighting broke out between the Ethiopians and Sudanese. Everyone would be armed, and deaths would occur. I first learned there that refugee camps were not necessarily the safest of places.
My favorite teacher was Deng Alier. He wore glasses with clear frames and taught us arithmetic. He was gentle, with a high-pitched voice. A lovely man and a great teacher, he liked me and encouraged my inquisitiveness.
DENG ALIER: Ger, you will have a future when New Sudan’s vision is realized.
Mr. Deng and I did not speak after the Ethiopian civil war. I do not know if he survived.
Some of our teachers, like Simon Duol, had fought on the front lines and had missing limbs and other visible injuries.
SIMON: E and a together sound like the long e, as in “bean,” “dream,” and “blue jeans.”
ME: Did you ever wear any?
SIMON: Please raise your hand before speaking. And did I wear what, Ger?
ME: Blue jeans.
SIMON: Once or twice.
I realized quickly that was kind of a silly thing to latch onto, but I was just so excited to learn everything I could about where I was and where I might go one day.
ME: How did you learn to type on a typewriter before you knew the English alphabet?
SIMON: It is about daily practice.
ME: What does it take to learn this typewriter thing?
SIMON: Keep observing me and one day you will be able to do it.
A good number of our teachers had been educated in Sudan before the war broke out. Against their will, some had to cut their studies short and undergo military training at the SPLA camps in Bonga and Bilpam before being deployed to the front lines in liberated areas like Nasir, Torit, and Bentiu. They showed unmatched commitment in teaching us, living by an unwritten SPLA rule that required more of all its combatants. Beyond just being a fighter, every member of the movement was expected to give back to the community, one way or another, by volunteering either their time or their skills. One such example was Peter Yak Jany, a volunteer teacher at our makeshift school, who discussed the difference between the South Sudan Liberation Movement and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. He always preached that we must appreciate and embrace self-determination. He loathed New Sudan’s vision of everyone coexisting and sharing in governance, and he was not a huge supporter of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) because he thought its sole purpose was to benefit Dr. Garang and saw its leaders as hijackers of the people’s movement. We called him “professor” because of his sharp intellect. He inspired a lot of young Sudanese refugees to seek an education, and was a big influence on my friend Lual Nyang, who was the best English speaker of my generation at the refugee camp.
Eventually, the UN and the Orthodox Church built a school, made of bricks, concrete, and rough zinc, which is when we were grouped according to age. We learned with kids from all over Sudan. Our fathers, for the most part, were SPLA soldiers. We were a mixture of boys and girls, young and old. None of us had been to formal school before.
ITANG BROUGHT US MUCH–NEEDED STABILITY, a respite from our constant movement, but it was also very crowded. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people lived in its tents and mud huts, since everyone escaping Sudan had to pass through the camp whether they ended up in Egypt, Cuba, or America. The UN provided us with rice and beans, but in order to cook, women ventured deep into the forest, far away from the camp, in search of wood to fuel our traditional fires, made with three large stones upon which clay cooking pots were set.
During these trips to the forest, women risked assault from soldiers—some of whom were prone to rape them. I worried about my mother and aunts, hoping that someday I would become a great warrior and protect them. Hygiene was also a huge problem. I saw the most dead bodies I had ever seen in my life at Itang, where the graves were shallow. The water wasn’t clean, and cholera was prevalent since people drank from the river where they swam.
My last sister, Nyibol, was born in 1988 in the camp and succumbed to the flu at one year old. Another loss for my mother. Another death. Sometimes I’d wonder how a parent—especially my mum—found the will to wake up each day from dreams about the children she’d lost. What was in her spirit that convinced her that fighting for survival might still be worth it? A lot of children died in Itang.
One afternoon, as Nyakuar and I entered our hut after our lessons, we stumbled upon a soldier speaking with our mother. Mum turned to us with watery eyes, so I feared the worst.
MUM: It’s your father, c
hildren.
I stopped breathing.
MUM: We have just received word he is alive!
I reanimated right then and embraced my sister, who was not much of a hugger and therefore tried to shake me off. But she was filled with joy too and let me hold her longer than she normally would. I had many questions.
ME: Where is he now? When will we see him? Does he have a message for me to decode?
Mum was more patient with me now that she knew Dad was safe, so she tolerated my questions and left the shushing up to the soldier messenger. He was not stingy with it.
After that day, I kept my ear to the ground and learned through eavesdropping on the conversations Elizabeth and my mother held in hushed tones that my dad was probably in hiding, occasionally showing up in Itang in the dead of night to check on my mothers. I also learned that Dad had been in charge of our movement the entire time on our journey from Bukteng to Itang. He’d been sending messages through intermediaries, who gave my mother directions for getting into Ethiopia safely.
Dad was a prominent target for his Anya Anya II tribesmen since he had originally joined them in fighting for the secession of the south from Sudan. He later deserted and joined Dr. Garang’s SPLA, buying into the vision of a new, united Sudan, New Sudan. Anya Anya II was eternally hunting my father down, a man whom they saw as a traitor to their separatist cause.
MUM: I believe Anya Anya II spies infiltrated the caravan we traveled in here.
ELIZABETH: It is almost a certainty. And they would have killed him had he shown up.