by Majok Marier
North Sudan is relatively developed and for years has received most of the infrastructure improvements in Sudan, and from colonial times to present has dominated the rest of the country; South Sudan consists of the areas west and east of the Sudd, and the Sudd itself.
This part was basically left unconquered when in the early 16th century Muslim armies controlled all lands bordering the Nile, Alexandria to Khartoum. The South was called Bilad al–Sudan, the “Land of the Blacks,” and stayed unexplored until the 1840s when the Turkish Ottoman Empire, under Muhammad Ali, invaded and seized Africans as slaves.12
After Turkish captors, slave traders from North Sudan followed. The Dinka, major victims of slavery, call this the “time when the world was spoiled.”13 The slavery continued into the late 1800s even though the British, who had come into power in the area, tried to end the trafficking. In the 1880s, the British army was destroyed in a revolt by North Sudanese, but they held on into the 1900s, finally dividing the Muslim north from the south, whose dominant religions are traditional animist and Christian.14 The Christian tradition is a lingering effect of the Christianization of the three kingdoms of Nubia in about 580 AD. The era continued until 1400, when most of Nubia became Muslim.15 (Their counterparts in southern Sudan retained their Christianity or their animist religion.) The British, in the 19th and 20th centuries, encouraged the autonomy of the south and encouraged Christian missionaries in the area. With the withdrawal of the British in the mid–20th century, several attempts were made for the South Sudanese to become independent.16
Majok says that the Agar Dinka were not enslaved, and it is possible, given their remote location in the Sudd, and their ferocity as warriors, that they were able to elude capture. As Baker, the English explorer, wrote, “They are something superlative.”17 With their very tall stature, and their tendency to color their hair orange, rub their bodies with ashes and indulge in intricate and showy body decoration, as well as their fearsome skill with spears and shields, they were probably a formidable foe. Not to mention the high jumping, part of the unique dance of this group of Dinka, but also very useful in battle. In addition, while the Europeans only in the 1840s discovered a way through the Sudd to the White Nile headwaters, doubtless the Dinka were skilled in plying those waters, and could use them to escape those pursuing them. The pages of Warriors of the White Nile: The Dinka provide a glimpse of very proud and complex traditions and ways of protecting themselves, much of which are present in other South Sudan tribes as well.
There is no doubt that there are large divides between Sudan and South Sudan today, and it will be a struggle for either side for the South to achieve true independence. But that was the agreement that capped a series of protocols signed in Naivasha, Kenya, in 2005. The south and the north agreed after a twenty-year civil war to provide for an election to allow southerners to decide if they would like to be a separate country. On January 9, 2011, almost 99 percent of those voting approved the separation of South Sudan from Sudan, and the new country formally became independent on July 9, 2011.18
The vote for independence occurred in January 2011, and the country of South Sudan formed six months later, but already war has broken out over the oil fields that lie in South Sudan—the source of the North’s wealth since the end of British ownership. Many challenges remain.
My country, South Sudan, as you might guess, is a tribal-based culture with few modern conveniences, and the life today, although there are many hundreds from my village who went missing or were killed in the 1983–2005 conflict, is not much different than it was before that. Any improvement would lessen the hard life and the illnesses that attack our people today. Wells for a supply of water would be nice, making unnecessary the hours-long trips to bring water back to the village for cleaning and cooking—the endless job of women. Then perhaps they would have time for schooling, a luxury for men and women, as even under the pre-independence system, only one son was able to attend the bush schools that offer rudimentary learning. A clinic would be helpful to treat the many illnesses coming from bad water: diarrhea and dysentery.
Former United States president Jimmy Carter has a personal goal of eradicating the guinea worm, a painful highly replicating worm that lives in the pools of water that are cooking and bathing sources in our environment. He hopes the election aftermath and the new independence for South Sudan will not mean an interruption to his goal of outliving the last guinea worm. Malaria is on the rise in Sudan; underground pumps are needed to replace the stagnant water that attracts mosquitoes, for even though there have been tremendous efforts to supply our people with bedding nets to keep out mosquitoes, the water sits in pools, when it is available in the rainy season, and attracts these disease-bearing insects. Such wells will be very expensive to drill, as the water lies far, far below the surface.
Telecommunications in the form of cell phones and Internet would be good. There are a few satellite phones now where there were not before, and it is helpful to be able to contact neighbors and family, especially in an emergency, for going to the hospital. But first the basics: water, health, and a stable country.
If there were water to carry my people through the dry season—January, February, and March—then they would not need to move their homes every year, to go to an area closer to the rivers for water. It is a major undertaking to leave the elevated homes in my village and then travel to the new location. There the people must go gather the grasses and create the mud to make the new huts, create the new kitchens and gardens, and then move back to our home village three months later. These improvements would mean changes to the Dinka culture, for it is a culture accustomed to moving every year, but it would be made up for in greater education and innovation in ways of doing things.
I think the Dinka, the man among the men, will be adept at creating new ways of living, but will still retain his strong values of helping family, respect for others, and especially, depending on our elders for guidance as we go through these changes. Just as my grandmother prepared me for the war that tore away my home, wisdom such as hers will prepare us for the future.
In every culture there is probably a tradition of observing that life has many sorrows, but that it has joys as well. The Book of Ecclesiastes relates that there is a time for having plenty, and a time for losing all one has; “a time for weeping and a time for laughing; a time to mourn and a time to dance.” My story here will be filled with instances that show the desperate situation we were in, yet there was sometimes a small blessing amongst the pain. One of those blessings was my great-uncle, a young man himself of 17 or 20, who accompanied us on the first journey, to Ethiopia, and showed us ways to stay safe. Our cousin, Kau, was a grace. Another was the care my family took to educate me, a small Dinka boy, on ways to do for myself. Many times I recalled my mother’s and grandmother’s words as I looked for water, searched for food, tried to keep hope. They had made sure I would be ready for whatever happened to me. They could never have foreseen this story of incredible suffering.
Another blessing is that, early on, my uncle, Kau Raik, and I encountered good Dinka companions, Matoc and Laat, and we all stayed together through the long journey to Ethiopia. We spoke mostly the same dialect, but we had some words that were different, so we came up with our own words or agreed upon a word when we had different names for the same thing. Language was a matter of life and death. If you traveled with people who spoke a different language, they could plot against you, even kill you.
There was enough death around, and we often came near death ourselves. Sometimes we would see a person lying beside the path. We were not sure if he or she was alive or dead.
“He is only sleeping,” Matoc, who was older than I, said. In fact, people did lie down to rest. Sometimes they pulled off from a group and said they were going to rest. But often they never got up.
My uncle, Kau, Matoc, and I, and Laat, who at six years old was even younger than I, always made sure we pulled each other up to continue walking. If we had not don
e this, any of us could have died.
In order to hide from the tanks and Hummers and SA soldiers, and also to keep from running into people who might do us harm, we walked off the main road where tanks were forced to travel, and we walked at night and early morning. This also kept us out of the hottest part of the day, which would be deadly to us. We never had enough water or food. We walked until midnight the night before, and then slept for a couple of hours, rose and ate some kind of food, maybe sorghum grains or corn we’d been able to find, then left at four in the morning to walk for six more hours. During the middle of the day, we rested under a tree well off the path where others might find us.
Often I found we were under a tree that was like a tree from my own village. Other times I noticed that there were mountains in the distance, which I had not seen from my own village. The land always had interesting things to see. I’d rise before dawn as usual with the others, have some boiled grain over fire, and clean my teeth with ashes from the fire (we Dinka use ashes for toothpaste and many other purposes, often to decorate our skin for ceremonies). Once or twice I remember I’d be sleepily making my way down the path. All of us would be quiet, still a little asleep, and the sunrise would start filling the land to the east with light. That was a good feeling, because it told us we were going in the right direction—Ethiopia was east, where the sun rose. And there was such light over tall fields of drying grasses that my breath hardly came. With the heat of the day yet to come, I could enjoy the beauty of my country. It would be enough to help me move my legs and walk fast, to feel that slightly cool air and see the slanted golden light of sunrise over the fields and paths I would need to walk for the next several hours.
But most of the time, there was no time to think of beauty. There was only desperation.
Two
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Walking in the Wild
A man and his wife were out in the bush walking to a village near their home, passing through thickets of trees and high grass. They had their baby with them, the wife carrying it in a sturdy calfskin sling across her body. All of a sudden, an elephant appeared in the forest, all by itself. It charged toward the man and woman, and grabbed the man and wrapped him with his trunk, raised him high in the air, and then threw him to the ground, killing him. The woman ran, but the elephant caught up with her and tossed her in the air. As it did so, the baby and heavy sling flew off her body and the skin was caught on the limb of a tree. Villagers came by and found the baby, and it lived, though both parents died.
This incident took place in my village before the war, and I grew up hearing it as a caution for watching out for solitary animals. It was a story I related to my companions often during our long journey. Animals in groups are usually not a problem, because they are following a dominant leader, or staying together for protection. A herd or a group of elephants doesn’t present a danger because they are following the leader, but an animal alone is another matter. A solitary animal most often has been forced out of the herd because it’s violent and a danger to the others, and it’s a great risk to humans.
Wild animals, including lions and hyenas and elephants, as well as snakes and scorpions, were our greatest predators on our journey, as were hunger and thirst. Sometimes other people were predators as well, but I will tell more later about the human threats. It took a great deal of knowledge to assess how to deal with each of these. As we walked, we shared stories like this and discussed who and what to look out for. That was the way we survived.
Majok on 2010 trip near Pulkar on a path similar to those they took while fleeing burning villages in 1987.
Villages throughout southern Sudan were burning, and everyone was fleeing, when I started out with my uncle and later found Kau. People were frantic, trying to get away from the war, just as we were. Some carried bundles, mothers towed children by hand and on the breast, fathers herded an occasional cow until they finally had to leave it by the side of the path. Most carried gourds full of grain and water for sustenance. Most were Dinka, but did not speak our dialect. If people we encountered did not speak our language, we hesitated to become friends with them, because they could trick us by speaking strange words to each other. We wouldn’t know if they were plotting to harm us, or talking about finding water. We would hurry ahead. But still we would stop where a group of people was gathered on the ground when we needed to rest. Others would be resting, too, each home group arranged around its own tree, and we would be under a separate tree.
In one of these stops we heard boys like me speaking our dialect. We talked, and I found out one spoke our Agar subtribe dialect, so he was of our people. Another boy in the group of people sitting in that group picked up on our conversation and he also spoke the same way. The first boy was Matoc, and the second was Laat. They were from an area near Rumbek, but not our village. When we talked more, we found that we did the same thing back home—watched cattle. And that we enjoyed playing the same games with other boys while we grazed cattle.
For instance, we all knew a kind of tree that produced gum, and we would collect the goo, roll it up and form a ball, and hit it with a stick to move it forward. In the game, called adeir, we would push the ball with a stick with teams of 10 on each side, pushing the ball to a goal. Or we would make shields out of plum-tree wood and practice war with sticks and shields, an imitation of the buffalo-skin shield our Dinka warriors used.
We decided we would walk together, and I was glad to have companions my age. My uncle told the other boys to go gather some palm leaves by the path, and my uncle braided palm rope he later attached to squash gourds for Matoc and Laat to carry water. The walking was much easier with my friends.
The talk as we made our way east on the path was about the dangers around us. The Sudanese Army had attacked our villages, and we didn’t know if we might meet them again. The Army could only move on the main road (there are only a few roads that tanks can move on in South Sudan), and so we walked on paths that avoided the road. People we encountered would tell us, if we could understand their dialect, where there were soldiers, or where there were animals about.
“Watch out for the green clothes,” we’d tell each other, as the SA wore light green fatigues. We’d try to stay near trees, even though now in the dry season the leaves were dried and thin. At least they provided some cover.
Next to those humans, our greatest fear was lions. Back in our villages, all of our homes were built up over the ground and we accessed them by ladders, primarily because of the floods that came in the rainy season, but also because of the lions. We kept dogs to ward off the hyenas and the lions. The lions usually were active around five o’clock in the evening, so we looked out for them. But if we saw hyenas, we were safe, for they kept the lions at bay.
At that time, we thought hyenas would not kill a man, only other animals, but later, in 1989, while we were in Pinyudo camp in Ethiopia, a man was killed near my home in southern Sudan by a hyena, but I did not know this until people told me this in my village after the war. So now we know to fear them, too. But as we set out on our journey away from the SA soldiers’ attacks, we thought a hyena would be protection against the fearsome cats, for they prey on them. Besides lions, hyenas go after cattle, goats, and our own dogs.
For such a small animal compared with a lion, a hyena, with its sloping back and oversized head, has tremendous power. A hyena can attack and kill a larger animal by the sheer force of its jaws. Once a hyena locks those teeth into a prey, the wounded animal jerks and runs and turns about trying to get free. The hyena just hangs on with those clenching jaws, letting the intense struggle work to his advantage; the animal will weaken and eventually die as the hyena rips the prey’s skin and limbs in the fight. So lions will flee hyenas, hyenas will be discouraged by dogs, and lions will avoid either of the other two. But we never knew what could happen in the bush. We had little protection, other than the trees with their drying leaves.
This lesson from the animals helped us later in
Pinyudo, as some monkeys screeched loudly high in trees above us when we were left on our own to search for grasses to make our shelters. They made such a racket that we knew to be afraid and look for a lion or other danger. The monkeys were alarmed by wild animals in the area, and they were signaling each other. And we were afraid because we were lost. But I’ll relate more about this experience, as it shows that even when we were in refugee camps, we were not safe from wild animals.
That night, my uncle also showed us how we would travel to keep alive. If we walked during the heat of the day, we could die from thirst and exhaustion, and also were more likely to be seen by the Sudanese Army, so we found a place where we could crush long grasses and sleep. We did not eat; I had eaten a paste of ground nuts in a banana leaf earlier in the day, and that was my food. That night and every night afterward, we rose about 4 a.m. and walked while it was cool and dark. We walked for eight hours, and then we rested in the middle of the day, usually under a tree, one that was far off the path so we would not be found by others. We would find some grain, sorghum wheat, or corn, among the harvested stalks in plots on the edges of settlements we passed, although these villages were mostly burned; we parched the sorghum seeds and boiled them with the corn for lunch, then rested more and then walked in the late afternoon until about midnight. Then we slept again and woke at four or so to be on our way.