by Majok Marier
In the fall of October 2010, just before the January 9 referendum on independence, there was question among diplomats and those in South Sudan whether the election might even happen. (The 21-year war just ended had followed another such long war, the First Sudan Civil War.) Clooney’s impact cannot be overstated, as Salva Kiir, who took the provisional government’s leadership after John Garang died in the air crash, had effectively kept the South Sudan coalition together. The Obama administration and the UN focused their attention on the issues at that time. “And China—Sudan’s largest oil investor—changed the equation by belatedly announcing it would support the referendum.24
“Still, after Clooney launched a media blitz to mark 100 days to the referendum, English-language newspaper, magazine, and website mentions of the Sudan referendum spiked from six to 165 in one month. Between October and January, the referendum was mentioned in 96 stories across the networks and cable news—with Clooney used as a hook one third of the time. In that same period, 95,000 people sent emails to the White House demanding action on South Sudan. Valentino Achak Deng, the former ‘lost boy’ known to Americans as the subject of a bestselling ‘fictionalized memoir’ by Dave Eggers, What Is the What, says simply: ‘The referendum would not have taken place without his involvement. Never. He saved millions of lives. I don’t think he knows this.’”25
Clooney has joined his emphasis on media with his concern for South Sudan by beginning the Satellite Sentinel Program. This program, which is carried out with Prendergrast’s organization, the Enough Project, provides the services of satellite surveillance to pinpoint areas of conflict between Sudan and South Sudan and between Sudan and Darfur. Once documenting areas where there are military attacks, he raises concerns in the media to focus attention on the issue.26
The attacks of the Sudanese government’s Sudan Army Forces (SAF) in Darfur and adjacent areas have become a focus. Conflicts have centered on the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA), a rebel group in Darfur created in the style of the SPLA. The SLA has joined with the Justice and Equality Movement and formed the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) in its efforts to end the Bashir regime and form a democratic, secular government, in opposition to the Islamist-focused government that has been in power for so many decades.27
Clooney’s Satellite Sentinel Program found that both Khartoum’s Sudan government and the SRF were occupying areas of Kordofan state, an area that was supposed to be demilitarized. The satellites further showed craters in the market and adjoining neighborhoods near Abu Korshula in Southern Kordofan state, a sign that Sudanese government aircraft had bombed the area in an effort to dislodge the rebels. The Sentinel Project called for all forces, government and rebel, to withdraw and observe peace.28
While the satellites were able to pick up the images of war and occupation, the UN, which was charged with keeping the peace in the area, was unable to physically access the areas in Southern Kordofan, so they had not taken action to resolve the dispute. Here’s a case where technology is ahead of the boots-on-the-ground forces. Clooney uses both the satellite technology and his role as a Hollywood celebrity to make the rest of the world aware of events affecting millions of people (in South Sudan as well as northern Sudan and now in Darfur).29
“Before-and-after satellite imagery indicated all of the tukuls (mud huts) in the village of South Kordofan burned during recent April fighting. ‘This [satellite] imagery provides independent confirmation of the devastating toll that the hostilities between the SRF and SAF continue to take on South Kordofan’s civilian infrastructure,’ the report states.30
“Images taken of the Sudanese village of Abu Kershola on May 15, 2013 show 20 craters in residential and market areas. Analysts have opined that four were caused by artillery and the remaining 16 are consistent with aerial bombardment. ‘This satellite imagery proves that armed forces remain in at least 14 locations…. Sudan and South Sudan need to commit to complete compliance,’ said Enough Project Sudan/South Sudan analyst Akshaya Kumar.”31
The situation in South Sudan as well as Darfur still is fragile. With the peace contract agreed on by South Sudan and Sudan, some stability has occurred, despite the world’s fear that things would unravel. Now there is growing tension and bombing in limited areas as a result of rebellions in Darfur and some areas not resolved in the CPA. But with new technologies such as the Sentinel Project offers, there will be major changes in how the rest of the world finds out about the areas most likely to experience widespread human suffering. The days of hiding the atrocities are now limited.
Thirteen
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Infrastructure
When I think of South Sudan and what it needs for the future, I have to reflect on the country I was born into, or at least the region of the White Nile River, where the Dinka are concentrated. A couple of years after my birth, a book was published entitled Warriors of the White Nile: The Dinka.1 Ethnographer John Ryle and photographer Sarah Errington lived among the Dinka and they studied and photographed the people, detailing their customs, including cattle keeping, marriage negotiations, mothering, child raising, crop raising and many other aspects of their lives. They described the life and training of a warrior, who might look out for lions and hyena as well as Nuer trying to take some of their cattle. The two-story houses were featured, and effort went into describing the semi-nomadic life of moving from one area to the other depending on whether it was rainy season, when crops can be grown, or dry season, when only tobacco is grown in the temporary camp. The long walk to the river, six miles in the dry season, to collect water each day; the hair-dying customs among the men, using cattle urine; body decoration sessions—all these activities of the Dinka were detailed in a book that seemed to describe a kind of Eden still present in the early 1980s. The younger children especially wore few clothes, but T-shirts and draping gowns covered women and elders. The men’s athleticism showed in the pictures depicting the thousands of Agar Dinka gathering for a communal spear-fishing event in the River Na’am at the end of the dry season.
The book was helpful in showing me how our life was before the civil war, as the conflict started a year after the book was published. In fact, it showed my father’s village, now my mother’s village, of Billing Daldiar, so it was very near to my family’s experiences before the bombing and attacks on Adut Maguen, just a short distance away. The big question is: what will it look like with the infrastructure—roads, dams, canals, electricity, water wells—that the country needs so badly. And how do we provide these in an orderly way so everyone feels they are getting their share.
I can also use Google Earth to pan over the South Sudan area where very few locations will spring up, as the villages are so small and the infrastructure—roads, schools, public buildings—is almost nonexistent. You will see after a while the vast expanse of the Sudd, the swamp around the White Nile around Shambe and the rivers flowing into it. You might pick up parts of the Jonglei Canal, now abandoned. You might see these, or you might not, because it is mostly a vast expanse of green. South Sudan is mostly rural villages with a few large towns and not a lot of cities. If you keep panning east toward Ethiopia, you might see the Akobo Desert, and the pictures of this will astound you. So South Sudan is an area just waiting for the right kinds of development. Jonglei Canal was stopped because, under the Sudanese government, it was felt not enough attention was paid to the changes in ways of life—especially farming in rainy season—that creating the canal would bring about.
Now with independence there will be great need for improvements in South Sudan, but they will probably come slowly, as that is our way. To go fast would upset the numerous tribal and other customs—ways people have been living for thousands of years. But the changes will come. It may seem like a small thing, but when I was growing up, land was tilled with single shovels and other basic tools. Now bulls are harnessed with plows to till the soil. The planting of crops goes faster. That is a big change.
Wells are being buil
t in small numbers. There is still a problem with building them and maintaining them so that they will not fill in. One change is to build them with solid walls. These will hold the sides. Hand-pump wells, the most basic, are frequent in Rumbek, but not yet in the outlying areas. There are all kinds of ideas on how to build and power pumps, but we are better off with hand-pump wells distributed throughout our country rather than solar-powered wells in a couple of locations. Why? Everyone needs clean water, and if it is provided for one but not for others, there will be disruption and fighting over the well access.
It’s a big problem that the rainy season in our area has changed. Sometimes it rains a lot, sometimes it doesn’t. In 2009, there was a drought. It rained for the first months it normally does; it stopped in the middle, in June. That’s not good because all the crops that they grow, if they are dry, it would be hard for them to grow back in the rainy season. So that is a really big problem. We need to see how to help them get water so they can have the crops that they grow.
So far, there are no wells in my home village, or in Stephen Chol Bayok’s not too far from mine, or in any area around us. So that is what I hope to provide some day. Not having clean water makes life continue to be very harsh for our people.
There are no schools in our area. Two Lost Boys from Georgia and North Carolina have partnered with Mothering Across Continents, a North Carolina nonprofit organization, to build two schools in Unity State, north of our villages in our state. Those will not benefit anyone in Lakes State, but perhaps if we learn how to raise funds to build water wells, we can do the same to eventually build a school.
There are no clinics in our villages. If someone gets sick they have to carry them to the hospital in Rumbek. It’s hard for somebody who cannot sit on the back of a bicycle, so it may go the old way of four people carrying the person. It takes them a while to carry a person the 12 miles to Rumbek. But once there, it’s not a real hospital. There are no beds. Everyone lies on the floor. If you’re in a room, it’s hotter than staying outside. There is no place to send people, and it can get very full with children and everybody. It would be good to have a hospital just for children. You go there and get a prescription and then you have to go and buy the medicine outside the hospital—people go out and buy the medicine for the hospital. So if you don’t have any money, nothing is going to happen.
However, small steady changes are coming with the money that flows to these areas from the United States due to the Lost Boys and other Sudanese sending money back. The villages are full of motorbikes. The last time I was there, some people would not even know how to ride a bike. Now there are lots of motorbikes.
Also, there are the satellite phones with generators. Generators also supply the lights within Rumbek. The generators they have in the villages to charge the phones are smaller than those generators. But the satellite-phone generators use pull cords, and they use gasoline. And there’s a business that does this. You pay one Sudanese pound to have your battery charged.
With the motorbike I gave my brother, he can commute to Rumbek and leave his families in Billing Daldiar. That permits him to work and bring income from the water company where he works. My other brother, my younger brother, takes care of the family cattle, along with his children and his nieces and nephews. So there are some changes coming.
A big problem for South Sudan’s infrastructure development is the delays or outright taking of the oil revenues from the oil wells that do exist in South Sudan. It was part of the CPA that these revenues would be divided equally, but there has been some trouble on this issue from Khartoum. Getting this problem solved quickly will be key to South Sudan’s success. Then we will get to see the larger infrastructure changes.
The challenges facing the country are not unlike swimming under water—the task is so great it may not appear much progress is being made. At times it may seem like swimming against the tide as well. Creating schools, for instance, will require significant resources. In one state, Unity State, Mothering Across Continents (MAC) is working with several former Lost Boys as part of the Raising South Sudan project. With Mothering Across Continents support, one of these former Lost Boys, James Lubo Mijak from Charlotte, North Carolina, working with another Lost Boy, has completed construction of a permanent school building and teacher accommodations built to serve 300 children in his home village of Nyarweng. The other, Ngor Kur Mayol from Clarkston, Georgia, is in the planning stages for a school in his home village of Aliap. The two work on each other’s schools to see them to completion. The projects include either building or reboring wells that have collapsed in order to provide community water, too. MAC provides fundraising help, operational back up and technical assistance, including working with well-drilling contractors and building contractors to make the projects a reality.
According to MAC Executive Director Patricia Shafer, in Unity State, there are 130 schools, but most of them are schools under a tree such as Majok described earlier in his refugee camp experience. Some have walls, but they are sheet metal and chicken wire, she said, and otherwise open to the elements. So the physical schools are not always available. The Nyarweng school her organization helped build is made of bricks and cement, and provides latrines as well. A teacher’s living quarters, food storage, and teacher offices are also part of the model school in Nyarweng.
Schools in South Sudan are provided through a number of different sources: private schools, non-government organizations such as CARE International, and Mothering Across Continents. The government role in this will evolve as the country grows, but most organizations feel they cannot wait.2
Ngor Mayol was born in the small village of Aliap in Ruweng County in northern Unity State, near what is now the border with Sudan. Fighting broke out there, in 1983, near the critical line separating southern Sudan from the North, and he and thousands of other boys fled from the many villages around to go to the SPLA training camps, far away in Ethiopia. SPLA in the villages and towns escorted the boys to each succeeding town along the way until they reached a camp in Ethiopia, Tharapam. There they drilled in the camps in the morning and started learning their ABC’s in classes in the afternoon, writing letters in the dirt with a stick.3
“They told us when the Northern militia comes, they kill boys,” Ngor said. “When we went to the camp we trained, but we were not deployed. We were regularly screened and selected for more training.” The younger boys were not part of the more intensive drilling, he said.
Several years later, in 1991, “We left Ethiopia; we were told we were going to Kenya for education, but it wasn’t true.” Eritrean rebels were fighting Ethiopia for independence, and Ethiopia had fallen, deposing John Garang’s protector, Mengistu, and the SPLA camps had to move, just as Majok’s camp at Pinyudo collapsed and emptied.
“We went to Kapoeta, and it was then when Riek Machar began fighting John Garang and splitting the SPLA. Those siding with Machar deserted the SPLA, so there were fewer soldiers to fight the war with northern Sudan.”4
“John Garang had created the training camps to have soldiers when they became adults, but now he had to deploy them. I helped build a bunker for the assault on the Sudan Armed Forces landing field at Kapoeta,” Ngor said. “These bunkers were made by digging a hole deep into the ground. The Northern Sudan bunkers were made of several layers of reinforcement—trees, dirt, steel roof—they could protect them from anything—except bombs. The SPLA bombed them with BOM30 long-range artillery and the bunkers were destroyed.5
“There were two rows of soldiers ringed around the inside of the circular bunker. I was in the second row. When the attack came, people died 10 feet from me. I was estimated to be 13 to 15 years old.”
During the time Ngor was in the camps in Ethiopia, “John Garang came many times to talk to us.
“‘You are the seed of South Sudan,’” he said. ‘You are the engineers, the road builders, the teachers and more.’ I was John Garang’s bodyguard from 1994 to 1996. We people who knew him personally, it’s s
omething we will not forget. He was like George Washington to us.”
Ngor said those in the training camps were allowed to leave periodically and go to school and then come back.
“The way it [training camps] were portrayed in Emma’s War, children abused and all, it was not like that. You were given a choice,” Ngor said.
While in the training camp in Kapoeta, Ngor and the others were told they were deploying to Bahr el Ghazal, but plans changed when one of the SPLA leaders who had rebelled against Garang returned to the SPLA. Later, in 1996, Ngor acquired travel documents and left and went south to Kenya, to Kakuma Refugee Camp, his first long-term opportunity for going to school and not being in the SPLA.
He found while at Kakuma that both his step-brothers had died in the war, on the same day, in 1990. When his father back in Aliap found out, he had a heart attack and died. His mother died the next year. He has surviving siblings, but has not located his younger brother, believed to be in Khartoum.
Part of the resettlement to Atlanta and Clarkston, Ngor attended high school in DeKalb County and began working for Publix Super Markets, Inc., where he’s been employed for 10 years. In 2007, after his first return to southern Sudan in 2006, he and Karen Puckett founded the nonprofit Sudan Rowan, named for her home county in North Carolina. They associated with Mothering Across Continents on a project to build two schools in his home county, the one in the village of Nyarweng, Lubo’s home, and a second in Aliap, Ngor’s home.
Heavy on his mind is the elders’ directive, “Don’t forget your people,” and Garang’s “You are the seed of South Sudan,” as well as the sacrifice of the lives of his four family members on account of the war. Ngor has worked both in Georgia, keeping his job with Publix, and in North Carolina, helping raise funds there, as well as in his Georgia home for building the schools. In the past year, he has worked as well in Ruweng County, in Unity State, while construction was under way on the first school.