[The following book excerpt is published to mark South Sudan’s independence on July 9, 2011]
Sudan 2006
My destination was Pagak, a pinprick of a settlement on the Ethiopian border along the Sobat corridor. Across the border lay the refugee camps of Fugnido, Dimma, and Yerenja; temporary homes to sixty-five thousand displaced Sudanese, waiting for the Gambella (Ethiopia) to Pagak (Sudan) road to open. Dribbles of families had commenced making their own way home. Almost everyone was naked, or close to it, and barefoot. A handful of residents draped in threadbare clothes and T-shirts meandered about carrying firewood. The better dressed were NGO officers at the health clinic or supervising infrastructure projects, such as the installation of boreholes. It was a town lacking basic amenities. Poverty and hardship flourished. Toxic, kelp-colored ditch water formed cesspools of cholera and dysentery near outlying tukuls, their dome-shaped homes.
Victoria, the head woman of the village, held my hand and walked with me to the meager market. It was three sparse stalls with a scant selection of spices, rice, and dried beans.
I bought some rice and handed Sudanese dinars to the shriveled man with distinct Ethiopian features, as children screamed “Ferengi, ferengi,” “Foreigner, foreigner!” Ulcerated sores, flaky patches, scars, and scratches covered their young dull, dry skin. The merchant held the notes curiously, moistened his lips with his tongue, and shook his head. He had never seen this form of money before. I handed over American dollars and again he shook his head. It was surely a sign that trade was still limited to Ethiopia and they had not yet begun to trade with their fellow Sudanese in nearby towns. A young, muscular man, Peter Paul, explained that they only traded in Ethiopian birr and offered to exchange our money.
Peter was leaving on the morning plane. He fled to Ethiopia during the civil war and had only been back in Pagak for two weeks trying to find his sisters in the Dimma refugee camp. Not finding them there, he continued looking in the other two refugee camps with no luck. He vowed to keep searching. Unfortunately he had no photograph or picture, and it had been almost twenty years since he had last seen his sisters.
During my meeting with the Acting Commissioner of Maiwot County, he spoke of the arrival of peace. “The first good thing that peace brings to the region is the talk of schooling for our children,” he said. “In the twenty-one years of Arab reign, there’s been no school here. The second good thing is water. Foreigners have built seven boreholes. It’s good, but we need more, and we need peace-building skills, a legal system, and open roads. If there are no roads, there’s no trade. Peace also brings our people back home, but now we need water, food, shelter, blankets, clothes, medicine, and schools for them. We started opening the road, but we stopped during the wet season. We’ll start again soon.”
Leaders in the community since 1983, two women, Nyaluok and Nyadak, were confident speakers. “Before peace, we had forty-two women in the association,” said Nyadak, “and now we have ninety. During the war my husband fought. I would tell him not to and he would not listen to me. Now, if I say it, he listens. I would have him arrested to keep him in prison. Prison is a safer place than a war zone.” She smiled, but I knew she meant every word. “I did it in 1994. I had my husband arrested for a day until he said he would not go to war.”
Nyaluok added, “Women are the peace builders because we have no conflict with any one or any tribe. We intermarry and we trade during war, during tribal conflict, and during peace. That is the way women are.”
At dinner the paramount chief of Upper Nile, Kumy, pulled meat off the chicken bone. The sleeves of his red jacket were too long and his putty-colored pants were too small. Underneath he had a second pair of trousers with a frayed hem. A hat slipped over his ears and appeared too large. His hands were enormous. A jovial man with an irrepressible smile, he regaled us with comical stories of life in a land, as he described that was "closer to hell than heaven." Despite the protocol of not discussing the number of wives and children a man had—it would be like a Westerner bragging of his personal wealth—he revealed that he had ten wives and more than thirty children. Nine of his children died from battle wounds or sickness in the war. Six of his children were in Nairobi and one was in Canada, and he was hopeful that they would all return to his homeland one day. Chiefs once had status. Traditionally they were the peacemakers. Kumy was still highly respected, but the government was now the master of the land.
Extract from “The Sudan Curse” by Martina Nicolls, available in hardcopy, softcover, and Kindle at amazon.com
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