I was a little child then, too little to understand how sick my sister was. Also, like all small children, I thought my parents would always keep us safe. Most of what I remember from my first five years in Juba was the happy sound of people in my family and neighborhood. My parents loved me, and every night when I crawled into my nice metal bed with the comfortable mattress on it, the world seemed like a good place.
I didn’t understand that Southern Sudan had been a dangerous place for decades. When my parents were children, there had been a war between the southerners and the Arab Muslims who dominated the government in Sudan. That war ended with a treaty, and for ten years peace had kept life calm and allowed people to settle and prosper. But trouble started brewing again just after I was born.
The southern people were angry with the Arab government about a number of things. One was that the government planned to build a canal into the great swamp called the Sudd. The canal would carry the water away from the south to the Arab Muslims in the north and on to Egypt. Also, prices of critical supplies such as oil, bread, and sugar had risen because of the policies of the government in the capital city of Khartoum. Most important, the government had imposed Muslim law on the whole country, even though we black Africans of the south weren’t Muslim. The Arabs had never had much respect for us. They treated us as if we were beneath them, as if we were their servants.
In Juba and in other cities students protested against the government, and some were killed in the riots. Men in the south who were fed up with policies that favored the north formed the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, and fighting flared in the countryside between the SPLA, as we called that army, and local militia groups that the government had backed. But I wasn’t paying attention to any of that. I was just a girl of five, playing with my sister and my friends, expecting life to go on the way it was forever.
John
War came to my homeland when I was thirteen years old. We had been expecting it, but nevertheless it came as a shock when my village was actually attacked.
The Dinka had heard omens of war for a long time. Many people still believed in spirits that lived in animals and plants, and these spirits spoke to them about the coming of a very bad time. My parents told me one story just as they had heard it. They said a tortoise spoke to a man on a path outside the town of Bor. Among the Dinka, the tortoise is believed to be very smart. The tortoise told the man, “I am sent by the Lord. I bring you news of doom. Your country, Southern Sudan, will be destroyed.” The tortoise said the Lord meant to punish the people of Southern Sudan for being unfaithful, and it gave the man three choices. “One is drought,” said the tortoise, “and if you choose it, I will punish you by withholding the rain. If you do not choose that, I will punish you with flood. And if you do not choose that, I will punish you with war. Now, you must choose.” The man was frightened and ran away. The tortoise yelled at him, saying, “You must answer me! You must choose!” So the man chose war.
The man told everyone what the tortoise had said. The people of Duk Payuel, the village where my family was living at the time, debated whether the man had made a wise choice. Some argued in favor of drought. They knew they could survive because the Dinka have weathered many a dry spell. But drought meant famine, which would hit the women and children the hardest, so the villagers rejected that choice. Some argued in favor of flood. They knew the Dinka could survive because they could catch fish as the swamps filled with water. But floods meant our precious cows would die, so the villagers rejected that choice too. Most of the people in my village finally decided that the man had chosen wisely, but everyone kept talking about what the tortoise had said.
A month or two later, a crow landed on the shoulder of an old woman who was sitting making rope in the shade of her house. The crow gave her the same choice: drought, flood, or war. The woman didn’t know what to do, so she said nothing. The crow flew away.
Then a prophet had a vision. This man, named Ngun Deng, lived among the Nuer, a neighboring tribe. He saw bad things in the future. War would come to Southern Sudan, he said, and many would die. In the end, Southern Sudan would defeat the enemy, but it also would suffer defeat. Then he spoke a final prophecy: “Yours will be a generation of black hair.” The elders in my village debated his meaning. They decided he meant that the oldest and youngest would die. The oldest had gray or white hair, and the youngest had little or no hair. Only the black-haired young people would live, and they would see many troubles.
It was such a terrible time. People believed the words of the tortoise, the crow, and the prophet. Then one day the sun glowed blood red. My mother said it meant that blood would flow. “People will fight, and there will be lots of killing,” she told me.
At the time, I did not know much about my country’s history. Anyone who studied the early years of Sudan might have seen civil war in its future. Britain granted Sudan independence in 1956. The new nation brought together groups of people who had little in common. Arabs who practiced Islam and spoke Arabic dominated the northern half of Sudan and the capital, Khartoum. Black-skinned tribes who were either Christian or practiced traditional religions and who spoke dozens of languages dominated the southern half. At first, southern citizens saw little change in their daily lives while living in their new country. In the early 1980s, however, when the national government, dominated by northern Arabs, tried to impose Islamic laws on the entire nation, civil war broke out. Northern soldiers stormed into southern villages to quell the violence, but the fighting raged on. The northern armies got the best of most battles because they had more soldiers and guns and all of the airplanes. Those armies drew near shortly after we heard the prophecies of war.
I remember the night the soldiers came to Duk Payuel as if it were yesterday. The first sound I heard seemed like a low whine or whistle. It rose from far away on a moonless evening as I tried to sleep on the floor of a hut. About a dozen boys and girls shared the hut with me on that hot and sticky summer night in 1987. As government soldiers shelled and burned the countryside and airplanes strafed and bombed the villages, refugees moved south. Some came to Duk Payuel, and that is how I came to share a hut with strangers. My parents and other adults slept on the ground outside.
I was having trouble sleeping, so I heard clearly the whine or whistle as it grew louder. Then I heard more sounds just like the first. A chorus of shrieks descended toward our village.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Explosions shook the earth. I heard a huge crackling sound like some giant tree being splintered in the forest. I had learned enough from the elders who had gathered in our village to realize what was happening. Duk Payuel was being shelled by invaders.
I stood up and tried to run, but it was so dark in the hut that I could only stumble about. Other children were running too, and we smacked into each other and into the walls and support beams. Outside, amid a new sound that I recognized as bursts of gunfire, my mother shrieked the names of her children. I managed to find my way outdoors and looked up to see the red glare of fire dancing atop the trees of the forest and the roofs of our village. Everywhere, people were running in a mad panic. Bullets tore through the village, making angry zipping sounds like bees.
I looked for my parents and my brothers and sisters, but I saw no family members. I started to panic. Where should I go to be safe? Thank goodness, just then I thought I saw my father running in front of me. He disappeared down a path through the tall grass, and I followed him. I ran and ran but did not see him. Suddenly a hand reached out from the thick grass at the side of the path and grabbed my shoulder. As I felt myself being pulled into the grass, I heard a hoarse whisper.
“Quiet, quiet, quiet,” it said.
Nine northern soldiers dressed in dark clothes ran along the path I had just left, passing inches from my face without seeing me. They fired their guns as they went. The two of us backed deeper into the grass. We did not say anything, just crouched and waited for daybreak.
When it came, I was shocked. The soldiers had gone. My village was destroyed. I could see smoking