Seed of South Sudan (4 page)

It is known that several of the ancient Egyptian gods such as Anubia, god of embalming,
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and Isis,
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were Nubian. There were Nubians who were kings in Egypt, and Egyptian kings took Nubian wives. “Nubia appears not to have been exploited unduly by the Egyptians,” who probably did not enslave Nubians, Fisher writes. “As late as the Old Kingdom, many Lower Nubian princes and princesses were raised in the Egyptian court…. The intention was that upon their return home, they would promote Egyptian culture in Nubia and alliances to Egypt.”
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Archaeologists of Egypt and Sub-Sahara Africa find a great many links between the cultures, starting from the time before the Sahara became the desert it is now, and before Arabic groups came to live between Egypt and Sudan. In a sense, Sudan is an important source of much that is Egyptian culture and geography.

There was great interplay between Egypt in the north and Sudan as well as other areas of sub–Saharan Africa. In fact, all of what is now Africa shared much in customs, religion, and cultural objects. Archaeologists point to similarities between the early tools of the area, from bone harpoons to pottery bowls and jars, items that appeared from the Atlantic to the southern part of what is now the Sahara, on up along the Nile, finally reaching into Palestine, as well as similarities in the famous blue crown of Egyptian rulers of the New Kingdom era and the beaded miter crown used in Cameroon in the past (used ceremonially in present-day Nigeria). All of these examples simply suggest that there were ties between what may seem like unlike cultures, ties that date back to the Neolithic period.
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Yet to look at Sudan as a country today is to look at true contrast. Egypt was eventually ruled by Greek, Roman, Muslim, and Turkish regimes (The Ottoman Empire) before gaining independence. Largely through the dynasty begun with Khedive Muhammad Ali, the country was transformed on a European model.
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Because of that influence, Egypt learned how to tame and dam the Upper Nile, and became (at least until the Arab spring of 2011) a secular country that is more developed than almost any other country on the African Continent; it sits at the north end of the Nile Valley, orienting itself to the Indo-European culture of the Mediterranean. Sudan to its south is a culturally, religiously, and ethnically split nation. Nubia was Christianized and remained that way from approximately
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580 to 1400. At the end of this time, some areas still remained independent and Christian,
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affecting southern Sudan even today. Arabs, who came in initially in the 7th century but did not exact control for several centuries,
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occupy the north, including the Nubian Desert, the ancient kingdom of Kush, and the capital, Khartoum. The area to the south, inhabited by various African tribes including the Dinka, includes some fertile area, some desert, and what at one time was simply referred to as the Sudd, or Tremendous Swamp. In fact, the swamp is the largest in the world; in Arabic, its name translates as “obstacle,” which it has been for those trying to access the vast lands along its edges.
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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.
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After Turkish captors, slave traders from North Sudan followed. The Dinka, major victims of slavery, call this the “time when the world was spoiled.”
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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.
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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.
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(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.
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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.”
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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.
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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 done 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.