Seed of South Sudan (10 page)

Leland was on his way to Pinyudo Refugee Camp in 1989 when his plane crashed in the mountains of western Ethiopia. We were waiting for someone to come to see the problems. Imagine if Leland had come to Pinyudo and found the problems. We would have received some attention from America—America, the land with so many resources, so much freedom.

But no one came to find us. We still wondered where the rest of the world was in relieving the problems. It was not just our camps we were worried about, even though we never ate more than once a day, and there was illness, and much missing our families. We were concerned for our families and for our country in its long battle for resources that could help our lives; we needed help combating the Sudanese government, which took all our natural resources of water and oil, and provided no infrastructure, no electricity, no water systems. Now that government that gave us nothing was trying to kill all of us, and we needed other wealthy nations to come to our aid.

Where did the problems in Sudan come from? And what about Darfur? Many people have heard of Darfur. In fact, it is a sore point with the Lost Boys and the many others who suffered in southern Sudan that so many people were dying in the bombing and attacks on the villages in the south, and we were fleeing our homes, long before Darfur conflicts arose. Our civil war started in 1983, and the war extended past the time we eventually resettled in the United States in 2001. The war actually ended with the Peace Agreement in 2005. We believe the people in Darfur should be free of violence, also, but the problems of government attacks on their own people in southern Sudan began long before the world started hearing about Darfur, in 2003.

The native peoples of Sudan are those in south Sudan, Blue Nile province, Nuba Mountains, Darfur and other regions that are not Arab. Several centuries ago, the Arabs entered the Sudan area to trade with the native people in Sudan and west Africa. The traders then became those in power. A decision was made by the British to leave Sudan totally in the 1950s. Before that time they governed Sudan in an arrangement with Egypt. There was an attempt to separate the south from the rest of Sudan at that point, but southern Sudan agreed that they would stay with the Arab people and remain part of Sudan. A conference was held in Juba in 1950 with all chiefs of southern Sudan villages about separation of Sudan and they decided not to separate the southern provinces from the north. That was a mistake, as the Arab traders and their descendants, a people with a different religion and ethnic group from the natives, then ruled the country.

All the water from the headwaters of the Nile, which lie south of Sudan, is destined for Egypt. This is because Egypt and the Sudanese government determine these things, and the native people of Sudan do not have power to change things. All of Sudan's oil, most of which is in Bentui, Unity State—an area of southern Sudan—is pumped out and flows directly through the lower part of the country up to northern Sudan to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. All the revenues from the sale of oil go to the Sudanese government, which is controlled by Arabs. Egypt, whose development depends on waters from southern Sudan, does not appreciate how southern Sudan helps Egyptian people with water from the River Nile. Egypt supports their friends in north Sudan because of the Islamic Brotherhood.

These Arabs are Muslim. The people in the south are mostly Christian or animist, the native religion. The civil war in southern Sudan began over the attempt by the Sudanese government in Khartoum trying to impose the Muslim sharia law in all of Sudan. It began in 1983, and it reached my village in 1987. In time, some 80,000 refugees filled camps in Pinyudo and other locations. An estimated 2 million died in the war. Yet the news was not widespread about the civil war that eventually extended over two decades. Is it a coincidence that the United Nations Secretary during part of this time was from Egypt?

Khartoum focuses all the resources that it receives to develop the areas in the North rather than in the South and in other remote areas. There is no infrastructure—schools, hospitals, factories, roads, security—they are all lacking in southern Sudan, and before the civil war, the politicians from southern Sudan did not secure these things in their areas. Southern Sudan got two vice presidents before the civil war, but they did not build one house in their own home town. They lived in Khartoum for their whole life because they did not want to come back to southern Sudan.

Darfur is in western Sudan, and its characteristics are different from southern Sudan. In Darfur are many Africans who have over the centuries converted to Islam, but they are native Sudanese like those in the south, so they are Muslim Africans. It is important to know the truth, and that is that the Darfurians were the highest percentages in the Sudanese Army, the same army that killed many of our people in southern Sudan; it was those soldiers we were fleeing all those months on our journey, and the ones who would kill us if we did not reach safety.

At this time, the Darfurians regret what they did to southern Sudanese people, and we are still welcoming them as our people of one nation. We are all Sudanese. What happened in Darfur is that unlike southern Sudan, there are few natural resources in Darfur. There are no roads going into that area. Between Libya and Sudan, if you travel by car, you'll easily get lost because of dust. There's not any road you will see. Dust will cover it. In their area, it is desert; there are no resources, no water; their people rely on the government, and so when they started demanding resources, that's when the government started bombing their villages.

In our area, meaning the western part of southern Sudan where the Malual Dinka live, the Marleen, the nomadic sheepherders, came over into western Bahr el Ghazal, looking for water for their livestock. They took a lot of children from there, and that's why slave trading started. What affected us was the Sudanese government was not enforcing the border there. All through this region they took a lot of children and they killed a lot of people. Here is the Kirr River; they have to get water, so what happened was that during this dry season they come on this river; they burn all the houses around here and stay there, and they abduct the children and girls; then they kill the Malual Dinka's animals and get the meat, then take cows with them as they leave.

Back in Darfur, north of this area, the Janjaweed were given guns by the Sudanese government, so they warred on the native African tribes. They were also Muslim, but the government would set one part of the tribes against another, and they would say we will give you power, and then you can kill the other people. Those native people were wanting the government to provide them with health care and infrastructure and access to water. So then the Janjaweed, now armed, started warring on these Darfur Africans.

This all started long after our civil war had caused us to have to leave our homes, see our companions die, lose our parents and families—it had been going on since the early 80s. We were warred on earlier than Darfur, but the world heard more about Darfur, and it was termed “genocide.” We feel the southern Sudan war was genocide as well. Likewise Rwanda, which experienced so many millions of deaths in 1994, was called genocide. Maybe these are called genocides because the rest of the world got to hear about them. After Rwanda, maybe the world was watching more. So those are the differences in the southern Sudanese civil war and the tragedies in Darfur.

We Lost Boys of Sudan all had different experiences—we varied in age and came from numerous villages across southern Sudan when the civil war erupted, and journeys took different paths before we ended up in Pinyudo Refugee Camp. There were 12 groups that included about 15,000 boys altogether at Pinyudo. But we will all remember the Gilo River, and we will never forget that experience. If you ever meet a Lost Boy, you will know he is in fact a Lost Boy if you mention the Gilo River, and his reaction is to become either very quiet, or very angry, as he relates what took place.

First, we have to return to the country of our refuge, Ethiopia. During the Sudanese Civil War, the Sudanese government was determined to eliminate the Sudanese Peoples' Liberation Army, and the government's Sudanese Army held many of the southern Sudan towns. The SPLA, under the leadership of John Garang, fought for control from one village to another, attempting to take areas from the SA. The SPLA sanctuary was Ethiopia, and this safety was made possible because of the mutually helpful alliance between the dictator of Ethiopia, Mengistu Haile Mariam, and John Garang. Mengistu's protection made the camps able to operate eventually so that we could obtain food, shelter, and safety from the SPLA and the UN.

After the severe hunger of the first months in Pinyudo when so many children died, the food gradually became more predictable, although we continued to receive only one meal of corn or grain or beans a day. Still, we'd built our homes and a classroom. We'd found a priest among us, Father Madol, and we were having Mass, and we were about to begin construction of a nice church in our camp. There was a great deal of excitement about this. Life was a little bit okay for the unaccompanied minors at Pinyudo Refugee Camp.

Then, with the fury of a sudden desert dust storm, in May 1991, we were ordered to leave the country in 24 hours. After ruling Ethiopia for many years, Mengistu was overthrown by rebels, and the rebels ordered refugees to leave. In the camp, there was chaos. Where were we supposed to go? And how? People ran around in panic. All they could think about was the hard months of journeying to find safety, and how that now would start all over again.

There was no reliable transportation for us to leave the country. It was not a simple thing to do—there were no trucks to carry us or any other transport. Ethiopian rebels were combining their armies with Sudanese armies from the Khartoum government to take control of all of Ethiopia and to take revenge on the SPLA and its kind. We were going to be under attack anywhere we went.

Our leaders told us to run—and that's what we did. People had to try their best to walk by foot for 100 miles to reach the southern Sudanese border and, beyond that, the town of Pachala. Boys who had walked to Ethiopia through Pachala on the way to the refugee camps gave us directions.

We had to swim the Gilo River, a river forming the border with Sudan, in order to reach this safe area of Sudan. It was the rainy season, and the Gilo River was full of swift, turbulent water because of the heavy rainfall. People could not see the other side of the river, and they wondered how to cross. There were no boats or local fishermen to help them negotiate the river.

With my companions, I was able to swim in the swift water. There were high waves in the river. Coming behind us were the other refugees, and we were all trying to make it out of Ethiopia before the rebels caught up with us. We made it across, but others were not so lucky. In 1992, I talked to my friend Mawat who was there. The rebel troops came up behind those on the river's edge and began shooting; they forced people into the river with their heavy gunfire, and then continued shooting as people tried to swim across the river. If you were swimming in the river, three or four people jumped on top of you as they fled into the river. They bumped into bodies as they tried to cross. Others were killed by crocodiles in the river. So whether from being shot, or drowning, or being attacked by crocodiles, many, many people died at the Gilo River.
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Anti-aircraft were patrolling the borders between Ethiopia and Sudan and shooting at rebels who might be in those areas. They followed the routes to the towns they already knew, like Pachala. So the refugees avoided these places, moving beyond the river and Pachala to open fields outside the town. They had to go where they would not be hit by bombs.

The Ethiopian rebels themselves teamed up with the Sudanese government. They were actually based in Sudan. When the rebels overthrew Mengistu and we were told to leave for the sake of our lives, we walked away very quickly. I was one of the first, and since I was nearly 12 years old, and I'd grown tall, my natural tendency to move quickly was aided by long legs and moderately good health. That's why I could get to the river before most of the others who were caught up in the gunfire. There was a special group of refugees trailing far behind us that came out from Pinyudo, heading for the river. They could not walk easily because they were older, and there was an International Red Cross worker with them. When they got to Pachala, the Sudanese government bombed them. They captured them, including the IRC worker, and took them all to Khartoum. They released the IRC person, but they kept the children. I don't know what they did with them.

Those who were able to make it across the river then went further west, one hour from the Gilo, in Pachala. When people went to Pachala, there was no food. There is a small airstrip there; no planes carrying food could land there. The UN base at Lokichoiko, Kenya, was trying to figure out how to help the children. So they came out from Lokichoiko with flights, dropping food down on the ground there in Pachala. We were in an open expanse of land—few trees, no provision for cover. It took them a month to figure out how to fly in and make the food drops. It was the rainy season and people had nothing to eat. So when they started the flights, they dropped food down, and they killed some people with loads of food. While people were waiting for these food drops to get organized, they became so desperate they ate tree leaves, and a kind of fruit on the tree. There is a seed on the tree that people eat.

So we might get food from the airlift, but what about tomorrow or next month? There was no shelter, and we were wet a lot of the time from the rains. What kind of a life is that? This went on for several months.

As SPLA forces were now in control of some of the towns in the southern part of Sudan, camps were being set up to receive us. This is what we heard.

As the dry season began, in January, February, and March, we began moving south. We were encouraged to move toward the Kenyan border, as Sudan was still in civil war, and while the SPLA forces now controlled some of the towns, that could change. If the attacks became more threatening, we were closer to Kenya than Uganda, so we tried to go in that direction. We walked in large groups, moving toward Kapoeta, further southwest in Sudan, in Eastern Equatoria region. (It is now Eastern Equatoria state.)