Seed of South Sudan (8 page)

Food being such an important part of life, our grandparents and parents try to help us keep our expectations low so that we won't die because food has become so important. In fact, that training turned out to be the difference between life and death for many of us, as we found later at Pinyudo.

But on our long and difficult journey, we did wonder about why we were having to go so far, to walk in foreign lands, to even go to another country, just to find enough to eat, to be safe, and to be able to have future lives. Where was the world while we walked?

Here in Ethiopia, we continued our way of walking in the night, stopping after midnight, sleeping for four hours, then rising and walking until midday when we could rest for a few hours when the sun was hottest. In Sudan, we would look for a tree to rest under, but there were few trees here. And we were in Nuer country, so while we did not have to worry about the Sudanese Army, we had to watch out for enemy tribes and unfriendly villagers.

Then we were in an Anwok area. We gathered maize from stacks of stalks that were left in the field to dry. These particular people cut their corn stalks down with corn inside, and they piled the stalks together. They eventually would store them inside their village storage areas, but while all dried, they were in the fields, so as we walked at night, we took corn from these piles, stopping to boil it later.

During the day we came upon villages, about one a day, and here the houses were made of grass, including the roof, and they were on one level. They did not have homes like ours made with mud and bamboo where families slept up on the second level off the ground and animals were below. Their grass homes were more like our rainy season camps where we went to escape the high waters for several months a year.

There was one thing more that was different about this area. About the third day, we saw a mountain on the horizon. We had never seen this, and it caused quite a lot of talking back and forth about it. As we drew nearer, it grew bigger. When we arrived, finally, in Itang, the mountain seemed to loom over the camp. Later we found out it was another two hours from the camp.

Numbers of people had already gathered at Itang. There were old and young, men and women, and children, many children. There were UN-provided tents, and there was food. But it was also near a river, and it was wet and swampy. We had daily rations that included some staples, like wheat flour, maize, beans, oil, sugar and salt, but there was never enough. Powdered milk was also distributed, but if we drank too much of this, we suffered from bloating. People actually died after eating too much; it was called “suffocating stomach.” One guy died—they kept us away from him. My uncle told me not to drink much of this.

We got used to sleeping at night—all the way through—and rising early in the morning. We had activities to help keep the camp, but there were not other organized games or competitions. It was rainy, and it stayed muddy a lot of the time. So while we had enough water, maybe we had too much.

At this point, as I look back, I see my life began to change in big ways. For one, our small group—Laat, Matoc, my uncle Dut, Kau, and I—were separated. After walking 500 to 600 miles over several months, we were no longer together. This was because soon after I arrived at Itang, I met an elder, Akec Rang. My uncle knew a friend of his. He was Dinka, but from the Cic Dinka tribe. Still, he had connection to our people because he had married a lady from the Agar Dinka tribe like mine.

“You are supposed to go to school,” he told me. “At Itang you will not have anything.” So, after I was at Itang for about a month, he paid for a car to take me and two others, Malual and Bec, to Pinyudo, where he said we could have school. He accompanied us there.

Before I left, my uncle Dut left Itang and walked to Pinyudo. Laat followed me to Pinyudo three weeks after I'd left. Matoc stayed in Itang, but I found him at Pinyudo later, in a different group from mine. My uncle would be in an adult group in Pinyudo, although I would not see him there very much.

What we saw first at Pinyudo was a large number of houses, more than the usual number in the villages we passed while walking. Then, further away from the houses, we came to an area where people were gathered and they seemed to be staying, not moving on. We then learned that this was Pinyudo, and there was to be a refugee camp here, but there were no signs this was a camp. There were no tents. People were just staying on the ground there.

The scene was very disorganized. The car left, and Akec left, and we were there, three boys who did not know each other well. We were Dinka, but we spoke different dialects. We sat on the ground there. We had shorts and shirts on. We were not naked, as there had been some food and clothes at Itang. Most of the other boys were naked. Many of the others were in rags.

More and more people arrived at the camp area. There were many languages. It was difficult to tell who was going to help us. There was no food, and there was no other support.

Finally after about a month, we were told to gather in certain areas, and they created several large groups: boys, girls, and then adults, including adults who had young children with them. We were considered “unaccompanied minors,” as we had no adults with us. My uncle I could not see, but later I understood he was in a group with the adults.

As many as 300 people at a time came to the camp, but they could not stay together—the organizers wanted to mingle the tribes among themselves so that they would have better cooperation. This way we had to live with people who were not like us, but we learned to work out how we communicated and got tasks done.

Group leaders, many of whom later became our teachers, were selected to be in charge of each subgroup of minors. We were organized into groups based on our age. Among the unaccompanied minors, there were 12 groups, and I was in Group 9. Further designations were made so that each subgroup leader looked after 10 boys.

In this area there were more trees, and we camped under these. We did not have blankets, we did not have food, and there were snakes and scorpions to look out for. The young children were not able to survive that way—no food or blankets, and their stomachs were empty all the time.

By this time it was the rainy season, and we heard trucks of aid could not get through because of the deep mud caused by rains on roads from their headquarters in Gambela, Ethiopia. The aid was to come from the United Nations through its aid agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). We were aware of UNHCR personnel in the camp from the beginning. Their compound was being constructed and they were erecting a big tent to distribute the food.

People in the camp began dying of starvation, or disease, or exposure. They had walked, like us, for hundreds of miles, through the desert and hostile lands where some were killed by native tribes afraid they were coming to take their territory. They'd run from areas where soldiers were, but some fell to soldiers' bullets when they went too close to a town. They'd escaped wild animal attacks, snakes, and poisonous bites. They kept walking without food and water until their feet were bloody. They'd lost companions, their families. Their hope was the refugee camps in Ethiopia. Now that they had arrived, it was safe, and they didn't have to walk; there were not soldiers or hostile people that would kill people. But there was great hunger, there was no food, they were naked, and there weren't even blankets on which to lie on the ground.

Finally, a truck arrived, but by this time there were thousands of people lying or sitting under trees and all over the camp. Our large groups of unaccompanied minors were in one area, adults in another, but there were so many.

The one truck that got through came with 20 bags of corn or maize, but that cannot feed 15,000 children. It was really bad because when they came to distribute that corn, some people ended up with one kernel of corn and that's all the person had to eat. Now children were thinking about their mothers and how they served them with their food, thinking that if they were back home, they could get food anytime. So that is the reason people died—loss of hope.

This is the only reason I can think that I did not die. I remembered my grandmother's lesson from long ago: not to long for the food that she used to feed me and that my mother used to feed me. There was no food. People had to hope there would be food the next day. Many could not do that.

Many boys were dying because of lack of food, cold weather, and diseases. Many boys used to collect maize that dropped on the floor during distribution, and that's all they got. We were naked because UNHCR did not provide clothes. The young children were not able to survive under the trees without food and blankets. We lived under trees for six months, and in that time we lost more boys because of these lacks.

I remembered three boys who died at night because of starvation. It was one day that we had received a small amount of food in the distribution and some people decided to keep it for the following morning so they would have enough food until the next food arrived. When we woke up in the morning, the three had died while they slept. They had not eaten for two days and probably they'd had even less over the months. The UNHCR official came to see what happened to those children, and some of the other boys were selected to go and bury them. We used to bury our friends, and this was unjust to have a child bury another child at our age.

There was no regular food available for five to six months. In that time, hundreds of children died. The children also had malaria, malnourishment, diarrhea and dysentery. If you have some corn and you don't even boil it, and you have a long time not eating anything, it can have a reaction on your stomach. And if you drink a lot of water, that can also bring diarrhea. Diarrhea killed a lot of people. Also, chicken pox started coming out on the bodies. Nobody got immunizations when they were young, so those were the other things that people had.

We would go to the cemetery for the burial of a person in our group, and we would see another child we knew being buried. It seems like those burials happened every day.

Where was the world while this happened? Couldn't the UNHCR have acted faster to bring food and shelter to prevent the deaths of these children? They are supposed to be looking out for disasters like this, thousands and thousands of children and refugee families—couldn't the countries of the world have moved faster to help us? Those are questions I still have.

How did we deal with these desperate conditions? Older Sudanese refugees in the camp came up with the idea of organizing games and dances. There were dances for children that involved a series of moves like a couple of girls would dance and then they would select a boy to dance with them, and then two of those would dance together while the second girl would then select another partner. Other children clapped their hands to provide the music. Children took turns selecting each other as partners until everyone was dancing. These kinds of games and dances were entertaining.

I've mentioned before that there were many languages among all the people on the long walk to Ethiopia. In camp, this was true as well. We found people who could speak our language by hearing someone saying words we recognized. There was a connection, and we did things together. In Group 9, I found some others who spoke the same Agar Dinka language. Then, as we did on our journey, where we had different words for the same thing, we would agree on words we would all use in common to help us understand each other.

While these were necessary distractions, life continued to be hard in Pinyudo. One incident shows how just trying to provide for shelter had life-and-death consequences. I think there should have been a better way to watch over the many, many children in the camp and provide for their safety. This day ended up with some children becoming lost, and probably they died. We do not know.

At the time of this trip into the bush, it was six months after we arrived at Pinyudo. Food deliveries had become more regular. Some adult refugees were identified who could become our teachers. We were still sleeping under trees.

In our group, Group 9, we were ages six, seven, eight, and nine. Our group leaders and teachers had organized a trip to find our shelter and bedding material in the forest. We were told the night before that tomorrow we were going to find material for our houses and beds. We were excited because we didn't know how bad it was in the forest. In the morning we woke up early, at 4 a.m., and we went together before the others, proud to know that we were going to the forest first. We were about one thousand children that morning walking to find the materials—large sticks and grasses mostly. We stayed with everyone until 7 a.m., and then at 8 o'clock, we left the group, because we knew each other and we thought we could gather our materials together. By 10 o'clock we had all our grasses and sticks of wood. And then we tried to return back to the group, but we had lost our way back home.

We were lost for the whole day. We were trying to go back home early, but we just went deeper inside the dark forest. The big problem was that, because of tall grass, we could not see anything, no familiar natural markers, to help us find our way home. We climbed up on a tree to see if we could tell which way to go, but we couldn't. We were very thirsty because there was no water to drink for the whole day, not to mention no food.

From the trees around us came the frightened screeches of monkeys—calling to alarm other monkeys. This is the sound they make when there are wild animals around. I was very used to paying attention to animals' alarm sounds back in my home village. We had gone a long way from home—not one of the trees in that place had any cuts on them from humans taking limbs from trees. When we heard the cries of the monkeys, we made the decision immediately to go back and follow the way that we came from. After about a three-hour walk, we ended up getting back to camp that night at 9 p.m. We'd been gone on our own since 8 a.m. Teachers and group leaders were preparing to search for us in the morning, but we arrived safely, and everybody was happy to see us.