You are the future

Using mud, wood and grass, schools were built. Each group had its own school. There were twelve groups so there were twelve schools preparing to open. These were the schools the SPLA soldiers had preached to us about on our trek. Conditions in Pinyudu were changing. We were acclimatising. I was filled with joy. I was becoming of age but had never been to school. Perhaps as were ninety-nine per cent of my fellow comrades. In South Sudan it was a privilege to attend school. Each year, before the civil war, it was said that Khartoum’s racist Islamic regime only offered some college opportunities to a paramount chief for his village. Our paramount chief headed more than twenty villages. So effectively each village had only one chance. South Sudan was illiterate. South Sudan was completely unpaved, raw, and virgin.

As excitement about schools opening spread, news also circulated that the SPLA/SPLM leader, Dr John Garang de Mabior, was on his way to Pinyudu. They said he wanted to address us, the Red Army before the schools open. We were transported by the thought of seeing Dr John Garang de Mabior in person. He had been proclaimed as an all-knowing scholar. It was said his eyes could not be seen because of his long beard. That he was a bald-headed man, a sign of wisdom and great leadership according to the Dinka People. We considered his coming to Pinyudu practically messianic. The news smelt in the air. Back in our village, we used to hear that Garang launched the rebellion to rid Sudan of the Arabs who had come from Saudi Arabia, and had to be forced to return.

One morning, we woke to the news that Dr John Garang had arrived in Pinyudu. We put on our best clothes like girls going to meet their suitors. Group leaders gathered us onto the parade ground. We couldn’t wait to meeting the man purportedly responsible for our diaspora, our separation from our families. Each group was organised in three rows. We marched singing patriotic and war songs. Shouts echoed in all directions of the camp. By around seven, we were seated on the gathering ground. Anticipating his arrival, we continued to sing morale-boosting songs. Songs about why we had crossed the unforgiving, punishing wilderness of South Sudan to Ethiopia. Songs about why the SPLA/SPLM had taken up arms to fight against the Arabisation and Islamisation of the Sudan. We praised and glorified John Garang for being a brave and courageous leader of the liberation struggle. South Sudanese and other marginalised people of Sudan were in the mouth of the abyss. The SPLA/SPLM’s avowed objective was to rid Sudan of the Islamic government.

At around nine, in ceremonious, military style, Dr John Garang de Mabior arrived! The SPLA forward guards and outer-circle security apparatus began to appear from nowhere. There was little movement as control of the parade ground was taken over by SPLA security personnel. The tension was thick. Everyone else was ordered to remain still. Fighting jeeps, with heavy machine guns mounted, circled the gathering looking intimidating. Suddenly, inner-circle security guards appeared and Dr John Garang emerged in their centre. The manoeuvre was breath-taking as heavily-armed body guards flanked him. The electric atmosphere was engulfed in deafening screams as we sang our patriotic songs with all our hearts. Excitement overwhelmed us all as we sang songs of welcome and praise.

In front of us was the leader of the SPLA/SPLM rebel movement. John Garang was of medium build, bald and with a long beard. He had the typical dark complexion of the South Sudanese people. He emerged into our full sight. As he moved back and forth, his right hand fisting the air, he enthusiastically rallied the crowd with the SPLA/SPLM slogans, ‘SPLA oyee. Red Army oyee. New Sudan oyee. Koryom oyee. Mourmour oyee,’ and many more. Then to my amazement, he began to speak in Dinka. I had thought the language was foreign to him. I did not know he was Dinka, but then how could I have known? We were so young, innocent and ignorant. Perhaps he spoke in Dinka because almost the entire crowd spoke Dinka.

With magnetic-like enthusiasm, John Garang strategically educated and enlightened us, the Red Army, about the SPLA/SPLM. He described what he called the ‘fundamental problems of the Sudan’. He talked about why we had trekked across the wilderness for months to come to Pinyudu, Ethiopia. He redefined what various Khartoum-based Islamic regimes called the ‘problem of the South’ as the ‘fundamental problem of the Sudan.’ He demonstrated this problem by posing the metaphorical question, ‘If a person comes and sits on me, then who is the problem in this picture? Is it me, the person being sat on, or the person sitting on me? The South couldn’t possibly be the problem because it is South Sudan that is being sat on by various Khartoum-based regimes.’ His voice trebled to an eruption of supporting applause.

He explained the reason the SPLA/SPLM went to bush was to launch the rebellion. He elaborated the reasons for waging guerrilla war against the Arabisation and Islamisation of the Sudan. He said that successive Khartoum-based regimes had wrongly established Sudan as an Islamic country and that these rogue regimes had imposed their oppressive Islamic system in the Sudan at the expense of the Sudanese people. ‘Various regimes that have adopted and implemented laws that escalated the marginalisation of the African majority have ruled the Sudan,’ he said. ‘This marginalisation has continued to undermine development in South Sudan and other marginalised regions of the Sudan. You’re the posterity of the New Sudan,’ he roared like a thunder.

‘I’ve entrusted you with education,’ he pronounced. Nothing was comparable to that moment! Excitement and euphoria filled the air as we screamed and sang patriotic songs at the top of our lungs. Dr John Garang, the Commander-in-Chief of SPLA/SPLM, shifted strategically and politically from one agenda to another, educating and informing the future generation of Sudanese leaders about the ‘fundamental problems of the Sudan. We dispersed for lunch and returned. That afternoon, after the end of his famous address, he recited as we repeated after him the twenty six ‘letters of the English alphabets A, B, C, D and so on through to Z. He was a gifted public speaker. We couldn’t get enough of him. He had a silver tongue. His voice was smooth like honey.

A few weeks later, our first classes began under grass-thatched roofs and within the mud walls. But there were no books, exercise books and pencils. For the whole of our first ever school term, we used the floor and our fingers as books and pens respectively. Elementary English and arithmetic were the only subjects. There were more boys in each class than it could hold. As it was now the spirit, I was determined to learn and do better.