By Atem Yaak Atem
Atem Yaak Atem in Juba
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On the second Sunday after my return to Juba I arrived a little late for the service. As usual the congregation had filled the church to overflowing, so I took my seat at the wing that appears to be an addition to the original structure. The congregation that numbered over 1600 souls consisted of children, youth, middle aged men and women. There were senior members in the Government of Southern Sudan, GoSS, several generals in the SPLA and senior officers in regular forces.
Just when the service was about to end it was announced that if I were present I should report to the podium to greet the congregation. I slowly picked my way towards the podium, (or was it altar?) After receiving the microphone I was not sure whether I was going to say “I bring to you the greetings of our people in Australia. They send their greeting to you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” and then walk back to my bench.
I thought that doing that was not enough. I had an important message to deliver. Since I went to Australia immediately after the signing of the CPA, many people, distant friends and others, frequently kept asking several questions such as: Why had I to leave at that particular time? Did I not like the agreement? Some people drew some conclusions concerning my motives, suggestions so absurd that I better not repeat them here. I found the invitation to speak publicly an opportunity to end some of the wild rumours that had filled the air since my departure for Australia in 2005.
Because of the war conditions I had never had enough time with my family to the extent that my children did not know me very well, I revealed, adding that I had and still have nothing against the CPA or any individual or groups of people in or outside government. I further disclosed that I had told the late leader John Garang at Naivasha that I supported with all my heart the protocols that constitute the CPA but despite that stance I would not be part of the administration to be set up after the signature of the agreement.
To drive the point home that I was not making it up in the absence of late Garang who would not be able to deny or contradict my claims I had to mention, for verification, three senior SPLM/A members who were present during my talk with Garang. One of the witnesses I had named, an SPLA general, was by chance in the congregation. Since I had to be brief and that the subsequent utterances were of little import I have, at this juncture, to bring to an end the substance of my “lecture”.
Why being addressed “Far Away from War” offends me In about 1999 one of my young nephews wrote a letter to me. The missive began “Dear Uncle Far Away from War…” I instantly lost my cool and threw away the offending paper. The people in the room were stunned at my reaction. Was the missive carrying some bad news? they asked. The boy might have thought the title of the paper’s column had become my nickname.
He was wrong; only peers create and exchange nicknames. Usually, nicknames have their roots in circumstances best known and kept as secret among friends. Some of these could be light-hearted or based on a special circumstance which when taken out of context would be extremely insulting. There was nothing in “Far Away from War” remotely similar to the situations just cited to make that title in a newsletter my sobriquet.
“How can this boy be so rude as to write this…?” was my reply. Even after I had repeated what the letter contained my relatives did not see any reason behind my fury. After I had cooled down I realised that the boy had made a mistake out of innocence.
“This boy thinks that this is my nickname. It is not. And even though it were one, he is not my age-mate”, I told them.
“M’aleish (Arabic for ‘take it easy’). He did not intend to insult you”, they assured me.
The origins of the column and its name after my return from West Africa and after my reunion with my family who had been held hostage by a rebel faction for over two and half years in one of the towns in Southern Sudan I chose to settle in Lodwar, Kenya. The town unlike the nearby Kakuma refugee camp had better schools and amenities such as a public library and electricity. I enrolled my children in a primary school there. I also took up a teaching job in Lodwar High School.
North-western Kenya is usually dry, hot and humid for many months of the year; afternoons were particularly unbearable. I had to spend much of that time under a tree near my home. Its shade provided some mild relief from the searing heat. Nearly every day, while sitting under the tree I would either read a book or write an essay, a short story or a press article. I even ventured into poetry.
The subjects of these pieces ranged from culture, mostly nostalgic childhood recollections of village life, to customs or emergence of slangs that contain words such as “thiai-dit”, Dinka and Nuer corruption of “CID” (Criminal Investigation Department) to refer to a Southern Sudanese informant working for Khartoum security apparatus. In the cultural domain, for example, I wrote a piece that explained the possible reasons behind the taboo that prohibit initiated men in some Nilotic communities from cooking or milking cows.
Nowhere in the column did I ever write an article denouncing the war of liberation that was being waged by the SPLA against the Sudan Armed Forces. I also did not express in writing or verbally that the forces of SPLA should stop fighting when the causes that led to the armed conflict had not been adequately addressed and given appropriate solutions. I am neither a militarist nor a pacifist but I am firmly convinced that the armed struggle conducted by the SPLA was justified as a last resort by a people denied their birth rights as citizens equal with others before the law.
What I meant by “Far Away from War”: When I sent the first articles, the editor of then SPLM/A mouthpiece, “SPLM/A Update” weekly newsletter my colleague George Garang Deng Chol was happy and encouraged me to feed the publication every week.
Within a short time the column attracted a large readership, especially among non-Sudanese expatriate community in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Letters of praise for the contents of the column came from Sudanese sympathisers of the SPLM resident in the Gulf and from areas controlled by the government in Khartoum who read the paper under cover.
The central message from “Far Away from War” was that despite the prevailing war conditions people in the refugee camps, in the rural areas under the SPLM/A administration and in the diaspora and even at the war fronts, continued to live their lives as usual. Children were being born, marriages and wedding were being celebrated, cultural values were either being observed while others were being questioned or discarded. To me this phenomenon was normal.
Wars, it has to be allowed, disrupt lives, cause deaths, maim people and separate families but the human resilience makes it possible for war-affected people to live life as usual or a semblance of that. Indirectly, even without the writer being aware of that, the column was a voice of optimism.
Others, for different reasons and motives, viewed the contents differently, some with jaundiced and venomous bias against the author; some approached the essays with closed minds to the extent that I was informed that some persons who had not read a single article were known to seethe with anger whenever they saw the newsletter.
Because of the campaigns denigration distortion from my distracters word went out to some members of the SPLA that I was “contributing to lower the morale of the fighting forces”, an allegation that could equate the accused with traitors, and of course with serious consequences, given the military mind-set of those days. Anyone known to have done anything to dent the morale of the SPLA was branded a fifth columnist.
Self-inflicted hate
Some of the movement’s members who believed I was wrong did everything they could to tarnish my personality; some even wrote innuendoes against me in the same publication while others were reportedly said to have gone to the Chairman asking him to order the editor to stop publishing my column. He is reported to have said nothing in response, an indication that he disagreed with my critics.
To be fair I must admit that I stepped on some sensitive feet. For example, in an article I ridiculed people, without reference to soldiers, for buying and carrying several expensive pens at the same time to advertise that they were educated and therefore “intellectual”.
In another opinion piece I challenged the then pervasive belief among some Sudanese officer class for priding themselves on belonging to a career that they thought was superior to the rest of other professions. I conceded that being a soldier was a noble calling as soldiers. I mentioned some well known generals in world history who defended their countries from foreign aggressions and that some military leaders who were on record as liberators of their people from foreign invasion or oppressive internal rule.
On the downside of the scale I reminded the braggarts that soldiering had the distinctive disadvantage that it was an occupation that could not be exported as is the case with medicine or teaching; except only if and when a former soldier wanted a job outside his home country, the only vacancies on offer were membership of a mercenary army or guarding of public buildings and establishments. For months I was a pariah within the officer corps for my audacity to state the obvious.
I believe that no harm came to me for my “sins” of “Far Away from War” because the SPLA top political and military leadership enjoyed reading “Far Away from War”.
Years later some friends within diplomatic and NGO community based in Nairobi informed me that they subscribed to the “SPLM/A Update” because of my column which they said relieved them of the dreary propaganda material that filled the rest of the 11 pages. Having been a propagandist myself during my tenure as director of Radio SPLA from 1984 to 1991 I have come to realise that propaganda is the most boring form of communication human beings have ever devised.
“Far Away from War” provided the non-partisan as well as SPLM readers with a break from a litany of invectives hurled against the movement’s enemies and from grim statistics of the dead enemy soldiers. I have no regrets and this is why I have included those pieces in the collection of my selected press articles I intend to publish in the near future.