i. bulletpoints from the beginning of this chapter
- the market was closed on sunday and monday, the 5th and 6th of october, because of outrage over the selling of a piece of land near the border. a dinka man sold it to a somalian entrepreneur.
- citizens fear that the somalian, who wants to build a depot, will usher greater arab influence into a community that is predominately christian and animist (and only a few years after the end of the southerner’s two decade war against the arabs of the north).
- this land acquisition by a foreigner also highlights the current debate over property rights. established tribes such as the madi and acholi, who have lived in the equatoria region for centuries, want the dinka to return to their homelands. (large numbers of dinkas were displaced to nimule and the surrounding area during the civil war.)
- dinkas suspect the disappearance of their soldiers on monday was a reprisal by the madis or the acholis or both – an act of violent resentment toward the dinkas’ immovability.
- the magwi county commissioner arrived on tuesday and informed the soldiers to stop harassing the citizens of nimule. the tension slowly dissipated.
- rumor has it that a local “big man” by the name of kisire, who is a madi and who has a reputation for murdering both his enemies and members of his own family, was responsible for the disappearance of the soldiers.
- people say “a vehicle came and picked up the men” as if the machine itself kidnapped the soldiers. the car was said to have gone down to the banks of the nile river.
- among members of each and every tribe there is a belief in demons that reside underneath the water. some say you can contact them if you dial a certain number on your cell phone.
- kisire is widely thought to have intimate relations with the devil.
- but the nile’s murky depths and and kisire don’t have exclusive rights to darkness. it’s everywhere. it’s inside each one of us. and right now it’s calling this wounded community to a feast.
ii. tender spots in my handwritten journal
October 12th: But there is a difference between turning the other cheek and sticking your head in the sand. As I write these words in my notebook I’m sitting on a bench outside the Kololo Primary School’s administrative office, awaiting a meeting of the School Management Committee, of which I am the co-chairman (a position that was thrust upon me in the same manner that a Sudanese matriarch compels a visitor to eat food or else risk causing a unforgivable offense). I’m surrounded by about twenty children in their white and blue, vaguely British uniforms, and they’re staring at me as if I’m an animal in a zoo, performing some curious task with my hands. I know that I wrote that first sentence for them, because the events of the past week – even the past year – are approaching a crisis point where their lives and the lives of every other soul in this town could end up trapped, by brutally ignorant or sadistically selfish forces, in the crossfire.
I want to believe that violence, whether on the scale of a Goya desastre or a Michelangelo chapel-flood, will be avoided. But as I wait for the meeting to commence and I look at all these kids crowded into classrooms that are nothing more than wood posts holding up thatch roofs, I keep seeing the squad of soldiers rumbling across these same grounds last week, running over a student or two, and propelling themselves forward like a living, shouting, armed and ready machine of terror. And that last word, though overused and retrofitted to justify vengeful and flawlessly executed instances of itself, is the right one in this context.
October 13th: Last night, exactly one week after the shooting death of the Olubo musician and the disappearance of the SPLA soldiers, a group of military messengers drove around town in a pick-up truck, announcing through a crappy PA system that there was a curfew. Have we crossed that line into martial law, again? This morning they had another declaration: anyone with a firearm needs to report to the barracks so that the weapon will be registered.
I later learned that the announcement was specifically directed at the wounded veterans, many of whom have become loose cannons. Many are no longer attached to the barracks and they are usually the last ones to be paid by the government. Their unfair treatment was the catalyst behind the town wide protest last August, and it seems that some of the higher-ups in the military don’t appreciate their unpredictability. When the vets assembled at the barracks, the commander said they didn’t need to register their weapons; they needed to relinquish them. The vets refused.
Friction seems to sprouting from every quarter, even from within the SPLA itself.
iii. a way forward
That same morning, October 13th, I spoke first with Akera Emmy, one of our youth leaders in the church, and then with Pastor Juma about the current state of affairs. I talked about the pattern that I feel has begun to develop over the course of the past year, and as I spoke the pattern itself seem to come into even sharper focus.
In July, a Dinka man with a history of mental illness trespassed on the Merlin residential compound in the neighborhood known as Motoyo. (Merlin is the UK non-profit that is assisting the Nimule hospital, and its residential compound accommodates their senior medical staff.) The man was shot and killed by the watchman on duty. In retaliation, a mob composed of Dinka citizens and soldiers descended on the hospital itself, which is located near our home in Kololo. For a full day, the group would not allow any vehicles to enter the hospital. Doctors were turned away with violent shouts and hurled stones, which left their patients under the management of the nurses on duty. Medicine was given to the patients, but for those in dire need there was no doctor in sight. A day later, Merlin agreed to pay what I assume was a rather hefty sum of money to the family of the man who was killed, and the mob disbanded.
In August, SPLA soldiers, led by wounded Dinka veterans, effectively put the entire town under martial law, forcing businesses to close and halting all public and private transportation. This systematic shut-down was the soldiers’ way of demanding that they receive their long-delayed salaries. And within 24 hours the government responded and assured the SPLA that the money was coming.
Finally, we saw the SPLA’s unwarranted acts of violence and intimidation against the civilian population at the start of October. I told Juma that these events are showing us something, and even though everything seems normal right now, the soldiers have clearly demonstrated that they can and will take the law into their own hands at anytime. To what extent are they capable and willing to exercise this power? And the tension between the tribes hasn’t ended – it’s merely gone underground for the time being.
I told him I felt that our church and all the various congregations in Nimule ought to have a unified voice to address these issues. I don’t know exactly what the churches in Nimule could do to help, but they cannot be silent. If nothing is done then we’ll be partly responsible for any of the blood that’s shed. And I honestly feel that an armed conflict is not that far off.
Juma agreed with everything I said or perhaps threw at him. He mentioned that in the past few years violent tribal clashes have erupted in other parts of South Sudan. He saw the same brutal potential here in Nimule, and he said that the current dilemma would be one the topics at an upcoming meeting between local leaders, which was being organized by the Governor and Commissioner of Magwi County. Juma planned to attend the meeting and said he would inform me of how it turned out.
Obviously, God wasn’t only speaking into my heart, for none of us own the exclusive rights to darkness, or the Lord’s revelatory light.
iv. bulletpoints from the end
- kisire wasn’t the only one fingered in the disappearance of the dinka soldiers. his brother angala was also a suspect.
- angala is a store manager at the nimule barracks. the two soldiers who vanished happen to be assigned to his store.
- angala led a protest on the same day in which the soldiers went missing. he marched from the town center to the barracks with other outraged madis to raise some hell over the purchase of the land by the somalian businessman.
- the commander of the nimule garrison came out to meet the protestors on the road and angala vented his anger toward what he saw as an unjust acquisition of traditionally madi territory by a foreigner.
- angala was arrested in connection with missing soldiers, but released in mid-october after the men were discovered within nimule. the explanation for their disappearance isn’t clear. however, they themselves testify to the fact that they weren’t kidnapped.
- madis believer the disappearance was staged in order to imprison and therefore shut up angala, an outspoken opponent of the dinkas continued presence in nimule.
- the governor and commissioner of magwi county asked the two tribes, madi and dinka, to put their concerns and complaints into writing and submit them in preparation for a meeting on the 17th of october.
- the meeting was relatively successful and the parties agreed to postpone the resolution of the land issue until a government committee could be set up to deal with it.
- in the meantime, the sudan council of churches will hold a conference in november with the main aim of bandaging the still open wounds.
- the devil’s appeal to come and feast hasn’t been drowned out completely. there are many voices now and we’ll see which one the people choose to follow.
v. my minor role in the future of this town
Akera has been taking down the minutes from the meetings that he and Juma are attending in preparation for the November conference. He asked me to transcribe them to a computer, because he doesn’t know how to type and because, You know, Kelly, you are one of us now.
I feel I can’t describe to you how much his words mean to me. Even though I find him incredibly annoying at times, I believe he was being sincere.
He sat beside me as I typed out the minutes, and when we came to the list of names for the documentation committee for the conference, he told me to add my name, which I agreed to do. The Community Peace and Reconciliation Conference began yesterday afternoon. I enlisted Emmanuel Okot to help me in videotaping the proceedings, which was a smart move, because I was possessed by some kind of stomach bug and had to excuse myself a couple times so as take full advantage of the conference facilities. Nevertheless, I’m feeling rather dapper today, and I believe the meeting is starting to move into territory wherein the participants will either find solutions or renew their divisions . . .








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