Seed of South Sudan Read Online Free PDF

before, and then slept for a couple of hours, rose and ate some kind of food, maybe sorghum grains or corn we’d been able to find, then left at four in the morning to walk for six more hours. During the middle of the day, we rested under a tree well off the path where others might find us.
    Often I found we were under a tree that was like a tree from my own village. Other times I noticed that there were mountains in the distance, which I had not seen from my own village. The land always had interesting things to see. I’d rise before dawn as usual with the others, have some boiled grain over fire, and clean my teeth with ashes from the fire (we Dinka use ashes for toothpaste and many other purposes, often to decorate our skin for ceremonies). Once or twice I remember I’d be sleepily making my way down the path. All of us would be quiet, still a little asleep, and the sunrise would start filling the land to the east with light. That was a good feeling, because it told us we were going in the right direction—Ethiopia was east, where the sun rose. And there was such light over tall fields of drying grasses that my breath hardly came. With the heat of the day yet to come, I could enjoy the beauty of my country. It would be enough to help me move my legs and walk fast, to feel that slightly cool air and see the slanted golden light of sunrise over the fields and paths I would need to walk for the next several hours.
    But most of the time, there was no time to think of beauty. There was only desperation.

Two
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Walking in the Wild

    A man and his wife were out in the bush walking to a village near their home, passing through thickets of trees and high grass. They had their baby with them, the wife carrying it in a sturdy calfskin sling across her body. All of a sudden, an elephant appeared in the forest, all by itself. It charged toward the man and woman, and grabbed the man and wrapped him with his trunk, raised him high in the air, and then threw him to the ground, killing him. The woman ran, but the elephant caught up with her and tossed her in the air. As it did so, the baby and heavy sling flew off her body and the skin was caught on the limb of a tree. Villagers came by and found the baby, and it lived, though both parents died.
    This incident took place in my village before the war, and I grew up hearing it as a caution for watching out for solitary animals. It was a story I related to my companions often during our long journey. Animals in groups are usually not a problem, because they are following a dominant leader, or staying together for protection. A herd or a group of elephants doesn’t present a danger because they are following the leader, but an animal alone is another matter. A solitary animal most often has been forced out of the herd because it’s violent and a danger to the others, and it’s a great risk to humans.
    Wild animals, including lions and hyenas and elephants, as well as snakes and scorpions, were our greatest predators on our journey, as were hunger and thirst. Sometimes other people were predators as well, but I will tell more later about the human threats. It took a great deal of knowledge to assess how to deal with each of these. As we walked, we shared stories like this and discussed who and what to look out for. That was the way we survived.

    Majok on 2010 trip near Pulkar on a path similar to those they took while fleeing burning villages in 1987.

    Villages throughout southern Sudan were burning, and everyone was fleeing, when I started out with my uncle and later found Kau. People were frantic, trying to get away from the war, just as we were. Some carried bundles, mothers towed children by hand and on the breast, fathers herded an occasional cow until they finally had to leave it by the side of the path. Most carried gourds full of grain and water for sustenance. Most were Dinka, but did not speak our dialect. If people we encountered did not speak