My Life History during the Civil War in Sudan
I was born in Bahr El Ghazal, Yirol province in southern Sudan. In 1984 my village was attacked by government soldiers from the north. I was very young. The village was first attacked in the early morning hours while we were sleeping. The government soldiers began to burn my village. I was up early because I was hungry and I was looking for something to eat. I saw the fire and called my parents. Our house was elevated to protect children from lions, leopards and rhinos. We climbed down to the ground and the soldiers started shooting us. They killed my father in front of me with bullet. My father went down and I saw blood, but he did not have a knife wound so I did not understand why he was bleeding. I had never seen guns before. My mother, who was next to my father, told me to run to the bush to hide from the soldiers. This was the last time I saw my parents.
Everybody was running and crying, including the goats and cows, because the village was burning. If the soldiers caught a whole family, they put them in their house, spread petrol around the house, and burned everyone inside. They did this because they did not want to waste bullets.
In the bush, I met different people from my village. I wanted to return home, but the people from my village refused to go back again. They told me that if I were to go back, I would be killed. I cried a lot because I saw blood and because I did not know where I was going. I met Deng, a man who knew my father. He took care of me because he knew my parents and was strong. He told me not to cry because if I cried inside the bush, the soldiers would hear my voice and kill me. He also said I could not cry because the lions and the leopards would find me and eat me. I had to be quiet because the government soldiers were still following us and shooting us.
Deng took care of me. In the night, he gave me his t-shirt because I did not have clothes. He rolled me up in his t-shirt and it was very big for me. After the rain stopped, Deng made a fire because I was very cold. My teethe were chattering I was so cold. He put me between the fire and himself and told me to sleep. He wanted to protect me. In the night, a snake came and entered Deng's pant leg. It crawled up to his neck, but Deng was sleeping. Since Deng wanted to change his sleeping position, he made a move and the snake bit him in the neck. This is when I woke up.
I started to cry and that is when people at nearby fires saw me. Then they started to cry out "Snake, snake" and to run. Something was coming out of Deng's mouth. He was dead. After this, another guy picked me up and ran with me. This guy was running with his wife and did not know where his own children were. He and his wife took care of me. Together, we crossed the Sahara Desert. I never knew their names.
There was little water in the Sahara, and many people died. Some people, to save themselves, would drink their own urine. Some people would eat mud so that their throats would not close. In the Sahara there are no trees, no shade, just grass. Even if these people gave me food, I would not eat. I cried for my mother. They would tell me that my mother was coming to meet me, but she never came. They tricked me so that I would move along with them and not cry. Sometimes, they would tell me that my mother was waiting for me ahead to get me to go. It took us two months.
So we crossed the Sahara and arrived at Pochalla, a southern Christian Sudanese camp. We were met by hostile tribes and northern soldiers. There were so many of us. We did not stay there because the people there tried to kill us for our clothes. The hostile tribe tried to take the youngest children away to raise them. The man and the woman were still carrying me, so we ran away together.
We wanted to go to Ethiopia and we had to cross another river. Since the riverbed was dry, we had no trouble crossing it. We arrived at Panyido. When we arrived, there was no shelter. It was forest. We settled there and there was no food, no U.N. May people coming from Sudan arrived here. Someone was sent to speak with the Ethiopian government for help. At that time, many people died because we were not used to the food or the water. If we drank the water, we got diarrhea. If we ate the food, we got diseases. So the people ate leaves from the trees and trapped birds for food. After a month, the U.N. arrived. It was 1989. So, I was on the run for five years.
After the U.N. came, there was a lot of food and clothes. After seven months, they opened a school. I studied the alphabet in kindergarten, but I didn't care about school because I was thinking about the past. While I was in Panyido, the Ethiopian rebels, who did not want the Sudanese in their country, went to Khartoum in Sudan to train as soldiers.
We stayed at Panyido until 1991. At the time, there were twenty-two thousand Sudanese orphans at Panyido. All of us were students. Students were separated into 16 groups of 2000. My teacher was responsible for 100 students. Then we got the news from the Ethiopian government. All Sudanese had to leave Ethiopia since the Ethiopian rebels had returned to Ethiopia and were fighting with the government. To stop the unrest in Ethiopia, the Ethiopian government told the Sudanese refugees to leave.
So each teacher took their students and left again for Sudan. It was the rainy season. This means that it was winter in Africa. The rivers were flooded and so was the road. This was a dangerous time to travel because lions and snakes would prey on humans. There were many mosquitoes which brought malaria. Plus, the Ethiopian rebels were following us and shooting at us. We walked without rest until we reached the Gilo River which borders Sudan.
This river, which was dry when we left, was now completely flooded. If you did not know how to swim, you could not cross. A lot of people died at that river - families, small children - because they could not swim and because the rebels were shooting at them. My teachers put the luggage in sheets of plastic. The plastic floated on the water. I did not know how to swim, so my teacher tied my hands to the top of the luggage.
My teacher pushed the luggage across the river, and I floated with it. My hands and my head were above the water, but my body was below. The rebels were shooting all around me. And it continued to rain.
I was lucky because I made it across the river with my teacher. Other people were not so lucky. If you said you knew how to swim, then people would wait until you went in the water and then they would jump on you because they thought you could take them across. But this did not work because there is no way to swim when many people are on top of you. Many people drowned.
My teacher untied me and we ran together to Pochalla, which is at the Sudan border. It was still raining this whole time. This meant that most of the land was flooded and there were few places for the refugees to go. At Pochalla, the Sudanese rebels were waiting to help us, but they had no food at all. So we started to eat the leaves from three types of trees: wak, afour, and cuiec.
The U.N. could not reach us because of the floods. So we waited at Pochalla for three months without food. Many were crying because they were hungy. Many died because no one had mosquito nets. The mosquito nets were necessary to protect us from the mosquitoes which brought disease.
The Red Cross finally reached us by airplane. Their airplanes were small and could only carry six bags of beans, medicine, and mosquito netting. They dropped off the supplies and took away the seriously ill people. They came three times a day. The Red Cross could not bring a larger plane because it would get stuck in the mud.
Finally, a month later, the ground was dry enough for the Red Cross to drop off the food and supplies. We live this way for three months.
Then, the Northern Sudanese government heard that the refugees were in Pochalla, so they sent soldiers to kill us. The soldiers shot people at night. I ran with my teacher and the Red Cross, but again others were not so lucky. The sick people and the unlucky boys were taken to Khartoum
We wanted to reach the Kenyan border, so we crossed the Sahara Desert. The Red Cross made stations across the desert. Each station had water. Some people walked, but since I was so young, I was taken in a Red Cross truck.
One month later, we arrived in Nairus, which is the last town in Sudan. Nairus is also very near Kapoeta, a town of Sudanese rebels. While we were in Nairus, the government attacked Kapoeta. When this happened, the Red Cross made us run across the border to Kenya to a place called Lokichiogio. We stayed there for one month but it was dangerous because it was close to Kapoeta. So the U.N. decided to move the lost boys to Kakuma Refugee Camp. The year was 1992. Kakuma was a very dry place and there was lots of mud and wind.
We were settled there. At Kakuma, the U.N. built a school, shelter, and a hospital, but we still lacked food, water and medicines. I lived at Kakuma for nine years before being selected to come to the United States in 2001.
Charles is working with a former teacher on writing a book about his life story. A participant in both the Lincoln and CAP Programs, Charles is a 2005 graduate of Lincoln-Sudbury High School and currently a student at ITT Technical Institute in Burlington, MA.
