My Juba story – in Southern Sudan
In August 1977 I had a valuable
chance to visit Southern Sudan, (Juba town) as a university student, among the
very first batch to be enrolled in the University of Juba. It was the first time for me to see the south,
only 5 years after Addis Ababa accord had been concluded in 1972. The Agreement speeded up the establishment of
the University, however the idea goes back to Arkwait conference. By then northerners who live in the south,
Juba in particular, are merchants, teachers, soldiers, and some civil servants,
whereas Southerners who live in the north are either politicians and high
ranking officials, or daily – paid employees in different activities, life goes
normal on both parts of the country after the cessation of war (1972).
However, 15 years later when I went
back to Juba, (1991), I found the (normal) life
deteriorated to unimaginable levels; inadequate food supply, zero electric
power, daily curfew applied more or less towards sunset, and empty streets
except from military vechiles and terrified
(few) passers-by. Then again two years
later in 1994, I was there only to see
that half of the citizens were in military uniform, or so the town appeared to
me. However according to my 1997 visit
it seems as if half of the Sudanese army was in Juba, as military operations
were intensifying.
While wondering around Juba streets
in 1994, I came across a handful of people, who used to pass their time playing
around arrays of small holes where they place the play-stones. During my (more than) 6 months stay there, they have been playing
daily from sunrise to sunset as I pass by towards Yei Park street, almost on
daily basis, footing from the university down to the centre of the town. I asked myself whether those middle age able
bodied men really have families to look after?, and then afterwards I decided to ask them just jokingly
if they could answer me, to
my surprise they’ve promptly
responded to my questions, and I was made to
understand that as economic
activity in Juba reached a standstill point,
they have lost their employment chances,
therefore, they don’t dare
to go home empty-handed
of food and of
other basic necessities. They would
prefer to go home late at night after their children have slept, and wake up as
early as possible before anybody could see them. And I was embarrassed to have asked questions
that provoked bitter stories, however educative they were to me. Just to strengthen my will and determination
to further explore the burden ordinary men and women suffer because of the war.
However, towards the year 2000, while
visiting some relatives in Omdurman (the old city not the suburbs), I came
across a team of teen agers playing football, exclusively of southern origin,
using Omdurman Arabic, full of enthusiasm and vitality. The scene doesn't seem to have drawn
anybody's attention in the neighborhood, however should that happen only 20
years before, I can assure the response would have been very different, if at
all that was imaginable by then. On the
other hand, some years before, during my stay at Kosti (White Nile State) I
used to observe some southern ladies, who used to do some domestic jobs in the
evenings, after the end of the working day, so beautiful and smart, walking in
groups, happy and healthy, clean and decent, to their homes in the nearby
village called "Dar – Asalam", officially known as 'displaced people
settlement'. The scene did not seem
again to have been drawing anybody's attention in the city. However, to me the case reflected a deep
change in the attitude of northern societies towards southerners, and as well a
similar change in the image of southerners towards themselves as ordinary
members of a wider society, and not, necessarily always been looked down upon. That understanding is not an over night
affair, it is rather an outcome of decades - long of co-existence, inter –
action and mutual interests, effected through displacement experience due to
the on-going war, by then.
Not far away from my residence in the
capital city of the (While Nile State)
Kosti, over time and as years pass by, I started to observe some small
northern girls, while playing outdoors, reciting and dancing the same way
southerners do sing and dance influenced by either T.V. programs or impressed
by neighboring southerners in the surrounding area. This scene also was of no particular
significance to whoever passes by, other than myself, who saw in that a warm
gesture of cultural normalization, as a result and because of a growing spirit
of reciprocal acceptance and familiarity between migrating southerners and host
societies in northern urban centers.
Since then I started to develop
interest and concern with probing into the societal dynamic at work because of
and due to circumstances established under war conditions. Bearing in mind that both root – causes and
impacts of war emanate from and end at the particular society. And as societal impacts of war are more real
than apparent, we have to embark on producing in-depth analysis of those
impacts, and most important of all to forecast the future and expected effects
of them on population characters.
Much research work has been done on
the political repercussions of the southern problem, and much more has been
devoted to study displacement phenomena and the related side – effects, however
as both deserve merit and value, there remains an actual need to supplement
all, with a slightly different angle of approach towards the same problem. I believe it is of vital importance, if, we
are to draw future strategies and plans.
We have to consider some variables shaping the current population
dynamics; however less apparent they actually look. A proposed quarterly national strategy has to
assess how the country will look like in the coming 25 years in terms of effects
of war – disability on production rates, and the effects of war orphans or
traumatized on general education policy and standard? The co-relation between vagrancy and Juvenile
delinquency? And a whole package of
inter – related societal mechanisms working beneath the population
surface. However, that's hardly
accessible without due regard to the subjects this book, and hopefully other
similar and more scholarly contributions would cover.
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