MOVING SUDANESE STORIES:
VOICES THAT CONTEST THE DOMINANT REFUGEE DISCOURSE(S)
DEEPA RAJKUMAR
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
GRADUATE PROGRAM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE
YORK UNIVERSITY,
TORONTO, ONTARIO
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14-1 Canada Moving Sudanese Stories: Voices that Contest the Dominant Refugee Discourse(s)
By Deepa Rajkumar
a dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of York University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
© 2009
Permission has been granted to: a) YORK UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES to lend or sell copies of this dissertation in paper, microform or electronic formats, and b) LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA to reproduce, lend, distribute, or sell copies of this dissertation anywhere in the world in microform, paper or electronic formats and to authorize or procure the reproduction, loan, distribution or sale of copies of this dissertation anywhere in the world in micro form, paper or electronic formats.
The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the dissertation nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's written permission. Abstract
This dissertation is a composition, of stories, many stories, of journeys, of people as they moved from Sudan to Canada, confronting and contesting the dominant refugee discourse(s). Stories that also challenge the form and content of academic writing. Form builds on content, moves away from certain academic conventions, and centers the storytellers themselves, who tell their stories of moving, on their own terms. Storyteller- centric stories decentre the conventional academic author as the author.
Speaking dialogically, they engage, as persons, speakers, with one another, with me, and with the readers. About meanings: given, subverted and opened up as possibilities, to think and be different. Not fitting into the framings, which reproduce certain people, as refugees, as passive, victims, voiceless, or even threatening. In dialogical conversations that take place through single-voiced stories of the storytellers; through interviews with storytellers and those who asked questions of my project; and through mixed-voiced first person conversations.
Questioning. Performances of authorship, readership, participation, and obj edification.
Through contestations, conversations.
For possibilities.
Telling a different story, living a different story.
iv With my father, Who knew, and did, differently. The same. Simply, complex. Accepting, people.
For those, This matters to.
v Acknowledgements
To the innumerable people who supported me in myriad ways through the years it took me to complete my dissertation. Some of whom stayed from beginning to end, some who were there in the beginning, in the middle, at the end. Who came and went, stayed and didn't. When I needed them, when I asked, when I didn't. In academic and non-academic ways, mixed together.
To Prabh Rabindra Rajkumar, my dearest father, who passed on May 11 2009, the day I almost submitted my dissertation. Who supported me through anything and everything in life, especially in breaking established rules that curtailed life. Who understood me, more than anyone else. Without whom my life is half, and who would still have pushed me to make it one and a half. With humour, and awareness of the other. With others, humbly, proudly, groundedly in an ungrounded way. In moving.
To Gerald Kernerman, my supervisor, who some friends have teased me as being my adopted parent, for his immense support that went beyond the role of a supervisor, or maybe one that actually filled it completely. Finding him made me relaxed, and pushed me to put my raw ideas and writing in sync with my political project.
To Peter Nyers and Honor Ford-Smith, also members of my supervisory committee, for their valuable guidance and backing.
To Maroussia Ahmed (External), Gamal Abdel-Shehid (Internal External) and Shannon Bell (Dean's Representative), members of my examining committee, for their engagement and belief in my project.
To those I met with a bit, and gained a lot: Ambrose Beny, VY Mudimbe, Gustavo Esteva.
To those who directly helped me with the dissertation process in their understanding: Susan Henders, David Mutimer, Ato Sekyi-otu Anna Agathangelou, Deborah Barndt, Elizabeth Dauphinee Leah Vosko, Valerie Preston, Robert Latham And Marlene Quesenberry. Among the many.
To Nadia Hasan and Jabin Jacob, whose were also my editors, proofreaders. They had fun. Or so they said.
To the hundreds of people from the Sudanese communities in Canada, and through them in Sudan, who took me into their communities, into their homes, and into their lives. Including, and especially, those who shared stories with me. About whom, through whom and with whom I have written this dissertation.
VI To the many many people, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, even strangers, who helped me along the way. Sometimes in agreement and sometimes not. Directly, indirectly. Abdelhamid, Abdulkareem, Absheri, Adau, Ajay, Albert, Anju, Antoni, Anuradha, Apidech, Arafa, Archna, Ash, Atchara, Augustine, Ayung, Bena, Beig, Benjamin Bol, Benjamin, Bhaweshi, Bic, Bikrum, Brian, Buay, Burak, Bwogo, Caglayan, Charles, Daniel, Daudi, David Lukudu, David Lugeron, David Majok, Deepa, Deng Leng, Deng Domac, Deng Alor, Dennis, Derek, Deny, Dubey, Duoth, Edwina, Eknko, Elfadil, Elfatih, Elizabeth, Emmanuel Kembe, Gamal, Gamal Adam, Gatluak Deng, Gokul, Hakim, Hillary Adeba, Hussan, Nori, Isa, Isabella, Jacob Karaba, James, James Biel, James Choul, Jayanthi, Jim Nugent, John Aban, John Carlaw, John Chhetri, John Jok, John Loku, Jong-Chul, Jorge, Joseph, Jossy, Joyce, Juliane, Jun, June, Kamala Narayanan, Katsu, Keak, Khalid Abdelwahab, Khalid Ahmed, Kon, Kuel, Kuer, Kwongo, Lam, Laura, Levish, Lomumba, Machar, Machar Buol, Mading, Madut, Maita, Majok, Malual, Manyang, Manzar, Margaret, Manut, Marial, Mark, Martin Ochaya, Mawien, Melanie, Mervet, Michael, Miriam, Mourn, Morgan, Mutwakil, Muhammad Iqbal, Nabarun, Namrata, Naoko, Nashwa, Natalia, Naveena, Nelson, Nishant, Nithya, Nyandeng, Nyakong, Nyalela, Olura, Omme, Omprakash, Orik, Pal, Papiti, Peter Opio, Peter Longwala, Peter Van Wonterghem, Portia, Preethy, Prem, Ragamalika, Ravinder, Richard, Ritika, Ritu, Ruben, Saad, Sabit, Sadia, Sai, Salil, Salimah, Salwa, Sandeep, Sarah, Saritha, Secil, Senthil, Simon Keat, Smita, Sudarshana, Sumanth, Suresh Paul, Sushila, Tony, Tor Both, Tsugumi, Tut, Valarmathi, Vasavi, Vipul, Volen, Wani, William, Yalini, Yasir, Yien Puc, Zahir, Zuba. And to, especially the young(er) ones: Raan, Pajok, Nyaluak, Chamrin, Vishav, Nyandeng, Arual, Afongwa, Kiyang, Luwa, Ibrahim, Arul, Shagun, Shubham and Shivani.
To those who are my immediate family: my mother Pramila Rajkumar, my sister Divya Rajkumar, my cousins Sidharth Kumar, Clifton Noble, Jefferton Noble and Simanda Noble. And the rest, grandparents, great aunts and great uncles, uncles and aunts, cousins. Who accept me as I am, not asking for more but believing in me.
And to those who passing me by, did me deeds that helped sustain me, inspire me, in all kinds of ways.
Deepa Rajkumar Toronto 23 June 2009
vn Summarized Table of Contents
Preface xvii
Introductions: To all of us 1-52
Contexts: Sudan 53-145
Living in and leaving Sudan 146-204
Journeys 205-317
In Canada 318-539
A hope: Going back 540-552
Conclusions: To all of this 553-563
You can see, easily see what I am here. 564
Appendix: Conversations 565-573
Glossary: A selective referring 574-578
Bibliography: As it is 579-587
viii Detailed Table of Contents, Stories, Journeys
Preface xvii-xxii
Introductions: To all of us 1-52 -A Story. A long story. A never ending story. Many stories. 1 A place. Many places. Moving stories. -Who are you? 2-5 -Telling Stories. Theorizing method. 6-9 Osama: I am a regular Sudanese person born to a worker man, 10-11 a very simple, religious man, and a simple woman. Ajak: My father left to join Sudanese People's Liberation Army. 11-13 Santino: I was six years old when my dad left and went to 13-14 London, to study more. Athaia: I am from Yei. I grew up in Juba. And I stayed in 14-17 Khartoum too. Khalid: For me this question of going somewhere never had the 17-19 time to come up. Elizabeth: I came away because there was a war in my country. 19-21 Amani: The problem started, I think, in 1983. 22-24 Alek: I am from Abyei. It is in Kordofan. But that's the problem. 25-27 Lubanga: The schools were highly politicized. 27-30 -But, should I also not get to know you? Will I always be an 31 object? Interview with Elizabeth: Do you think this was like a proper 31-35 interview? Interview: And, what is your project? Could you elaborate? 36-47 Interview: But, are you not claiming to be an author here, right 48-52 now? Questioning methods.
Contexts: Sudan 53-145 -Hearing. Telling. Seeing. Believing. Knowing. Not knowing. 53-87 Saying. Lubanga: Marginalization in Sudan did not occur just because of 88-89 bad policies. It was deliberately planned, a clear case of policies. Osama: In Sudan the problem is corruption. 89-92 Lubanga: Besides, there are tensions in the South that benefited 92-95 the Sudan government as well. Elizabeth: For us Sudanese or Southern people there are a lot of 95-97 ways that people have been killed, if you look back. Interview with Elizabeth: / know nothing about politics. 98-99 Osama: Another part of the bad situation between the North and 99-100 the South, actually between the centre of Sudan and the rest, is the mentality in the North to follow the Arab League ideas. Khalid: Arab is a contested term. 100-107
IX Osama: The Arab in Sudan is a mentality, a way of dealing with 107-112 people, like being superior. Athaia: I have a lot of friends who are Arab. 112-114 Khalid: We meet people from the South on a daily basis but for 114-117 some strange reasons the South always seems far away from us. Lubanga: And there are some Sudanese fellows here who will 118-121 talk that there was no democracy in the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement. Osama: The leaders now, from the South, are separatists. 121-122 Lubanga: In our times we defined the problem as the government. 122-123 Khalid: And actually we, who are living in the North, don't really 124-127 differentiate much the people from the West and South. Amani: Darfur is a new thing. 127-128 Khalid: This, now, is really a transitional kind of stage in the 128-132 history of Sudan. Osama: In some part I am happy about this kind of government 133 we have, all the issues it exploded like in one shot, on the 30th of June 1989. Lubanga: The Southern Sudan situation is going to take a very 133-134 long time to resolve. Osama: I really don't feel Sudan is going to separate. 134 Athaia: I think I am not looking for the separation of the South 134-135 and the North, it's early. -I think, here again, the problem is the (nation) state, any 136-137 (nation) state. Interview: But, you have not really spoken 'a lot'. As an author. 138-145
Living in and leaving Sudan 146-204 -Our story is all the same. We all left for the same reason, the war. 146-148 Really? Osama: We, gained democracy through the big revolution, 149-156 April Intifada often days starting from 26th March 1985. Khalid: When '89 came everything in Sudan seemed to 156-161 completely fall apart. Athaia: My husband got arrested, in 1993, because he was 161-163 related to the church. Alek: They caught my passport. 163-167 Ajak: We suffered after my father left in 1984. 168-169 Alek: I came to Khartoum in 1987. 169-173 Khalid: In attempting to actually get out of the country you have 173-174 to do a lot of work. Athaia: It is difficult to cross the border. That's why we needed 174-177 someone. Osama: After I reached Cairo I heard this big thing they were 177-183 talking about, me. It was one of the funniest things. Elizabeth: In '91 war broke down in Itang. People moved back to 183-184
x Sudan from Ethiopia, traveling by foot. Ajak: In '91 we traveled to Sudan, and then to the border of 184-186 Sudan and Kenya. Amani: In '91 my husband just brought us to Sudan from 186-188 Ethiopia, put us down and left immediately to go back. -We walked 189-200 Interview: But, how are you? A reflection. 201-204
Journeys 205-317 -Through the international refugee regime. UNHCR. 205-215 Lubanga: I left Sudan in September 1962. 216-217 Athaia: We had different ideas in going to Ethiopia. 217-219 Amani: When you are young and the first time you leave your 219-221 family it is hard. Athaia: We got to Teseney. Now we had to go to locate the UN 221-227 office, in Asmara. Ajak: I lived in Ethiopia for a few years. 227-229 Amani: At the refugee camp the thing that hurt me the most was 229-232 that you have to go to the Red Cross and the United Nations and line up in order to get a cup of corn, a cup of beans. Athaia: In Asmara, it was like June '96 when we started to 232-235 receive SPLA soldiers who were getting wounded in the war, around Kassala and Port Sudan. Amani: In the camp, most of the women and the girls trained, 235-236 maybe if the SPLA needed them they would go fight. Ajak: I went to school in Itang. 236-237 Amani: I worked in the office, the women's association. 237-241 Elizabeth: In Itang people were mostly divided into zones for 241-242 tribes, but sometimes they were mixed. Athaia: In Eritrea they didn't divide people into zones, based 242-247 on tribes. Ajak: From Itang I went for high school to a boarding school 247-248 in Kenya. Elizabeth: We took a bus from Addis Ababa to Kenya, to 248-249 Moyale, at the border between Kenya and Ethiopia. Amani: When we entered Kenya, it was just a jungle. 249-250 Lubanga: It's in Kenya where the word refugee now applied to 251 -254 me. Alek: I was doing Theology, in Abassiya, in Cairo. 254-256 Osama: I first stayed in Egypt for a year. 256-258 Alek: My first job in Egypt was as a babysitter. 258-271 Santino: I was working there in a hotel, in a hospital. 271-273 Osama: I started to work with the Sudanese Human Rights 274-277 Organization, Cairo branch as a cleaner. Athaia: The Eritrean government said we don't want UN office 278-283 in Eritrea, in twenty four hours.
XI Alek: The first time, the UN did something bad for the Sudanese, 284-286 in Egypt. Athaia: Our protection officer was so good, a gentleman. 286-291 Lubanga: I met three teachers, Canadian, Australian and British 291-293 at Machakos Secondary School where I was doing my A Level. Amani: Jim asked my husband if he wanted to go to Canada. 294 Alek: The Canadian embassy took a lot more people than UN, 294-302 and nobody was going to the UN. Khalid: I never wanted to come to the west, to Canada. 302-305 Santino: The US was fun, so nice. 305-306 Khalid: Our first shock in this whole process was when Amin 306-308 took us to his house, in the US. Santino: When I heard that in Canada it's free to study then why 309 was I going to waste money all the time, better go to Canada. Khalid: We had to go to New York because the train goes 309-311 through it and then you get off at Buffalo. It's where you apply for refugee status. -And another story ends/begins. A Justification. 312-314 -How is conviction enough? Readers' conversations. 315-317
In Canada 318-539 -All immigrants here are refugees. 318 Khalid: First, at the Canadian Consulate at the US border they 318-321 asked us a couple of strange questions. -When I first came we went to the reception house. 321 -323 Khalid: I don't know if anybody will tell you this but I will tell 324-325 you. This is a process applicable to Sudanese refugees. Osama: I first came to Windsor. 326-328 Alek: We went to Winnipeg first. 328-330 Athaia: First I was not here in Toronto, I was in Saskatoon. 330-332 Elizabeth: I never went to school before, I started it here. 332-336 Amani: If I didn't go to the refugee camps I don't think I would 337-338 survive in Canada. Lubanga: My story may not be typical of Sudanese refugees in 338-341 Canada because I was sponsored by Canadians and I was on my own. -I came here through WUSC, World University Service of Canada 342-343 Ajak: I went to the University of Regina and did my degree in 343-345 Social Work. Santino: When I came to Canada I went to school. It was nice. 345-347 -When we came here I opened the IOM bag in the plane. Ya, they 348 told me not to till I reach Canada. I was a 'New Worker', brought here to work, do the jobs they don't want to do. Santino: There we got like everybody, Sudanese guys who are 348-349 doctors, teachers, whatever.
xn Alek: Everyone, when you come from there, you come happy. 350-351 Elizabeth: Many people are not happy staying here. 352-353 Lubanga: If you look at the refugees who came here after World 353-355 War II, they were mainly from Eastern Europe. The stories are identical. -They didn't know what to do with me. 355 Osama: I decided to stay in Ottawa, just to go to school again, 356-357 without any strong or good plans, just that I have to do something. Amani: I started intermediate classes. 357-358 Khalid: Sometimes you need a sense of humour to go through 358-359 this insanity. -They tell you Canada is a good place and it's up to you, if you 360 work hard, you can make it. Amani: When you come here they say you have to get a job, you 360-361 need experience, you need to have a diploma. Khalid: I remember when I went to this job placement centre 361-372 called CALL. It doesn't really reflect anything because they all assume that you really know nothing. -When they came to the camps, especially the Canadians, they 373-381 were asking for those who finished high school. -I came here for school . 382 Lubanga: I put my effort on my studies and education, a lot more 382-386 than some of the Sudanese or African people I now see here. Khalid: But we came here as nobodies. 386-387 Lubanga: There are certain communities, let me take our own 387-389 community, the Southern Sudanese community, they are totally unwilling to use the experiences of people, of their own members within the community, people like myself, who came here a long time ago, who went through the school system. Alek: The good thing here is for the kids. Sometimes the school 389-395 is good. But when kids are growing here they adopt the culture from here. It's a bad too, with the parents. Amani: I am happy that my kids, my girls, came here. Both of 395-396 them are now in university, they got an education. Elizabeth: It can be frustrating sometimes but many kids they 396-399 have to take it, ESL. Lubanga: A lot of it is for us to do it. 399-402 Interview with Ajak: I don't know how long you were in 403-421 Calgary, if you have seen that a lot of kids are on the streets. -I have to pay the government for my medicals there, 422-423 my airfare to Canada, for landing fee. Alek: After you come here you have to pay the loan back. 424 -Hey, what do you think about the G8 meeting going on now? 425 I like to talk about international politics, like what's happening in the world. And I want to study it, in university. But that will be tough, I finished only grade nine in Kenya. I started ESL here.
xin -They say if you don't work, if you can't get work, you can go to 425 the welfare. Ajak: With the welfare system, letting people be on welfare 426-427 without any other motivation is also not a good thing, not even necessarily only for the immigrants, I am talking about Canadians and everybody else. -You know when I was with welfare they gave me so less money. 427-429 -You know I read about this guy in Australia. 430 Osama: It's been a long, long time being here, and there are a lot 430-431 of good things and very bad things to experience. Ajak: Racism, of course, is the first thing that comes to your 431-437 head, oh my God these people are racist, this is racism. Santino: Sudanese, we don't like white people. I don't mean 437-440 because of the skin but because of the way they are doing their things. Khalid: When things go in reverse here, you feel totally unarmed, 440-444 unequipped to really understand what racism means. -You know they blame everything on the 'trauma' of war in Sudan 445-446 Santino: I got arrested twelve times, some mistakes, some fate. 447-458 But for whatever reason I got to see the police more than I wanted to, and all the times I did nothing. -Even with my family they did the same thing 459-460 Khalid: This is the other issue, which is personal, not that 460-461 personal. Like Sudanese can tell you that they are not racist, they can tell you that they are not sexist, but they have real problems. Elizabeth: Like, even now they blame only the woman when she 461-470 calls 911, because back home there was nothing called 911. Ajak: Guys are always raised different from girls, usually in 470-476 Sudan and in many other cultures in the world too. Elizabeth: I think it is a good experience to know a different way 477-479 of life from other people instead of just knowing the same thing. -There are so many new things here, not all bad. 480-481 Ajak: The great thing in my field is that we are exposed to all 481-484 these trainings and workshops, this woman was doing this gender, LGBT, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual, training. -We are here. 485-486 Khalid: So you get promoted, and everybody else is not doing 486-492 fine. Then you go and look at them as if they are not doing enough. -And they try to make us Canadian. 492-493 -Now, we have our own community centre, in Toronto. 494 Lubanga: We used to get together as Sudanese, something that I 494-495 really wish could still be there. Amani: In Canada there are so many Sudanese. Still you can find 495-497 some people, even after they came to this end of the world, they have that mentality, this person is from there, this person is from here, some people still don't get together.
xiv Santino: Right now, I don't have friends from North Sudan 497-500 anymore. Khalid: The problem with immigrant communities, Sudanese 500-507 communities, is that they have a lot of problems within themselves. -Before there were other settlement organizations, well 507-508 established and with a good line of credit, who were providing services for the Sudanese. Elizabeth: I am presently working in an immigration agency, as a 508-514 social worker for Sudanese families who are here and have difficulties with the language. -The way it works, the settlement organizations are established. 514-518 -So, we work in factories, in cleaning, in meat factories, as 519 security. Athaia: I am doing fine up to now. 519-521 Santino: I am here by myself. Here no one really cares for you. 521-524 Lubanga: Once I finished PhD I was lucky enough. 524-526 Khalid: I did well, actually I did very well. But I don't really like 527 my work any more. Alek: We were just stuck here in Toronto, we didn't move 527-529 anywhere. Ajak: After school I got a job in Ottawa with a homeless shelter 530 for a year and four months, and I was still looking for other jobs. Khalid: I made a mistake, I bought a house. 531 -532 -And they here are immigrants too, actually thieves, they took 532 other people's lands and are now calling it their own. They try to keep, make, native people stay in reserves and immigrants in ghettos. Santino: I came from the US to Ramsey, it is a ghetto. 532-535 Lubanga: My best bet would have been to live in the North, 535-536 Sudbury, Thunder Bay or Sault Sainte Marie. Alek: Then, some people they find some places here that can 536-537 sponsor one person for you, to get them here. -Oh, you are done. 538 Interview: See you! 539
A hope: Going back 540-552 Osama: I have to go back. That's it. 540 Athaia: Going back makes sense to me. 540 Alek: I am going to be going back but not now. 540-541 Amani: I wish I can go back, but the thing is maybe I need some 541-542 time for my two boys. Elizabeth: I would like to go back, but not at this moment 542-543 because I want my kids to grow up here and have their education. Santino: I will go to the South, because my grandmother, she is 544-545 leaving too.
xv Lubanga: Because of my background, particularly studying 545-547 education and working in the government now for eighteen years, I strongly feel I can contribute to Sudan and Southern Sudan in particular. Ajak: Sometimes they talk, we are going home, I am going home 547-549 and I am going to do this. I have a feeling even when they go back they will be lost again because things have changed after they left, people have changed too, things are not the same. Khalid: This whole western experience, I think it's totally 549-552 unnecessary. I don't think I would miss it.
Conclusions: To all of this 553-563 -Going back, to what we talked about, long back, could you 553-555 please let me know if you are okay with what I wrote about you, from what you told me, and how I reordered it. Alek: This is Alek's story. 555-556 Santino: Since then, when we talked, I moved. 556-557 Osama: Politically, if I went back to Sudan, I am going to work 557-558 for something really different. Ajak: I have moved to Calgary, and I am married now. So it's a 558 totally different life for me now. Amani: I have nothing to add. 559 Khalid: Lots has changed. I have moved. 559-561 Elizabeth: But my story here is okay. 561 Lubanga: Best of luck with your things. 561 Interview with Athaia: What did you do with your stories? 561-563 How does it help you with your progress, moving forward?
You can see, easily see what I am here. 564
Appendix: Conversations 565-573 -So many stories, so many languages. 565 -Why are you talking to me, and so openly? 566-568 -So, how many of these words are mine. 569 -A list of interviews 570-573 -We kept talking, some of us in any case. 573 -And then there were follow up conversations 573
Glossary: A selective referring 574-578
Bibliography: As it is 579-587
xvi Preface
A friend, a dear friend from Calgary, I will call her Nyaluak, reads mainly the Bible, and tries to read from her ESL books. She told me that she will read my book, my dissertation. I told her that that would be nice, but maybe she may not like it. She thinks she will.
I have wondered if she will identify with what I write. I think this about her, and about many other people too. That is, I think about my audiences. My father and my sister connected with my writing, whatever they read of it, and said it was political, telling much that is unsayable or unsaid. My mother, she read only a little of it, said it's rather simple and with too much detail. Many of my friends, Sudanese and non Sudanese, appreciated it, they felt it broke some boundaries as well as barriers, of knowing, in letting the storytellers in the writing speak for themselves. As agents. A few didn't see this. They asked what was it that I was really doing by not adhering to conventional, academic, writing. Mainly, the people from Sudan who read this, including the nine people whose stories I have written in detail, said that they felt a part of the writing.
They saw themselves in it, and they also read some new stories that they hadn't heard before.
And still, the question lingers, for whom am I writing? Who is my audience? Who am I writing to, for and with?
xvn My audiences are multiple. But am I writing for each of them? Yes and no. The audiences are equally important, but not equally central. I am consciously centering and decentering different audiences, placing some on the margins in order to centre others.
For Nyaluak, is my central audience.
Nyaluak, who's stories, in a sense I am writing, although never specifically. Whose life is more complex and more simple, different and similar, to what I write. Whose experience is enmeshed in the contexts, in Sudan, in Ethiopia and in Canada, which I have written about or not written about or just alluded to. Contexts that she knows, in her own ways, without explications from me. Whose experience is more than those contexts.
When she was a person of some standing in Sudan and Ethiopia, because of her missionary and well known father, who was killed in Ethiopia. And because of her
Sudanese politician husband, who encouraged her to apply as a single parent to immigrate to Canada, who never joined her here. And because she was a teacher in
Ethiopia, in a camp.
When she is not a person of much standing in Canada, when as a single parent, on welfare, she has to take care of her two kids, and another one born here. And then her younger brother and sister, and her mother. When she is in ESL, and trying to become a nurse, and is working part-time as a personal caregiver, changing adult diapers.
xviii While she does what she can, for her kids, siblings and mother. Three generations of people, sometimes going in different directions, that she doesn't always understand or have control over.
Nyaluak is open, in a truly hospitable sense. She took me in, a stranger, when I was looking for someone to stay with for two, three months during my research, in Calgary.
Her uncle who I had just met for the first time, through a friend in Ottawa, said that I could maybe stay with her, took me to her place, and she said yes. She would not allow me to pay her to stay in her house, 'not in my house' she said. It just wasn't done, a guest is a guest. Slowly I realized that she didn't even exactly know, in the beginning and for sometime later, what I was there for.
Would Nyaluak find herself as a person, as a speaker, as a storyteller, with her own knowledge, in my writing? Would she see herself standing up against the dominant refugee discourse(s), as these intersect with her life, as she negotiates with and around it?
Even as I do not explicitly label it as such, even as she would not explicitly label it as such?
Can I, should I, be explaining to Nyaluak, her own background, her own contexts? Be telling her how the system, that she has had to deal with, works? Be making her understand her own circumstances, of which she knows more than I can ever know?
Should I be explaining to her what the dominant refugee discourse(s) are? Or even be teaching her of a Derridian hospitality, a hospitality for what is to come, when she knows how to be a host, to strangers, in a place where she is also a newcomer, a guest.
I would say no. And, if I were to explain to her, her background, her context, her circumstances, the dominant refugee discourse(s), she would no longer be my primary, participating, audience. She would instead become an object in my analysis.
In contrast, this objectification does not happen as long as the storytellers do the explaining in their own stories, in their own conversations. It does not happen when the storytellers describe their own contexts, and the dominant discourse(s), on their own terms. In this way, my aim is to have different people from Sudan, who have gone through some 'refugee' experience, be in a position in my writing to destabilize the very dominant discourse(s) that (try to) frame them. So that they are central in my writing, and not objectified, or constructed as passive, as is normally the case.
And, while Nyaluak is my primary audience, I have other audience as well. Academic and non-academic, both Sudanese and non-Sudanese.
In writing this way, for, with, Nyaluak, by not providing in my own voice some of the background information that she has 'lived', I realize that I am not fulfilling the desire for such information, the expectation of it, on the part of certain other readers, especially academic readers, Sudanese or non Sudanese. My hope is that, by not meeting certain elementary expectations, I am able to decenter the academic reader, put them 'out of
xx place' in certain respects, so that they are, have to be, led into the stories, by the storytellers themselves. This decentering of the academic reader is precisely one of my aims, one of my academic aims. Because I think it can lead to a productive form of questioning.
In consciously not fulfilling these expectations, in decentering much of the academic and the non-Sudanese audience, I don't mean to say that they are less important per se, not at all. Rather, by decentering such audiences to the margins, my aim is to lead them to pose certain questions of themselves, of the text, the context, and importantly of their own academic expectations of the text. It is only by not fulfilling certain elementary expectations that the self-questioning of our academic expectations is enabled. The moment these expectations are fulfilled, as if as a matter of routine, they become invisible, taken for granted, once again.
Further, as I was beginning to say earlier, if I were to fulfill these expectations, in following certain elementary, conventional, academic, writing practices, I would, contrary to my intent, marginalize, decenter and objectify Nyaluak. And thereby hinder conversations, that she, and the other storytellers, as subjects, as knowledge producers, with divergent perpectives, could have, with one another and with the multiple audiences.
And I ask again, would Nyaluak relate with the politics in my writing? Would she read it as a general text, would she read it as a personal text? Would she feel better on reading it? Would it somehow change something, anything, in her life? Could it?
xxi Would my writing speak to Nyaluak? Would Nyaluak speak in my writing?
xxn Introductions: To all of us
A story.
A long story.
A never ending story.
Many stories.
A place.
Many places.
Moving stories.
Sudanese voices.
Sudanese, who came to be when Sudan came to be.
And then they left, many of them, thinking they will be back, to be back.
Or maybe not.
And I write.
What I hear, what I sought to hear, asked for, exceeded, limited, diverted, subverted.
What I heard unasked for, unprepared for.
Yet seeking.
i X Who are you?
I am from India.
Yes, Indian Sudanese!
Hehe. Not really.
And, you know we have Indians who settled long back in Sudan too, like some Greeks,
Armenians and others.
Yes. But can I be without any nationalities please, even though I am with you, hmm.. .most of you, make that many of you? And I may also be Canadian soon.
Then you will be like us.
To travel, Indian passport doesn't let you into many places easily.
And think of the Sudanese passport.
I still have mine.
I got mine renewed.
I never had one.
I don't want one.
Mine expired.
Still I can't go to Sudan, definitely not through Khartoum, without the Canadian passport, until I become a citizen.
They can do anything there.
But they can't do anything to a Canadian citizen.
2 And here they say I can't go back until I am Canadian, because I came here to escape danger there.
Before you become a citizen here they can give you travel document to travel to other places.
Only not to Sudan.
But it's not easy. Like when my father was coming to US for a conference I wanted the document to go see him there, I didn't see him for ten years. They said they can give it only if he's very sick. That day I was so sad. I want to see people when they are alive and well.
It's easy to get the document. I got it.
No.
Yes...
And it's okay to go to Sudan.
Especially now after the peace between North and South is signed.
Depends.
In Sudan if you can talk it's okay too, you can get your way out of many situations.
Yes, but not always.
Not in Darfur.
But there too.
And in the East.
Actually it's difficult to just be, all over Sudan.
3 And here too.
It's easier there.
Depends.
I want to go home.
I already went back.
I don't know when I will go.
It's a lot of money to go back, too.
And you have to take something back.
You have to be someone first.
I will go for a visit.
If things become okay there I will not come back, why should I?
I am going now, after the peace in the South.
I am leaving my family behind, the children have school here.
I don't know if I want to go there, most people don't think like me though.
I might.
And then like my sister here, she grew up in Ethiopia, she doesn't think she is Sudanese, she is Ethiopian.
Some are Kenyans, Ugandans.
Hehe, these young people.
And yes, Canadians.
4 Are you not young yourself?
Ya, but I grew up in Sudan. I remember it.
Ya, it stays. Even when we change, even when it, Sudan, changes.
And we tell about it to our children too.
5 Telling stories. Theorizing method.
Polyphonic and analogical, in different ways. As Bakhtin (1984) says. With
contrapuntal, counterposed, juxtaposed, dialogical relationships, in coexistence and
interaction. As in life and in anything that has meaning and significance. Not a
developing series. Seemingly independent of the storyteller, but with points of view
about the world. In plurality, with independent voices and consciousness, for a
'polyphony of full valued voices' that 'provoke, tease, and elicit response'. With no
finalizing words, but bursting with meaning. (Bakhtin. 1984. 4, 23, 33-34).
Similar to how Benjamin speaks, about the need to rediscover the lost art of
storytelling, in 'Storyteller' (1969). And Trinh, in 'Grandma's Story' (1989). And
King, in The Truth About Stories (2003).
Like my grandfather was saying. And my grandmother. My aunt. My mother,
my father. My brother. My neighbour. And that person I met passing by. That person I
read passing by.
About storytelling, that doesn't reduce human life to analysis. The way it comes
about. Unexplainable. And defeated in the explaining.
Need I explain?
Not the same old story, not the known story, the accepted story, by the civilized
mind, the civilizing mind, located here or there, everywhere, in academia and outside,
in policy circles, in implementation agencies, in everyday lives, in all of us. Not to ask the truth, the structure, the explanation. But to displace conventional practices of
6 making information, explanation, knowledge. In the spaces in between, in the stories that transgress truth and fiction, based on lives that are many, and cannot be reduced to one, except by putting them within a singular explanation. (Trinh. 1989. 119-125, 143-
148. King. 2003. Benjamin. 1969. 89-90. Bakhtin. 1984. 24).
And not reducible even then. When, for Benjamin, the soldiers came back from
World War I, when reports and analysis were written, and everything seemed the same, except the clouds in the sky (Benjamin. 1969. 84). When, for Trinh, western thinking and life, of the 'civilized mind', tried to order everything, knowledge, into linear structures (Trinh. 1989. 123-125). When, for King, colonization by the west and
Christianity, set about discrediting indigenous knowledges, in a linear story, about the origin and evolution of life, separating nature and humans (King. 2003. 21-25). And when, for Bakhtin, the modern novel got written, in monophonic and monological ways
(Bakhtin. 1984. 5-8, 14, 21).
Beyond the story, a unity. To tell a story, staying as close to it as possible, without 'representing' it. Even when it is impossible to say it the way it was first told, and then later told. And, a good story is one that is creative, that creates understanding in its creativity, is composed on life. All the while when living is neither oral nor written and cannot be contained either in the oral or written alone (Benjamin. 1969. 87-
89. King. 2003. Trinh. 1989. 119-126, 140). Understanding, creating, composing on life.
To tell a different story. Stories. To change the known stories, and so the world and what we are, how we know things (King. 2003).
7 Stories. Open to interpretation, mine and theirs, yours, ours.
My theory is not a theory as such, is not a method as such. Its methodology, is not confined. What makes up the world, and how it can be studied, is not fixed. And so understanding is creative. Its politics is about pushing the limits of all that is taken for
granted, while at the same time allowing for the undoing of what and where one is in this pushing. A process of continuous, concentrated, unfixed, divergent critique, to
overcome even itself without a final overcoming. For justice, as impossible as it is. It is to ask questions of what else is possible, when things are not delineated. Even if one
aspect is concentrated on. The rigor is not in showing the fit but in showing that the limits are not the limits, only made so, understood so. And then it's not in just one way, that the limits are understood or the critiques can be done and undone. It is about possibilities, that haven't even been thought of, building from what others have opened up, creatively (Derrida. 1990). Or this is how I understand the approach, and (try to) inhabit it.
Deconstruction, that already is!
And stories are about patience, about listening, about creating, destroying, weaving, undoing, connecting, disconnecting. Reading. Joy and pain (Trinh. 1989. 119,
127-128). Stories are passed on, listener to listener, through storytellers, to be told and retold. Reader to reader. By those who stay in a place, know it well, and those who travel, see and tell. With little psychological shading. For the story to stay in the listeners', readers', memory, for it to be integrated into one's own experience. Retained and passed
8 on, even when denied. It overcomes death, is sanctioned by death. As it speaks of history, about life, through experiences, one's own and others. In remembrance it counsels, makes the story continue, mixes counsel with life to produce wisdom (Benjamin. 1969. 84-95).
Memory and experience. Life, death, sorrow, joy, and everything in between.
Continuation. Changes. Told by many, retold by many. Composed in the retelling, from life, lives. Many voices, and worlds, talking to one other, together, in dialog. It is not about one experience, one event, one world (Bakhtin. 1984. 5, 13, 21-22). It is not mere information, not a report, not an explanation or an answer (Benjamin. 1969. 89-90). Not verifiable. It can say the unsayable, in many ways. The truth, not the 'regimes of truth' that are each society's own politics of truth, but outside specific time and specialized space (Trinh. 121, 123). It has no beginning, no middle, no end. Its structures are in the saying, it changes each time it is told. Its authors are many.
9 Osama
I am a regular Sudanese person born to a worker man, a very simple, religious man, and a simple woman. I was born and raised in Khartoum North, Khartoum Bahri, by my mother's sister, my aunt, and my grandma. I have three mothers.
When I finished high school I started working. And even before finishing school I had started singing professionally, western songs, of Bob Marley and others.
Till I was fifteen I was in Al Danagla, in Khartoum North. Then me, my grandmother, and my aunt moved north, a little bit far, from the center of Khartoum
North, to a place called Al Halfaya or more specifically to Halfayat al Molook, looking for a house with cheaper rent. And we worked really hard. Both of them, they were workers, my grandma used to sell food to school kids and my aunt worked in a cigarette factory.
Halfaya is not far from Khartoum North, but it's a simple city or town. Even
Khartoum itself is not a huge, beautiful, rich capital. In that area people are very, very simple, very religious.
Religion is sometimes mixed with other beliefs because the people are not well educated. Most of them didn't go to schools. They mix things, which is their habit. It always makes me laugh. They say don't do this, or do this, because it's maktoob, written, like written in Quran, which it is not. But people say that, it's simple.
I worked for a government department for a while. By government I don't mean
'government', it's where they make furniture and clothes for Army, schools, hospitals.
After that I worked with Al Medan, the Sudanese Communist newspaper. I was already
10 involved in it through Itihad al Shabab al Sudani, the Sudanese Youth Union. I don't want to get the wrong translation, it's the Union of Sudanese Youth I think.
At the Union we are like socialists, but we don't ask our members to be members of Communist or any other socialist party. They were just regular people. They believed in democracy, social justice, equality. And we were trying to be involved more and more in community issues.
To just start talking about equality, these meanings may be bigger, and about very sensitive issue, like situations of women and girls, is not easy, to work in this kind of environment.
But it was really enjoyable kind of work because everything was for free. We only paid monthly for our membership. At that time it was five Sudanese pounds, which even in Sudan is nothing.
And, we asked why we, our group of people in Sudan, in Itihad al Shabab, or as socialists, are like very rejected. We are not rejected like Southerners but we are very scared, not scared, but we have to be very careful.
Ajak
My father left to join Sudanese People's Liberation Army, SPLA, because of the injustices that were done to the Southerners by the Northerners. That's all I can say. This has to do with the oil and things like that. Probably you have heard a lot from other people, better than you would hear from me.
11 I didn't get the chance to talk to my father. But I go with the rumors I hear, about
why people left to join the movement. I was young at the time. I had no idea what is
really going on, even about the history of Sudan. That is the disadvantage of leaving your
country when you are young, I didn't study the history of Sudan. So what I know about
Sudan is really what I hear from people. But one thing I know, and I assume again, it's because of the injustices that have been happening in Sudan. Some of us really assumed a lot because everybody was going and everybody had the same stories.
My father was working for the government, in Juba. During the division of the
Southern provinces, Kokora, he was transferred to Wau. But he didn't really work there, because immediately he was sent by the Sudanese government to England for a few years
for a course.
It would not have been easy for him to leave from within Sudan, so the perfect
chance was when he was abroad. He didn't return back to Sudan. He went right away
from there to the bush, to Ethiopia, to join the movement. My father was among the first people who joined the SPLA. Not the first because the first ones were in '83, then around
early '84.1 think my father joined towards the end of '84.
Personally I didn't get the chance to sit down and talk to my father, why he joined the movement. My father died in '96, when I had just finished high school in Nairobi.
Probably that would have been the proper age to be asking a lot of questions, and maybe to be able to appreciate things. Like now I know the importance of wanting to know what
is going on. Because if somebody asked me why are people fighting I just speak out of
12 what I have heard. It's not enough, it's not even really patriotic. You are supposed to know more than that. But then my father died, so it's hard too.
He was working with a non-governmental organization, NGO, in Nairobi then. He had decided to leave the SPLA for a few years because since '80s he never stayed with us. He was always in the war, for three, four years at a time, and we wouldn't see him then. Around '95 he decided to leave the Army, to be a civilian again and be able stay with his family. He was also not young any more. But then he didn't have much chance to stay with us.
Santino
I was six years old when my dad left and went to London, to study more. And my mom
left too, since that time, to Southern Sudan. It's a lot of years right now that I didn't see her.
So, I was there in Khartoum with my uncle's wife. And life started to be bad with me. She treated me bad because I am not her son. I was living a struggle life, going to
school by myself, paying everything on my own, working by myself. I had to even buy my own uniform. I was working in a supermarket, from when I was eleven.
My father knew all this but he doesn't care. That's why right now we got a problem. We got no peace, me and him. Before, in my childhood I was happy because my dad is a doctor.
13 In Khartoum, we had a good life, and a hard life too. Over there, there are a lot of problems but it doesn't come to you personally. It comes from the rules in the country.
They get them from Quran, and then they are going to judge someone who's Christian or someone who's got no religion. So a lot of people got bad situations, including my grandma.
I don't know, she was working with the government and they were trying to kill her. She took me with her to Egypt. I was a kid with no one to take care of me, I was thirteen or fourteen then.
I miss Sudan because there were a lot of friends there. I have a lot of friends there right now, but I don't know if they are still alive or dead, or they moved. There we got no gangs. There we got no problem with the cops. There is no problem like that.
It's not like here, there is real life. In all the neighbourhoods they were happy. It doesn't matter if you are Christian or you are Muslim or whatever, they are all together.
Only in the system, only two, three people, they are bad. Sudan is the biggest country in
Africa, and four or five people try to eat that country all by themselves.
And me, I am from the South, Aweil, but I am born in the North. I saw the South only in videos.
Athaia
I am from Yei. I grew up in Juba. And I stayed in Khartoum too.
14 We went to the North for school, because there are many high schools there. The
bad thing about education in Juba is that there are not too many high schools there. We
had only two or three high schools. It's not enough for the population living there. There
are not enough high schools in Yei too. So, the government transfers students. When you
get high marks they bring you to the North to go to the boarding school to study there.
They leave behind the people who have lower marks.
And the standard of education in South, in terms of people who are taking Arabic,
is very low, compared to the North. In the North they have good teachers, very qualified
teachers, teaching them Arabic, but you don't get a lot of them in the South. That's why
when you come to the North you have to take extra courses for Arabic, to upgrade it. But
if you started in the North and you go to South, if you come back you just catch up with
the people there.
It is the same Arabic but they don't take qualified teachers there, to the South.
They sometimes take high school graduates. After they graduate they think I have no job,
I better become a teacher. So, sometimes the teachers are not qualified and the teaching
will not be enough for the students to learn a lot.
Also, no matter where you are in the South, you see Arabic like it's something not
to do with you. But if the school is in Arabic you can't run away because everything you
are going to study is in Arabic. In English schools they have Arabic like French here,
everything is in English but French, and the students don't like the time for Arabic, they just go out of the class. That's what you will see. That is what is affecting them now
15 because when they see it like that, why Arabic, they prefer another language over Arabic.
But the fact is that they are learning English too.
The same thing is in the North too, people run away from English classes, this belongs to the Southerners. I remember my teacher, Rose, she was from England. It used to be just me and her in the class. All the Arab girls would run away, and I had to do all the assignments. She just wondered what was happening. She came all the way from
England to teach English but nobody was there in that class. Sometimes it was two, sometimes it was three, sometimes only myself.
In high schools in Sudan you can't even talk to somebody, say sit or do this. You have choice. They just walk, if they don't want something, they just go out. They don't care about failing in English. They just know that they shouldn't fail in Arabic, in Math, in History. They don't care about English. That's why you will see people, who came from the North, they have difficulties in English. English was there but nobody wanted it.
Oh English, ma'salama, goodbye, they say. They just walk out.
The thing is it comes from the heart. When you see things everyday, and you think this is a thing of slavery and colonization, you feel that in your brain and you carry it in your heart, I can't, I will not, learn it. For the Arab people, they feel learning English is like the British are forcing you to do what they are doing. That's why you see English as if it is foreign. In the North people don't speak English proudly.
But right now they are not like before. They put their kids to the English school so that they can improve. And for people in the South too, now it doesn't matter, if they can pay for the kids they can go to schools which are merged, with English and Arabic.
16 My high school was in Dongola, Saraya High School. It was neighbouring our former president Nimeri's house, the house of his dad and mom, where they lived, where he went for holidays and stayed with his family. The school was built by his parents. It takes seven days to go there from Khartoum, three days you go by train, then you cross the river, and then you take the bus all day, on the seventh day you reach the school. This is how I studied.
Khalid
For me this question of going somewhere never had the time to come up. Everybody in
Sudan, seemed like everybody, went to Egypt for holidays. Except me, I had no interest to go anywhere.
I am from around Khartoum. My place is kind of rural but it's urban nevertheless, half an hour from the centre of Khartoum by car. And, I graduated from Khartoum
University.
At the time, during the '80s, in Khartoum, there were a lot of artistic, cultural, activities going on. We, as the new generation, were part of a whole process of change going on. We were very busy. I was so busy. Even later, when I was working, I used to go after work, like from four up to the middle of the night, doing a lot of stuff. One thing,
I used to do a lot of theatre, directing and teaching in a Sudanese theatre group. By the way, I think this contributed seriously to the collapse of my first marriage. There was just
17 no room for it. And even after the Islamic military establishment closed all these places, in 1989, there was still a very thin space that I could actually utilize.
In a sense I was lucky because I was working in a foreign Embassy. I didn't have any economic problems, I was paid quite well. And working there sort of protected me from having problems with police and security, the intelligence. It was like an island.
You go in, close the door and nobody will touch you. It's like you are not a part of the country. Then you go back to the society, the island just disappears. You kept asking yourself what was going on.
I actually thought I would never leave Sudan. Earlier, usually the Sudanese who traveled abroad mainly went to live in the Gulf, to collect some money. These people had always been an object of our sarcasm. Also, I have a daughter from my previous marriage. I didn't want to leave her.
I started to make the decision to leave at a certain point. My friends kept leaving from 1989. We had spent all our lives together, they used to be part of our hopes, part of that rosy project of change. Then for four years till 1994 we just spent our time saying goodbye to people. It seemed like everybody was leaving the country. It was a real exodus.
I was sort of an intellectual activist, engaged in some kind of activities. Then suddenly all venues or spaces for any sort of intellectual engagements were shut down.
Outside there was nothing but an air of despair and defeat, as if the exodus of intellectual and political activists created a huge vacuum, a sense of worthlessness, a closure of a dream. I felt lonely. I think every one of us felt the same way. It was really depressing.
18 I even got married again. In retrospect I think if things were as before I might not have got married. When I finally decided to leave I was really hoping that my wife would convince me to stay, because deep down I never wanted to come here.
Elizabeth
I came away because there was a war in my country. It was very tough. People were running up and down. People did not have food. The only place where people got food was from Itang, where the United Nations, UN, gave people food. That's where the refugees were. The UN brought them there to support them.
I left my town, Nasir, which is north of Ethiopia, in '88. First I moved from Nasir to another village, nearby, in Sudan. For some reason my mom didn't want to come to
Itang, it is in the same area, because it was not safe or because she didn't want to move.
She thought it was not really safe. The Anyuaks who belonged to that area were killing
Nuers, and the other tribes, anybody from the South, who came that way, because of the movement, SPLA, all the time. And she wanted to live closer to our city even though there was a war and fighting going on all the time. So, we stayed at this village.
Everything was messed up. I think I traveled most of the years because I became the head of the family. At that time my father was in the military with the Sudan government. He was in the first movement, Anya Nya I, and then he was in Sudanese army. They were in the city when the war broke out, and he remained there and never came back. I don't know if he was thinking of coming, but the government of Sudan
19 would not let him go back. Then you would have to find your own way to come. If he was still alive he would have found his own way. And, my older brother, who could become the head of the family, was studying in Khartoum. My siblings were younger than me, and my mother was ill, not well to walk the three day, four day distance to Itang.
So, when we left, when we separated from my father, I took the lead of the house. I took the responsibility of the house. If there was something missing, clothes or food, then I would be the one who went and got it, especially at that time.
I used to walk from where I lived to Itang. Sometimes you can take the car, the soldiers' transportation. I would come to get food and clothes from the UN and take it back to the village where my mom, my brothers and sisters were. Sometimes I had to carry food on my head, from Itang to that village. I did that in '88, '89, '90, for three years.
It was very difficult to travel all these years, but I did it. I think it was only two trips that were really hard. One was the first time, because I was from the city and I never traveled on foot that much. My feet were swollen up and my body was so sore all over.
When I came back I carried a load of things, food, clothes, everything, it was so heavy for me. There was another time, I think it was rainy season, there was a lot of water all over. I was walking through the water carrying a heavy load, and at the same time I heard the news that my father had just died in the city where we lived.
The rest of the trips were not bad. Like I said I am an extrovert, I knew a lot of people from the military. So many times, I went to Itang by foot and when I wanted to go
20 to the village they said oh there's some car going tomorrow or the week after, you just go with them.
So, actually I was not staying in Itang. I was like in between Itang and that village. But you have to register in the camp to get your portion of the food. Actually my portion was for one person, but I knew most of the people who handled the food. Most of these people were from my area, I would get food from them or from my relatives in the camp. They knew that my portion is for a single person, but I was not working and I didn't have any income or money whatsoever so that I could buy food. I was a young lady then, eighteen, and there was no employment, people were not working. Some people like Sahra were doing some business, she had like a restaurant. So, if I came to them they would give me food if there was extra, after people get food first.
At Itang the UN called those who were educated and made them leaders. The food would come through the military, the SPLA, and they would give them to the refugees. But those leaders, who registered people's names, they would distribute the food, they would call out your name and then give you your food. The leaders were not all from the military, they were students, some of them were ordinary people. So, actually the decision about food, distribution, was not from the SPLA.
So, that's what I was doing. It was not a like a business. It was how people survived, taking the food.
21 Amani
We had everything. My father was a farmer. And he was the leader of a small group, in my city in Nuba Mountains, in West Sudan. The only things we used to buy in our house were sugar and tea, everything else was grown there. Even for oil we had a machine, we got fresh oil from sesame seeds. Even meat, we had chicken, cows, sheep, goats, everything. And we had a big field of corn, sesame, peanut, everything. That's how I grew up. I was born in Dilling. I went to school there. Then, I taught at a school there.
The problem started, I think, in 1983. Earlier, I think, people just said we are like this. This is my city, this is where I live, this is what I eat, what I do, that's how I live.
They didn't care that much about the government, and what was happening elsewhere.
Later on, with the new generation, and education, they studied. They saw how different people were doing, and how they were left out.
That's when the people started doing problems to the government. In some cities, like Kadugli, in the north of Nuba Mountains, the government started arresting people.
Then, when John Garang left the Sudanese army in 1983 and formed the SPLA, a lot of people from there joined him immediately. In these parts there were so many problems, fighting, arrests.
In my city not so many people joined the SPLA, maybe two or three people, before my husband. So my city was okay until the 1990s. That's when more people started coming out, to join SPLA, and then the problem started. The government doesn't say anything to you, they just see it as if you have joined Garang and they start arresting people.
22 I don't know exactly why my husband joined SPLA. My husband was working in
a government office in Khartoum, reporting government news. He was a teacher too. He
was teaching in the morning and working in the government office at night. Then he left.
He went to Saudi Arabia to work. Then he went to Ethiopia to join SPLA.
As soon as the government heard that, many people got arrested in Dilling. Two
days after we went to Addis Ababa we heard that his father was arrested, his two
brothers, his uncle and his brother-in-law, so many people. But whatever happened he
still wanted to be there, with SPLA. He trained with them, he was an officer.
It is this politics. In Sudan the government wasn't fair to everybody. Most of the people in the offices or in the government were those light skinned Arabs. People like
Nuba and the Southern Sudan people didn't get any chance. Everybody in Sudan can get
a job, but not in the office, not a good job. When Garang created Sudanese People's
Liberation Movement, SPLM, he wanted to make a New Sudan. Then everybody could have the right to work in the office, get a government job, anybody could be elected to be the President of Sudan, not only certain people. That was the idea.
First when the Southerners fought, in Anya Nya I, they wanted only to separate
from North Sudan, they fought only for Southern Sudan. But the second time with
Garang it was to unite everybody. That's what he spoke. He wanted everybody, he wanted to make a New Sudan. It doesn't matter if you are Muslim, if you are Arab, if you join SPLA we are going to fight to bring peace, for all of us to be equal. When they heard this, everybody, all the young people, wanted to join SPLM.
23 So many people from Nuba Mountains, just went and joined him, joined SPLA, because if you don't fight you don't get your rights. That's why even before Garang there were wars in Nuba Mountains. They fought, they fought, but they didn't get anything changed. Then they stopped and came back. When Garang started fighting, so many people followed him, in order to bring peace in Sudan.
But later on, in '91, even with Garang, Southerners started fighting each other.
Some people wanted to take only the Southern Sudan. And people were asking so many questions because people heard Garang wanted only separation. He said no, I never said that. He said he was going to create a New Sudan with everybody, but some people were just talking, maybe some people talked to the government or the government itself said you guys are just wasting your time, Garang wants only to separate Southern Sudan, you guys are just going to die.
Then some other people asked why are so many people fighting with you if you take only the South. What will happen to us, what will happen to Nuba, what will happen to Abyei, and what will happen to all these people coming to fight? We can't just come and stay with you, we have our own places. If you separate your own place then we can't go and again start a different war in order to free our cities.
24 Alek
I am from Abyei. It is in Kordofan. But that's the problem. When they wanted to separate
Southern Sudan, Nuba Mountains, and Blue Nile, Abyei wanted to separate, to come to
Bahr el Ghazal, Southern Sudan. And some of them in Abyei want to stay in Kordofan.
Before, my grand grandfather Kuol Arop was the leader of Abyei, in the early
1900s sometime. The leader of Baggara from Kordofan was his friend, they enjoyed themselves together. Kuol Arop went there to Kordofan, and the Baggara leader came to
Abyei. They came from there with cows and goats, to eat the grass. Abyei has nice grass, but in North Sudan they don't have grass. Later on they made houses, little by little, in the town. Then they stayed with us. Nobody said go back, this is not your country. Kuol
Arop accepted them and they lived together. After that when they became many they said they think Abyei is in Kordofan. No, it is not! And then, later, the government said Abyei is a part of Kordofan. That's the problem, till now.
I heard this thing. I have a cassette here, from before, when Garang went to
Abyei, to a part called Aneed, around the time the peace was signed in 2005, to meet the people to talk about the peace. But I don't know if that is exact or not. I didn't hear it myself.
I am supposed to hear it from my dad. But when he is talking on the phone from
Sudan, sometimes they don't keep the line clear, sometimes they tap the phone. There is noise, then something in Arabic, then they cut the phone. Sometimes they could catch you. It happened to some people, they tell the people, be careful. They give warning, this is the first time, the next time you are going to be in trouble. So people are careful,
25 nobody can talk much about these things. If you send a letter it's better than when you talk on the phone. Then I will know exactly what is going on in Abyei.
So, Garang spoke to us, peace is coming and we are looking at your problem. We put it on the table, but some people, the Arab, don't want Abyei to go to the South. When
Garang made the peace agreement he had big problems with the government. He wanted to talk about the Abyei problem and solve it before the voting for the referendum, in
2011, whether to separate Sudan into South and North, but the government didn't want
Garang to solve it. So he just kept this down, he couldn't go ahead with Abyei. Garang said we can talk about the problem of Abyei now, but we are going to put it off until people vote on the referendum. On that day we are going to see if Abyei will go with
Kordofan, if it's going to stay with North Sudan. He got sultan, leader, from each of the nine chiefdoms in Abyei, and for these sulatien, leaders, they had one person at the top, to meet with the Arab leaders, some from Darfur, from Kordofan. Then he called the leaders, and the older people, from Kordofan and Abyei. They know the border of Abyei to the North, what part is Abyei. They know the history of long, long time. They said some places from Abyei were taken away. But the leaders from Khartoum government,
Garang and our leaders didn't know how to solve the problem for Abyei. They just put it down until later. Garang brought the leaders to just discuss which part is Abyei, is not
Kordofan, they wrote it all down. And they will cut it up later.
That's what I heard. I don't know exactly, if that is true or not true.
Garang said now those people know the real things about Abyei, that a lot of it is not from Kordofan. It will go to Southern Sudan, or you can separate Abyei by itself.
76 They even put parts of Abyei in Darfur long, long time ago. The leaders, when they found that out, said we will just cut it, Abyei is not part of North Sudan, that's how they put it down now. Garang said they are going to solve the Abyei issue when the vote happened. Then I think Abyei is going to be separate, it will not go to Kordofan.
Lubanga
Garang was my roommate in high school, at Rumbek Secondary School, a boarding school. I grew up in Juba, although I was born in Yei, and I went for high school to
Rumbek. In the '60s, in the South, we had only two high schools, Juba Commercial
Secondary School and Rumbek Secondary School. Then there were intermediary schools.
These were all in English medium. Later on, between 1958 and 1962, they reintroduced
Arabic primary schools, they used to have them earlier, from 1899 to 1930 in Southern
Sudan.
Garang was behind me by one year. At that time he was a very mature person for his age. He was a very good student, a good friend, a nice fellow. But at that time I did not see him as the man who would lead the South or Sudan. There were other leaders who we thought would be great, such as Martin Majier and Moses Marial. Martin Majier died in 1993, but at Rumbek Secondary School we all knew that he would be a great leader. There was no question of that. He was ahead of me by two classes. The whole school respected him. Sometimes we used to have rallies in the school and he would address them. Garang seemed at the time as someone who would be looking up to
27 someone who would be leading the South. He already had grounding in the debates and the discussions, he was eloquent and all the rest, but we already had leaders, already chosen by consensus, that the people in the South would be looking up to. Maybe he was waiting for his turn.
The schools were highly politicized. The families played a great part in this.
Those of us who were in Juba grew up with parents who were very much involved in politics, and that had a direct effect on us. We spread it to the other students. In most cases the people who went to high schools were people from the working class. These were people in the police, in nursing, in clerical and such like vocations, because the top positions were always held by the Arabs, except a few ones. And they knew exactly what was wrong because the parents, like my father, would come home and talk with my uncles and so on, about restrictions, inability of Southern Sudanese to progress beyond certain civil service positions, discriminatory policies. We were all the time bombarded by this. All those people could see the difference, and question what is independence.
Like when the Sudanization Commission was appointed in February 1954, consisting of
Northern Sudanese, Egyptians and British, to replace Egyptian and British officers in the
Sudanese civil service with Sudanese nationals. In June 1954 it announced that there were eight hundred senior posts to be Sudanized, and only four Assistant District
Commissioners and two Mamurs, commissioned colonial officials analogous to District
Commisioners, were appointed from the South. People said how can you be members of the same country while this is going on?
28 I could see the people in political rallies, people talking at home, people debating, discussing. You were being educated at that level. And the teachers we had were victims of the same situation. Some teachers talked about this in the class. One teacher was teaching economics or history, he would analyze history from the point of view of the
North as suppressing the South. There is really no way you can escape the politicization.
Strikes were common, all were political strikes. We sometimes declared strikes when we were on holidays. We wouldn't show up at the schools because we felt that our leaders in
Khartoum did not produce the result we were expecting.
Now, when I was working part-time in Juba, during my high school vacation, I had taken these documents, government policies that the British initiated. They wrote nasty things. And some of the writings were by the governor of my province, Equatoria,
Ali Baldo. He defined himself as Arab, although his family was originally from West
Africa, of Fulani or Hausa origin. Unfortunately for them some of this got filed and were not destroyed. I shared these documents with other students at Rumbek Secondary
School, including with the student leaders such as Majier and Garang. Only the students knew, and they knew that it was dangerous for me if I was caught. If I had been caught I would have been shot on sight, no doubt about that. These were the documents that we used to campaign when we were in Anya Nya I. It was suspicious what was going on and this was the evidence.
I finally left Sudan when they started teaching in Arabic in high schools in South.
So, I left Sudan for political reasons, not because of fear, but because of the political situation and the relation between the North and the South, which hopefully has been put
29 to rest by the peace that Garang and the President of the Sudan, Omer Hassan al Bashir, worked out.
The first people moving out of Sudan were doing so for educational purposes, even if they came as refugees to Uganda. Same with the United States, the first bunch of
Sudanese who came here were all refugee students. For many years that is how we got out.
3ft But, should I also not get to know you? Will I always be an object?
I hope not.
Let's see.
We talked.
Deepa: Do you think this was like a proper interview?
Elizabeth: Yes, to you, but to me what I am talking doesn't make sense.
Deepa: It doesn't make sense? Why do you say that?
Elizabeth: I have never been interviewed before, the way we talked, for saying the background of what you have done before. I only know job interviews where I can speak about my skills.
Deepa: But that's what I was asking, did this feel like this was an interview? Because I was hoping it didn't, in the sense that I was saying in the beginning also, that we can just talk. Of course I was asking more questions.
Elizabeth: I know the point of your questions, it's broader, the talking. This to me is not an interview. It's like a conversation, like how I feel, some other things. I know for sure that's not really the way you research.
Deepa: That's what I was trying to say I think. It's all connected to what we are talking about. And now my problem is that everything that people say is connected. I really don't know what to remove when I am writing.
Elizabeth: That's what I am saying.
31 Deepa: And I don't want to remove any of that. And of course I can't write everything.
That's going to be my biggest problem. The idea here was basically to share things, though I think you did more of the sharing than me.
Elizabeth: I know, even things like my marriage. These are things you are not looking for. But when people talk you connect things from here to there.
Deepa: Actually I am interested in all of that also. But I can't ask you personal questions, unless if you are comfortable, because that's my personality too, I can't ask too much. At the same time why I am saying it's all connected is because people assume, they do, that because people have had refugee experience people have come here without any education, that that's why families are breaking up etc, etc. I don't accept that as a complete whole, I can accept it in parts. So in different ways I talk to people, different things, with different connections.
Elizabeth: Ya.
Deepa: I don't know how I am going to write up everything that people have talked of.
Elizabeth: You have to focus on that you are looking for when you interview people right, mainly about refugees, about how they came to Canada.
Deepa: Not your journeys alone, I think your journey is all part of life, what you learn through that is what you learn. I don't think that is separate from your life. And I am funny myself, I don't bother so much about only one thing.
Elizabeth: I think also when you interview people you should interview people who are really older, who have been in refugee camps for long.
32 Deepa: But its different experiences that I am looking for because I think each person has their own thing to say. And somehow I didn't get to meet many older people, especially those who were in the camps.
And I am thinking, of what a friend of mine was saying, many a time we feel how
we feel when we come across different people and their stories, sometimes we don't think or know what they feel.
Elizabeth: Right, that's true. It is like when you live inside something you know how it
feels, but if you don't live it and with somebody else telling you then you don't really get the feeling. It's like that sometimes, we feel about only what we want to feel and what we
are feeling inside of us, and then we think that's the right thing. We do not put ourselves
in other people's shoes or how they can feel. If we can do that the world will be peaceful.
Ya if we are able to do that then it will be really good but we can never. We can feel for
other people, oh ya, but it will never be the same as what we are experiencing.
Deepa: That's true, which is why people say I need to say what I need to say.
Elizabeth: Right.
Deepa: In a way that's what I am trying to do right, I am trying to say people who haven't been able to speak can speak, which I think is such a wrong way of putting it because people are speaking, sometimes they are not heard. Like now I am talking about people
from Sudan who have had say refugee experiences and yet it's going to be me speaking,
and I am trying to hear so many people. But it's different from you speaking. And why is
it that what you say is not accepted?
Elizabeth: Right.
33 Deepa: So at so many levels it's like not you speaking.
Elizabeth: Yes, but many people who you talk to will never get a chance to talk what they should talk, and even if they have a chance they will not have the guts to say it also, and sometimes we really have to. Then the message will be going through one person, and whoever will get the point will get it and whoever will say its not the point will not get the point. I think that's how the world is.
Deepa: But I don't know how many people are going to be angry with me later on for writing totally different things.
Elizabeth: As you said, all these things that I am talking to you now, like you are recording it, you can never put them in places exactly the way they are coming out of my mouth because you are really a different person and I am really a different person. It will be good if we all can have the opportunity to stand up and say whatever we can say. But I am saying only some people get the opportunity to do that, and also it's only some people who get the point of what you are trying to do and some people will never get it, and as you say maybe some people will say oh this point and that point its not the political science that we are looking for.
Deepa: Or even people from Sudan that I have been speaking to, they have been so nice to me, maybe they won't even meet me after I write what I will. I don't think this will happen, but still.
Elizabeth: Right. I really don't know, but human beings are different and you just end up with what you get.
Deepa: So, thank you so much, and I have to go to another place now.
34 Elizabeth: Well, see you. That was really a nice opportunity. I hope you will get something that you can use.
Deepa: I got a lot.
Elizabeth: And disregard whatever that you cannot use because I am not good at being interviewed. And, what is your project? Could you elaborate?
Sure. It's about 'situated knowledge' (Haraway. 1991), among (some) people from Sudan
in Canada, through their stories of moving from Sudan to here. To contest the dominant refugee discourse(s), the dominant stories, intermingling, within one another, building
(upon) one another. They make us, and place us.
To be someone, something, else one has to tell a different story, a different kind of story. Through, as Haraway says, a politics of positioning, and not the subject position of identity, resisting the politics of closure. Through meaning, already actively produced
in bodies, in situations of tensions, resonances, transformations, resistances and
complicity. Complex, contradictory, structuring and structured bodies. Without looking
for a final determination of knowledge (Haraway. 1991. 193-195, 200).
You have chewed more than you can swallow.
Maybe, but how else does one break (with) the dominant refugee discourse(s)?
Why would you?
These are stories that have been told for too long now, that make the citizen and so the refugee, and the author and so the object (of analysis).
Isn 't this also Foucault 'spoint, in 'What is an Author?' (Foucault. 1979), about the author and author-function? The author who came into being historically with
individualization, in ideas, knowledge, literature, philosophy and sciences. And that in spite of critical claims that the author has disappeared, and not being concerned with questions of authentification the author is still defined by the author-function. The author provides explanation, for events, their transformations and distortions. The
36 author is a principle of a unity of writing, resolving all differences and neutralizing all contradictions in texts by tying incompatible elements together or organizing them around a fundamental or originating contradiction (Foucault. 1979. 141-143, 148-
151).
Yes. And, the authority of the author makes him or her as well as the refugee, about whom she or he can speak, for whom he or she can prescribe solutions, and whom she or he has to maintain as an object in order to maintain himself or herself as the speaker, the subject.
Even so, can 'tyou write this critique academically or the stories academically?
Only, then I will not be writing as suggested by those who speak in favour of stories and alternative ways to write, which open up the space to write not just differently, but differently. As Foucault also says, the text has signs that refer to the author, through personal pronouns, adverbs of time and place, and verb conjugation, and in the preface, in the composition, in the demonstration, in the conclusion or supposition. But the role of these signs is different in discourses/texts that don't have the author-function. In the possibility of other texts, for something other than the discourse to which it belongs, and not just possible differences within a discourse. The possibility of divergences and transformations in heterogeneity. In the necessary returning to the original discourse, for transformative and not just supplemental process of endless modification, of the discursive practice itself (Foucault. 1979. 152-156).
To write stories, dialogical, polyphonic, is a way to overcome the author- function, the (conventional) content, and form, the limits, of (academic) writing. As for
37 Bakhtin, in not limiting it, the writing, to only outward, compositionally expressed dialogues but in it being the unfinalized essence of the entire writing (Bakhtin. 1984.
34). As for others, academics and non-academics, storytellers or not.
So I will write stories that have so far not been said, are unsayable, while the authority of the author is present. Through stories which can push the limits, even while, inevitably, limited by me, the storyteller.
And, what are these, the known stories, the dominant refugee discourse(s)?
You will see these, indirectly, in and through the stories that I will render. For, to tell the stories of the dominant refugee discourse(s) is to make them, give them significance, centrality.
But still, do tell, so that we know what you are talking about, contesting.
To contest includes not telling it.
No, to contest it one has to know what you are contesting.
And we all, most of us anyway, know that story, more or less, and we, some of us anyway, even while it exists and manages people, who are moving, or not, outside of
(their) states, without belonging to any, but expected to somehow belong to one. As
Malkki has surveyed people who know this, push this knowing, and those who don't, and what results from this knowing, doing. Also about what else could be, written, lived, is lived (Malkki. 1995). Since, of course, this discourse is never settled. It is always in the process of trying to order that which cannot, ultimately, be ordered. Life. In this
38 impossibility of ordering, which also means constant efforts at ordering, lies the
discourse's continued persistence and violence, whatever its power. And its instability.
Please say more, the story.
Belonging. To a nation, a state, a nation state. As citizen. With rights and duties, with
protection, (always) within boundaries. With an identity. Not belonging. To a nation, a
state, a nation state. As refugee. Without rights and duties, without protection, (always)
within boundaries, (always) outside boundaries. Without an identity. Is not enough to be
so. Is not to be so. Have to belong. Have to be made to belong. To one's own state (of
origin), to the state of (first) refuge, or to the (western) state of resettlement.
Reterritorialized after being deterritorialized after having been territorialized, into
(nation) states. Kindly, please.
So simple?
Not really. But this is also the way it works. Is made to work. Is practiced. Effected.
Lived.
And many people have worked on this, showing this. To show the speaking of the
refugee, in the putting into practice the speaking of the refugee, in the putting into
practice the speaking, the making, of the refugee. Because of how the norm is
understood, accepted, lived, of the state, the nation state, the citizen, even as it does not
exist, is tenuous, is made. In countries of origin, in countries where the refugees are
accepted, where the refugees go, in all the countries, in (nation) states, in camps, through
humanitarian efforts, with passports, in entering, in exiting, in exile, in undocumentedness, documentedness. As people are living, live and know, experience and
39 speak. Sometimes at a generalized theoretical level, and sometimes at a more localized,
ethnographic, experiential, level, sometimes among practitioners of state and refugee
management and sometimes among the refugees. Dealing with questions of how it came
to be, the state, the citizen, the refugee, in different ways and about different, related,
issues concerning the concern, the refugee(s). Then often dealing with how this is not
how it had to be, sometimes with how the refugees don't fit this way that it came to be, so
the flux, the breaking, the inescapable confusion. Then sometimes with how else to
(re)imagine the telling, and once in a while actually telling it differently. To say the
refugee is not, does not, will not, be reterritorialized except in imposing a (theoretical
sometimes even critical) thinking on them, who are not one. Like me, unlike me. Even
while that story, the stories of the dominant refugee discourse(s), makes them, even in
helping them.
Big favour done, in reterritorializing. Usually smaller favours done. No, these
are big too. Setting up internally displaced persons, IDPs, camps in states of origin,
refugee camps in other, usually neighbouring states, accepting people as urban refugees
in cities, usually in neighbouring states, and setting up camps for returnees in the state
of origin.
Protected by the international refugee regime. By the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UN agencies and bodies such as the United
Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), regional organizations, local, national and
international non-governmental organizations, NGOs, such as the International
40 Committee for Red Cross (ICRC), and International Organization for Migration (IOM), and national governments. A huge network of international, national and local bodies and
NGOs, and voluntary organizations, often the implementing partners for UNHCR. And state governments as members of international organizations, regional organizations and
NGOs, and as individual states. Obliged to provide emergency aid and material assistance for IDPs, returnees, refugees in camps and elsewhere and for those resettled, and to provide permanent solutions of voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement.
International refugee regime.
Humanitarian.
Hmm, how about political.
And, a regimentation. As Malkki (1996), Soguk (1999), Hyndman (2000),
Rajaram (2002) say...
States and other bodies working internationally, multilaterally, to resolve a common problem, for common interests. To resolve the refugee problem. State centric, following statist logic, supported by states, dependent on states, supporting states, which alone ultimately decide who can stay within their territory and who can work for those who stay within their territory. Upholding the state system, the 'national order of things'
(Malkki. 1995). The state, the nation, the citizen, within enclosed territories. Within boundaries. Placed. Following a set of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-making process, to deal with refugees, as people who are compelled to leave their permanent places of residence, who cannot avail themselves anymore of the national
41 protection of their country, and who are in need of international protection and assistance
from other governments, institutions and individuals.
Making decisions. Who is displaced. Who is a refugee. What has to be done with the displaced. What has to be done with the refugee. To make the out of place placed
again. To sort out the mess. The blurring of the borders, boundaries. To make itself, the
order.
A refugee is 'any person who, owing to well founded fear of being persecuted for
reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or public
opinion is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fears or
for reasons other than personal convenience, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country' as per the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees
and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. Or a little more flexibly, persons 'who, owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events
seriously disturbing public order in either parts or whole of his country of origin or
nationality' have fled their country as per the 1969 Organization of African Unity
Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, and those
who are victims of human rights abuse as per the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on
Refugees. To include as refugees, victims of persecution, those fleeing natural disasters,
violence and war, civil disturbances or political and economic turmoil, whether they have
a well-founded fear of persecution or not. And persons granted humanitarian status
and/or temporary protection by national governments.
42 Weeding out those who are not true refugees, who are economic, and not political, refugee, migrants seeking to better their lives, economically. Who is trying to tell lies, who is trying to take advantage of the system. To get to better pastures. Where they can't all be accommodated. Because there are not enough national (economic) resources to support them. Because, even if there are enough national resources, supporting (all, many, some of) them would mean a lowering of standards of living in these wealthy, developed, countries. If wealth is shared, especially with these, out of place, miserable, people who do not, can not, really contribute to the country's economic (and other) well being but will be a burden on it. Because they threaten the ways of life of the host, nation, state, citizens. They do not usually assimilate adequately in spite of all the efforts and only take (away) from it, the host, nation, state, citizens. So, only the truly needy, the truly deserving, the truly miserable, are to be granted refugee status. Everyone cannot be helped, and not everyone deserves or even requires help.
Understanding. Explaining.
Refugees are a unique category of human rights victims, in need of special protection and assistance. A problem. A seemingly never ending problem posing major humanitarian, and political, challenge to the international community of states. Caused by wars and persecution, civil wars, colonial legacy in third world countries, emergence of refugee warriors, separatist movements, super power interventions and support for freedom fighters, 'push and pull factors': positive pull factors such as higher standards of living, jobs, freer communities, etc. in developed countries, and negative push factors such as conflicts, political instability, social inequalities, poor economic opportunities,
43 etc. in developing countries, refugee policies in Europe and the US, the west, political uses of refugees and their symbolic uses. Major causes, of course, are wars and persecution, and civil wars. Resulting in interstate tensions, when territorial sovereignty is breached by refugees, when they are pushed or pulled across borders. Aggravating bilateral relations between the sending and receiving states. Affecting domestic politics and local economies of host nations. Causing real and perceived threat to national security. Endangering, as mass influxes, social and economic security in host states, especially in countries that are underdeveloped, have unstable political systems, and comprise ethnic or social cleavages. Causing political and military interstate conflict when states use them as pawns, and when they are themselves actively involved in sub- national activities against their own state (of origin). Resolved by an international response, to refugees, to security concerns, based on states' capacity to absorb the refugees. A global humanitarian response, to provide aid to refugees and try to resolve the causes of the problem. To make the refugees belong once again, to a nation, a state, a nation state. Preferably the one they came from.
With state protection. With identity. With rights and duties. Problem contained.
Managed. By international cooperation among states and non-governmental bodies.
Then states can be protected from refugees as well. Oh, that should read, then the refugees can be protected, placed. Actually it's the same thing, to protect the refugee the states have to be protected and vice versa, so no slippage (of the tongue) there. The story continues, maintaining the nation, the state, the nation state, the citizen.
44 The way it came about. Told and retold. By practitioners, scholars, reporters, all, many, most, of us. Refugees were always there. But the global refugee problem is a twentieth century phenomenon. Started since the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. When western states started having immigration controls, protective barriers and closed borders, and restricted international travel. And till the 1950s this problem was mainly in Europe. Since then the problem is mainly in the third world, the developing, underdeveloped, countries and in the poorest countries of the world, where most refugees are from. And the problem remains, there are too many refugees, and (so) the permanent solutions for them are increasingly difficult. Their future is bleak. As one of the biggest humanitarian crises, and as a big threat to the (state) system.
Sad, they are victims. Bad, they cannot be really placed in a state again. Sad and bad, they are helpless. Terrible, they take away (our) resources. Unforgivable, that they even tell lies, many pretend to be refugees. They need help, we help, they take advantage of the help. The issue is whether they are political or economic refugees, deserving or undeserving. Of pity. Check that, make sure no undeserving person takes advantage of the system. Of (our) generosity. That no one is out of place, each is recognized, labeled, helped, sorted out. Into states, of belonging.
People, dehistoricized and depoliticized, framed only by belonging and not, to a national territorial space. People, problematized, and not the states, territorial, of belonging, that always make some not belong, so that a national identity and citizens that
(try to) fit that identity can be maintained, it can be maintained.
45 By the dominant refugee discourse(s) that has no space for their stories. That makes the refugees objects, of analysis, as passive victims, and as threats, an other of the self, the citizen. As lacking the place, of state, nation, citizen. And so makes the refugee, as defined solely by the experience of displacement, as uprooted, from their permanent place of residence, their state (of origin), as if being placed within a nation, state, a nation state, anywhere, means emplacement, automatically, naturally (Malkki. 1995. 516).
And so, here and now, the taken for granted understanding, without and within the
Sudanese communities, galvanized/galvanizable by/in the dominant refugee discourse(s) to in turn (re)make them by (re)using the categories/identities: the 'refugee', the
'Sudanese', the Sudanese 'man', 'woman' and 'child', the Sudanese 'professional'?,
'worker', 'student', 'on welfare', the Sudanese 'leader', 'criminal', the 'African', the
'black', the 'third world', the 'developing', the 'underdeveloped', the 'homophobic', the
'patriarch', the 'illadjusted'/'illadjustable', the 'non-English speaker', the 'cultural', the
'uncomprehending'/'incomprehensible', the 'single mom'/'single parent', the 'cheat', the
'misfit', the 'non-westerner', the 'hyphen', the 'Sudanese Canadian', the 'child abuser', the 'wife beater', the 'drunk', the 'hardworking'/'lazy'/'dumb' 'Sudanese', the 'non assimilable', the 'multicultural', the 'asylum seeker', the 'economic refugee', the
'pitiable', the 'ungrateful', the 'victim'/'survivor', the 'case', the 'west', the 'citizen', the
'success' and so the 'unsuccessful'/'successful', the 'soldier', the 'rebel', the 'police', the
'child soldier', the 'Lost Boys'/'Lost Girls'?, the 'welfare system', the 'refugee regime' etc., etc.
46 And so, I, following paths opened by others, tell a different knowledge, a different story, a different life, a different journey. Based on lives, experiences, memories, hopes. In moving. To move. Towards a Derridian hospitality (Derrida.
2000), through stories, Bakhtinian stories, that have to be, are, told at the threshold, at the 'entrance'. For a knowing, a different way of meeting, living. To know, and be, someone, something, else. But still, are you not an author here, right now? Questioning methods.
Even if I vehemently deny it I am. I am the speaker, who is claiming the legitimacy to
speak, speaking because others have spoken, in the academy, and elsewhere, letting me now speak, speak by invoking these others, to speak differently but similarly with these
others. And then speaking for others, even claiming that their voices have not been heard
so far and that I will make (some of) them heard.
As if I know this for sure, that they haven't been heard and that I can make them heard. Or that they don't speak. Actually I know that they speak, everyone speaks, only not necessarily or always or usually with authority.
Even if as Spivak asks 'Can the Subaltern Speak?' (Spivak. 1988) and if the
'postcoloniaP 'subaltern' does not remain the subaltern if s/he speaks—can it be that postcoloniality, as if this is a geographical and/or even spatial experience, is the almost foundational premise, for the 'most' colonized 'woman' to be 'the' subaltern? The point for me, as for Spivak, being that there is no subaltern per se but only in the speaking and accepting of the subaltern, those who are 'truly' 'powerless', and so even the critical, crucial, interventions of Subalternists and others is still apart of reality/'founding', even if hybridized, speaking and accepting of the subaltern, those who are 'truly' 'powerless'.
Aren't we complicit in the (re)construction and (re)silencing of the subaltern in speaking of and for them, even while contesting who they can be, as 'them'/'subaltern' (even when very critically and so somewhat 'usefully'/'politically') and in laying bare their context
(as if this can be known)? When what they speak, as legitmate speakers (but delegitmized, by the very labeling, even by many 'critical', and quite often guilt ridden,
48 'interventions'), is not heard by 'others'/'us' when 'we' continue to think of them' as
inherently and significantly 'different' from 'us' if only because of their circumstances?
This is not to say that people do not live in inhuman and dehumanized conditions. But to
question how one can still talk of them as objects, an 'it', and whether they 'really' live
their lives like that and how one can judge that without being complicit in their making.
And really the question remains, can they/we escape their/our conditions? Especially
when they/we want to (why, from what, to what, so what and how; these questions
remain), without such interventions, or even with the most critical of critical ones.
Especially if these, interventions, are not 'truly' 'collaborative'/ 'localized' (and not merely local, impossible as that is, in and of itself) where the 'differences' and the
'similarities' between and among 'us' and 'them' merge, not into homogenized spaces but into spaces of 'acceptance'.
And this claim, that some people are unable to speak, is not entirely unfounded,
even is mostly true, in terms of who has the authority to speak.
And then my purpose is not to show that (certain) people have not been able to
speak or cannot be heard but to find a way to make the voices, as I say it, as I heard it.
Why?
Because these voices have been silenced.
And for the voices to speak, to be knowledge producing, acknowledged as knowledge producing, the author, authority, has to 'die'. As says Barthes (1988), and so many others. So that there is no voice of origin, but writing. And when what a person
says, the source, the voice, is not in the writing but in the reading. Where the multiple
49 writings in a text, with its cultures, its dialogues, parodies, contestations is focused in the reader, and not the author (Barthes. 1988. 142, 147-148.). A reader born, with the death of the writer.
Author authorizing author's death! Possible? And then, with me, you, us, 'dead' as well, can the voices be heard or will some other 'author' take over and continue
speaking?
Will the birth of the reader, the death of the author, allow for a hearing, a
speaking, a way that all become readers and so can hear one another and so let everyone
speak, so that there is a dialog, dialogues?
With the dialogical polyphonic story, with interaction of various consciousnesses.
So that no one can be the object of another, so that the reader cannot read a text, thematically, lyrically, or cognitively, into a monological pattern. So that a reader becomes a participant. With nothing to fall back on outside the (constructed) perpetual dialogical conflict. No one is a non-participating third party, not in the composition, nor in the meaning of the text. This allows for a new authorial position, non-monological, dialogical (Bakhtin. 1984. 14).
The (reborn) reader then attentively listens, participates, (re)makes the text, life.
The stories must be told, have to be told. Here and now.
Stories where I don't always make it clear who says what, stories where I don't always say it the way it was said to me, as if that were even possible, stories that are all
50 mixed up, stories that hurt so much that one doesn't want to face them, stories that
(hopefully) heal in this hurting.
(Some) people, who have had some refugee experience, and are now permanent residents or citizens in Canada, have stories to tell. That show the violence, the power, and even the stupidity, the limits, of the dominant refugee discourse(s). And more than that that they are people, with lives, aspirations and knowledges of their own, and that they are not all one people, or with one experience, even if I, and they themselves, call them Sudanese, Southern Sudanese, refugees. That they are not reducible to the refugee, within a singular experience of displacement.
And then, I don't intend to show this dominant refugee discourse(s) either, except as stories that define and limit the lives of refugees, desperately and impossibly.
Refugees, and people, after all always are more than and less than the stories, even the stories that make them. Life is not either oral or written and so any telling and writing of it is not life and can never be.
And many stories make one, us. Among these that very violently makes one is the sanctioned, conventional, dominant, refugee discourse(s).
And so, the many stories (here as well) to contest it. But really the stories are not for contesting (alone) but for living. And to live differently, as one knows it, can
(possibly) know it.
51 Talking of situated knowledge and deconstructing the discourse(s).
Is it vice-versa or is it the same—to situate and to deconstruct?
Is, is not, is and is not, not is and not is not; makes deconstructive sense?
Contesting the dominant, through Sudanese bodies, and without truth claims.
But we also believe (in) the system, which puts us down.
The problem: is it the system, the workings of the system or those who run the system?
And we rise, and try.
Me too.
Though I think I know more and can reveal to you patterns through what you tell me. As if. I hope as well, and that we move.
Beyond.
To?
Beyond the system, which for me is the problem.
Possible?
Let's push anyway.
Let's broke the English.
52 Contexts: Sudan
Hearing. Telling. Seeing. Believing. Knowing. Not knowing. Saying.
You know, many Southern Sudanese who came here, said they faced danger from
Dinkas, in Sudan and in the camps.
But that's not true.
It is.
No.
Is...
It was mostly Dinka in the SPLA.
No, unless if you separate all the others into their own groups, tribes.
It's true, most people in SPLA are Dinka.
But you have to ask why.
And why did these other people not fight?
They want to come, after we liberate the place for them?
In Anya Nya I, the first movement, there were so many Equatorians, and others.
Even this movement, the SPLA, has people from everywhere, even from the beginning.
Though most non-Dinkas joined them later, some never. After the first peace agreement in Addis Ababa, in 1972, we didn't trust the Dinkas
much. They came to occupy all the positions in Juba, the capital of the entire South.
In the police they wanted only their people.
They even fought in schools.
That's not really true.
Most positions were with Equatorians, they were the ones who were mostly educated.
No.
That peace lasted for ten years, from '72 to '83.
But for some of us the war didn't have a break. There were mutinies' and then there was
Anya Nya II, and we continued to fight the government. Anya Nya II formed starting
with the Akobo breakaway group in '75, led by Samuel Gai Tut, Akot Atem de Mayen,
Gordon Kong Choi.
It was also Benson Kueng Laguer who led this group.
Abdallah Chuol Deng and Paulino Matip Nhial were involved too.
But Anya Nya II was a decentralized movement. Besides these people based at the
Ethiopian border there were others in Bahr el Ghazal. They were not fully under the
others' authority, people like Anthony Bol Madut, Paul Malong Awan. Later they joined
SPLA.
No, it was good those ten years.
We were able, to some extent, to do our things ourselves, have autonomy.
54 But the government in the North never thought of our interests, our development.
Even with the democratic government, like those of Sadiq al Mahdi, they were still like that, and they are fundamentalists too.
The Southern government was corrupt too.
But it was our government.
Gaafar Mohammed Nimeri ended the peace, in 1983. He abrogated the Agreement, introduced Sharia laws all over Sudan, and divided the South into three provinces,
Kokora, decentralization.
But there were pro-Kokora people in the South, in Equatoria. And some against it.
With the peace many people from Anya Nya I were included in the Sudan government, especially in the wild life department, and in the army and police.
And then they were fighting the Anya Nya II, and later SPLA.
But you know, most were retired.
And some of the officers from Anya Nya I didn't buy into the Addis Ababa Agreement, and retained some form of paramilitary groups in Upper Nile which became active in
1982, in military actions.
Garang, was with Anya Nya I, as a student.
The students with Anya Nya I studied mainly in Uganda, then in Kenya, and some in
Ethiopia, Congo and Central African Republic.
We preferred to study in English, it was the main language of instruction in the South.
55 We went to Uganda to escape the war. We supported Anya Nya I, and they told us to study, to help the movement.
There they told us the South is like a family, the country is like a family. We start from the family, then go to the village and so on until we reach the nation, South Sudan. We have to be united, and we are different from the North that wants to keep us down.
Garang then became an officer in Anya Nya I, and then after the Addis Ababa Agreement an officer in the Sudanese army. Then, in '83 he left for the South, on leave, and was the negotiator between the Sudan Government and Southern mutineers led by Kerubino
Kuanyin Bol and William Nyuon Bany. And he joined them, Kerubino and William
Nyuon, in the bush. Then he formed the SPLA/SPLM, and became the leader of SPLA and SPLM.
Actually, Garang planned and coordinated the whole thing. The aim was to do an internal revolt and capture Juba, but that was discovered early.
It was not just him but others too, like Kerubino, William Nyuon, Salva Kiir Mayardit, who also formed SPLA. Even some from Anya Nya II were part of the planning, like
Abdallah Chuol.
They declared the SPLA and SPLM, its formation, in Ethiopia.
Russians, Soviet Union, and Mengistu in Ethiopia, were involved.
And oh, we always heard that we got money from Germany.
East Germany?
56 Maybe, I don't know.
At the time when SPLA was communist, socialist, they said they were fighting for a socialist Sudan state.
I don't think really communist but they called upon the free officers, in the Sudanese army, sort of associated with communist thinking and the Communist Party, to join them.
The Communist Party didn't really support them though, they thought all Southern leaders were separatists.
Anyway, the SPLA sent us to Cuba from Bilpham in Ethiopia.
Bilpham was the SPLA training ground.
Ya, we were happy because we could study more.
The Cubans came through Angola and trained some of us, young children in Red Army, to speak simple Spanish, and then they selected mostly boys and some girls to take to
Cuba.
Some were quite big too, and some of us we were still very young.
But it was mainly children of top SPLA officials who went.
It wasn't how they selected, but when we were at the plane we saw mostly them in the line. I don't know how they did it, but they switched names.
But others went too.
Some didn't want to go.
Like I know someone, who even shot himself in the feet, to not go. And there were some, they cried so much because they wanted to go but nobody selected them.
SPLA also sent some officers, and some teachers too.
I went with my sister, my brothers and my mother, she was teaching Arabic.
And many people returned, like my mother and my sister.
I think there are three people, they are still in Cuba. They didn't want to leave, to come to
Canada or the west.
They came to help us, to leave Cuba.
We first tried to contact SPLA to help us, there was no response, then some of us wrote to
Geneva, and some people, who left from Cuba a little before to come to Canada and some others, also helped from here in Canada. Then the UN visited us in Cuba, and I think they got the other western countries involved.
Most came to Canada.
To come to Canada took less time, less than a year, for other places the process took longer.
Only two or three people went to the US, and five or six to Europe.
In Cuba it was good.
But after sometime it was like the SPLA forgot us.
I am angry with them for this.
Me, I am still a supporter of SPLA, they didn't abandon us.
5£ I went to military college in Cuba and I am still an officer with the SPLA.
They selected some of us, to study for construction, and nursing, there.
I didn't like that.
They just looked at you and said you didn't have the understanding to be in normal high school.
And when we finished they brought us back to Ethiopia.
Some girls, if they got pregnant, were sent back too.
Then, in '91 Cuba was really bad, not just for us but for all Cubans.
But the Cuban system is better than here, school and health is totally free.
You see my teeth they got spoilt only here.
But ya, you do have funny, ignorant, people everywhere.
In India.
In Egypt.
In Ethiopia.
In Kenya.
Ya, I think everywhere.
Anyway, in Cuba, my girlfriend's grandmother was saying very seriously to me, you are not human, no? You are an animal, no? How can you be so black? Hehe. You just have to ignore them.
There, we were, many of us, in university.
Some finished, some didn't, when we came here.
59 Over there we had struggled so much, we knew how to manage things.
But Canada is different. They told us there that it's not easy in Canada, but we didn't think it would be so difficult. We thought we would be fine, we knew how to live in tough conditions.
Anyway, to go back, in Anya Nya II there were mostly Nuer.
And they fought the SPLA later.
But that's because of what happened with who should lead the SPLA.
I was there in Bilpham that time, I know what happened.
No, you don't.
I do.
No, I do.
Actually, we all don't really know how John Garang came to be the leader of SPLA and
SPLM.
Can I choose the version that I feel is true?
Yes, nobody can stop you from doing that.
But that will tell us who you support.
And you don't really know anything.
No, you know a lot, interestingly.
I don't. Maybe a little.
Maybe.
Yes.
60 So, at the time Garang said he was a Marxist.
He was never a Marxist.
He was.
The SPLM manifesto uses Marxist terms.
But Garang claimed that SPLM/SPLA was a socialist movement.
He even said, not long after the fall of communism, that his earlier leanings were a
marriage of convenience.
And after 1989, but especially from '91 he switched sides, became with US.
After '91, after the cold war, international interest in the South was much less, until the
US became involved.
They had pressure from conservative Christians.
From the Jewish lobby too.
And there was oil now.
Before, there was water and the Nile, and Egypt was involved.
This was from the beginning, even before, with the condominium, with the British.
And even earlier with the Turco-Egyptian rule.
Also the Arab League was involved, Sudan is part of it, it joined immediately after
independence.
They wanted to start with Sudan, and Somalia, and spread Islam to Africa.
And US was there in Sudan from before '91 too.
61 Chevron was the first major oil company in Sudan.
In the South. Before, there were other European and American companies too.
Chevron was there in Bentiu, until their staff was killed by the SPLA, in 1984.
And even before that the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, was there. Working with the
Northern government.
No, it wasn't.
Yes.
No...
Then Talisman from Canada came.
And oil money went to the Sudan government, who used that money to kill people, especially in the South.
Like with Chevron too.
But it was not so much oil then, mainly exploration.
We had huge protests here against Talisman, especially in Calgary.
In other places too.
And you know, in Calgary people came from the US, they came in Chevron cars!
Talisman finally had to leave.
The Indian oil company took over from them.
And the Chinese oil company is there, supporting the government as well.
<2 Also the Malaysian oil company.
The Sudanese government had invested their money in this company already, so that's directly Sudan money.
But they are all there, from everywhere in the world.
Also some Sudanese companies, on contract.
For oil.
It's all messy.
And nobody really knows where the money goes to.
They are all there, in other businesses too.
Even from Kenya, Uganda, Somalia etc.
And for humanitarian aid.
Also a business.
The oil is in the South.
We have all the natural resources, other minerals and forest too.
No, oil is also in the West.
No.
And the boundaries are not clear.
The government drew up the map, re-divided Sudan again, into so many provinces, all wrong, but purposely, also to make sure they have oil.
Like Abyei should be in the South, not North. No.
Once we have separate South Sudan then we will have our resources for us and then we can be developed.
The whole of the South? Even when it means displacing your own people, to be able to get the oil?
They will be compensated well.
I have heard this before.
This is dangerous, oil is dangerous for all kinds of reasons, even environmentally.
No.
Yes.
And maybe that's why Garang got killed, in 2005.
No, it was an accident.
In the North, they always do this, even to their own people. There have been so many plane crashes with top leaders in them.
This time it wasn't the North, the Americans, along with the Ugandans, did it. The US couldn't control Garang and so if he was alive they couldn't control the oil.
You know the CIA was always in Sudan.
And the Americans and the British are trying a lot, to talk to the Northern government, even now, when they are taking a public position against Sudan, calling the war in Darfur a genocide.
64 But that, calling the war a genocide, is also because of the Israeli connections, to show
Sudan as a bad Arab, Muslim, state.
And, the Chinese are a big threat to them, the Americans, and also to their oil interests in
Sudan.
But, have you seen how much we need development?
And that we had war most of these years, since '55.
We know the US has its interests always in mind. But they are the only ones who helped us get peace.
No.
Only we, we can get our peace, nobody else.
Only we can make our development.
Only we can make it happen.
And for this we all need to talk, really talk.
We need to listen to all of us, especially those on the ground.
Hey wait, don't start talking about now, yet.
So, with Kokora, in 1983, we were divided into three provinces, Bahr el Ghazal, Upper
Nile and Equatoria.
And now there are ten provinces in the South, and twenty five in all of Sudan. I don't even know them anymore.
Then, the Dinkas had to go back to their place in Bahr el Ghazal and to Upper Nile.
65 All non-Equatorians had to leave.
But then there was a big problem in Bahr el Ghazal between Dinkas and Fertit.
And in Juba.
What kind of a name is Fertit?
I think short for fruit eater, British name, makes no sense, maybe they thought all these people ate fruits.
Hehe.
It stayed, and they put many tribes, in Bahr el Ghazal, within that name.
I am Bongo, from Bahr el Ghazal, I married a Dinka. There was so much tension between these groups at the time. I had to hide at my mother's home, till I got out of Wau. We lived like in different zones when this problem started.
I don't even know why it started but people were killing each other. It was too bad.
And, we had to leave Juba to go to Wau when Kokora happened. Equatorians, the majority, said all Dinkas should leave. My house was attacked and my father, a police officer, was killed.
I am from Bor, I lived in Juba all my life. If now, like after Comprehensive Peace
Agreement, CPA, of 2005, they tell me to go back should I just go? My father's house is here.
But why are the Bari mostly in the island off Juba too, when Juba's their land?
66 No, they are in Juba too.
And there's like everyone, from everywhere here, not only Dinkas.
Juba is now the capital of the South.
But everybody can't stay in Juba.
If it's the capital now it doesn't mean all people have to be here.
Even all the international organizations are mainly here, they are more maybe only in
Khartoum.
But then again, see the way the jobs are in the South.
Even in the rest of Sudan.
With the oil and some other businesses booming, some people in Khartoum, in Khartoum
North, Omdurman, Wad Medini, Port Sudan are doing okay, even good.
And in some other centres, like Gezira, with the agricultural scheme.
Even Nyala, Al Fashir, Kassala.
And maybe Juba and Yei.
But where the oil is being taken out, processed, it is not so.
Even if people are finding some employment with the oil companies. Most people are displaced, especially like from Bentiu.
And there is no employment for most people anywhere.
In the South there are a few factories, like there was the cigarette and a cold drinks one in
Juba.
67 Jobs seem to be only available in the army and police, and yes there's the intelligence, we call it security.
We are even now, but especially before this peace, scared to talk. You don't know who is security. If they suspect you, anything can happen. So many people disappeared before, especially in government controlled areas, like Juba, Wau and Malakal, and some other smaller towns.
And in the North.
Then there are jobs in the churches.
And now more and more with the NGOs, especially the international ones, and with
United Nations Mission in Sudan, UNMIS, too.
In the international organizations they employ both men and women.
We can all be drivers and security guards with them, and hardly anything much else.
The Southern government also has some positions, in the different ministries especially wild life, but not many.
And there are the businesses, especially in Juba, the hotels mainly.
These hotels, they are mostly for the NGO and government people, on top.
You know how expensive Juba is now because of all this? It's the second most expensive place on earth.
Even though we have nothing!
Maybe they should have kept Rumbek as the capital.
Then another city would have developed too, and people would not be just all in one place.
68 Shall we get back to before again? I know the present, past and future are all related, but
still.
From Juba I went to the North with my parents, after SPLA started fighting.
There I became a Southern nationalist.
There is nothing for the Southerner in the North, and you feel different, like you don't
belong, like Sudan is not yours.
I wanted to join the SPLA then.
I always wanted to join SPLA.
I left my home to join SPLA. My parents didn't even know until later.
My parents and relatives did not let me join the SPLA.
Like my mother talked to my uncle, I was staying with him in Khartoum then, to not let
me go. My father already died because of the war. He was part of Anya Nya I, in the
internal cell.
I was forced to join SPLA.
In my family, actually there are many soldiers. Like me I am in SPLA, my father is in the
Sudanese army, and my brother too.
If you don't join the army how can you eat?
But how can you not fight the people who put you down?
And how can you come now and say this land, we liberated it, it is ours now?
You can't say you liberated us. We also died, not only you.
69 And in my family, we are Nubian, from Dongola, we are all Umma Party. But my brother
is in SPLA. We wonder what's wrong with him, hehe.
Yes, we have many people from the North, especially from Nuba Mountains in SPLA.
Oh, Nuba Mountains is West, not North.
No. Nuba is North, but not in the Centre, like where the Arabs are.
Only those in the Centre say that Nuba is in the West.
No, I do too.
And we have Arabs in the west too.
No.
And nobody in the North is really Arab.
We are.
No.
And me, I never met Arabs but I know they are the enemy.
For me I thought like that but now I think we have to look more deeply.
Even us we killed each other.
Ya. We can't trust the government in the North, but my question is can we trust the government in the South, even the SPLA?
There's so much bad things that the SPLA did too.
You know when they came to my place, Yei, we had to run away to hide.
70 I lived in the area that they liberated. I was once outside the city for a day, waiting for
them to go away.
But they were not Dinkas or Nuers who attacked us, especially the women.
They were.
When they came to my house and beat my brother, it was just a group from SPLA,
Lutoko, Pojulu and some other Equatorians. They were friends, all bad.
They killed my mother, I don't know why. She was a good woman, she helped everyone.
When the SPLA first started, they, mainly Dinkas, thought all other people were their
enemies. They killed so many. They raped so many, even men. No one will tell you this,
about the men, but I know this happened. My mother gave shelter and food, to these
people who were running away from SPLA. They cut her into pieces. I had to leave then,
with my younger brothers and sisters.
I met someone in Yei who talked to me about some women, she said they are starting an
NGO. They were like slaves for the SPLA, they cooked and slept with them.
You know the military, everywhere, is all wrong. There is nothing, not one thing, that is
right about it. I was with them before, but this is what I know. But, even now I support
some of the things SPLA is doing, they have to fight.
And the militias, supported by the government, also killed so many people.
We thought the SPLA, the Dinka, were the enemy.
But now I think differently. I support SPLA.
I don't.
I support SPLA too, I always did, but I don't think any one people should dominate in it.
71 And, with the split in the SPLA, in 1991, into Nasir faction with Riek Machar Teny and
Lam Akol Ajawin and Torit faction with John Garang, people were divided again, even
along tribes. Many people killed each other.
At that time many of us left SPLA too, deserted it. We didn't join the SPLA to fight
ourselves.
We are all Southerners, if we have tribalism then we will always have problems among
ourselves and the North can use us too.
They do.
We have to be united.
Wasn't unity with the North what John Garang was fighting for? Why many people from
Nuba and the North, and other places, joined SPLA?
You know it's confusing.
People in the South don't want that.
John Garang said that's okay. I am on a train, we are on the train together now, when we
reach the border with the North then you can decide what you want. Me, I will go ahead.
A few of us, we agree. But first the government in the North has to change, and they have to remove Sharia. Otherwise we cannot be one country.
They cannot impose Islam and Arabism on us.
They can't keep everything for them.
You see the South, there is no development there.
72 Yes, but it's true for all of Sudan.
It's worst in the South.
And they think we are not humans.
No, Darfur is the worst.
We never even had people, as Darfurians, in the government at all since independence, the Southerners at least had a few from the very beginning.
In the East with Beja, we are the worst.
And in Blue Nile.
No, us.
No, them.
Yes...
But, people in the West, in Darfur, were brainwashed through Islamic schools set up there.
And they were supporters of the Umma Party, and also some of the National Islamic
Front, NIF. They even had ministers and leaders in the government from there.
This happened because of the original al Mahdi, and Hassan Abdullah al Turabi.
Al Mahdi led his movement, Islamic and against the British, from the West. He had many supporters there.
73 And Turabi, a falata, also got support in the West. He is married to Sadiq al Mahdi's sister, Sadiq is Al Mahdi's desecendant. Turabi was the thinking head of the Muslim
Brotherhood movement in Sudan, that became NIF. He was also behind the imposition of
Sharia law, the September laws, during Nimeri's time.
He also supported Osama bin Laden, invited him to Sudan. He was involved with Taliban in Afghanistan for long.
But he's also like a liberal Islamist.
No, he was terrible.
And he was very much against the people in the South.
He is an opportunist. And he has always tried hard to rule Sudan.
And he was put in prison by Bashir, when they had a fall out.
Anyway, now with Justice and Equality Movement, JEM, the support in the West has shifted to them.
This, JEM, is a faction of SLM/SLA, Sudan Liberation Movement/Army. These are the two main rebel groups in Darfur.
And it is supported by Chad, maybe even by Turabi.
Its founder Khalil Ibrahim, used to be with NIF, before its spilt between Turabi and
Bashir camps.
He is an Islamist, even went on Jihad in South Sudan.
74 People suspect that he, along with the Zurga, the so called black people from Darfur, support Turabi, while the riverine tribes, the so called Arabs of the West went with
Bashir and Ali Osman Mohamed Taha.
With the SLM, it's backed by Eritrea.
It used to be called Darfur Liberation Front, till 2003.
That time it changed from saying it had no connection with the Southern rebels, they then said they had an understanding with the opposition forces to fight the Islamist government in Khartoum.
They used to be a secessionist organization, but the SLA leader, Mini Arkoi Minawi said they wanted to create a united, democratic Sudan. They are part of the National
Democratic Alliance, NDA, the umbrella opposition group. They want more political autonomy and a more equitable share of resources from the central Sudanese authorities.
But now the SLA/M has so many fractions, they all go under the same name. They form alliances and re-form them, among themselves.
Abdul Wahid is also an important leader, he lives in Paris.
Anyway, so there are the schools where the government tries to teach people their ideology but people in Darfur don't all support them.
Many of our leaders are with NIF but like in my village they didn't like what the government was doing in the school, they didn't like the government.
75 I was teaching in one school and the people there told me to oppose the government rules and syllabus. I did, and I was put in prison and tortured. That's when I left.
Also they collected Jihad tax from us, forcibly, to fight the South.
But yes, we didn't know people from the South as people.
The same like the North.
In Kordofan, we believed what we were told. We thought that they are not really civilized, humans.
You know, in boarding school in Kordofan I studied with some Southerners. That's when
I came to know they are nice people.
I am from the North, people would call me Arab. I grew up in Nigeria, and my best friend when I came back to Khartoum, was Shilluk, from the South. There were only a few of them, Southerners, in the university housing. We were beaten in school all the time, I didn't even realize it was racism then, just because we used to say we are African.
I studied with Northerners, but I was never friends with them. It was too much. Maybe it's bad but that's how I felt, that they were our enemies, they did bad things to us.
I had friends from the North, but that doesn't change how I feel about the North.
Maybe now we need to think more about all this. I think we all know only some things about the war and the situation, about who we think are the enemies.
And who we think we are.
76 And you know we, the Fur, used to be peaceful with Janjaweed, the people now killing us, armed by the government, because they are supposed to be Arab. Before in Darfur, even if we fought it wasn't like this.
Like everywhere in Sudan.
We all did fight from time to time, for grass for animals or something.
But we also lived with each other, usually peacefully.
Anyway, to go back again, quite many SPLA leaders didn't agree with unity.
And many died as a result too.
Also because of personal issues, and other political issues.
And, people like Riek Machar and Lam Akol wanted separation.
They didn't like Garang's leadership.
And they said they didn't support Garang having child soldiers, in the Red Army in
Ethiopia.
Or so they said.
I am from Bor, but I like Riek Machar. My people will be so angry with me if they know
I am saying this. When the Nuers attacked Bor, with Riek, in 1991, after the SPLA spilt, they killed many people. My grandmother and my cousin too died. But I like separation, not only for Sudan but everywhere in the world. So I support Machar.
If you think of this Bor massacre only as something that the Nuer did then there can be no unity among us in the South.
77 I think we all have to acknowledge that lots of things before, during and after that Bor incident went wrong and we have to talk about it.
I hear different thing about this from different people, especially Dinka, from Bor, and
Nuer.
Also I don't think people were just blindly led by Riek Machar. They agreed to what he said because of what they thought as well, how they rationalized.
Ya, they actually stopped at Bor and returned back from there. Machar couldn't make them keep going on and fighting. That's why he lost then.
But Riek didn't support this in the first place, it was the white army that took the war to
Bor, they were Nuer too.
So it's not him that lost, and he had some officers that he left behind in Khartoum.
And then, Machar and Lam had joined the Sudan Government. How could they believe that they could get separation like that?
Ya, I don't think that was the right move.
But without what Machar and Lam did how could we oppose the domination of the
Dinkas in SPLA?
But people were not just divided on tribal lines, even in SPLA, no?
Not always, but often.
We are actually brothers from long back, like the Dinka and Nuer.
And they killed a lot of people too, Machar and Lam.
Nobody's hands are clean in this war. The problem is really the three doctors, Garang, Machar and Lam.
Hmm, but we need educated people to lead the South too.
We don't.
And the North tried to make sure that there was no education in the South, among
Southerners.
People who know, or can decide, are not just people who went to school though.
But leaders doesn't mean people who do things for themselves, without taking what others say. A leader always serves the people, that's how we, many of us, tribes, like
Nuer, always knew it, how we did it for so long.
And, without Garang we would not be able to fight the North.
He brought the war to all Sudan.
First they said it was a junubi, Southern, problem. Now everyone has woken up, in the
West, East, Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, Kordofan.
Hmm, but we always fought the government. We always fought the Arab. In Nuba, East,
West, Blue Nile areas. In North too we fought the government, we all don't like them.
Actually it is only a few tribes, Shaygiya, Jaali, Danagla, in the North that control everything.
Actually a few families, especially the Mahdi family, and the Mirghani family . Most leaders of all parties in Sudan, in the North, are all related, one way or the other.
79 Even the parties in the South had to have some association with these families to function.
And, about Sudan they keep saying the war is about North and South, Muslims and
Christians, Arabs and Africans, but it's not so simple.
But the Northerners are all racist.
Yes, but some of them helped me to escape. Like my friend, he was so good.
And, in our locality there were not many Southerners but we all celebrated Ramadan and
Christmas together. Only those Muslims with beard, like one guy, my neighbour, he didn't mix with us at all.
But you know now they have changed their look, they don't have those beards any more.
And all who have beards are not people like that.
That guy, our neighbour, he killed my uncle and they did nothing to him. I hate them.
It's tough for Southerners in the North.
Especially with this government, NIF, when Bashir came to power with the coup in '89.
They even took away so many jobs from Southerners, especially in the higher levels in the government and in the army.
And in public companies too.
And they introduced privatization in Sudan.
Then my mother, it's not just the women in the displaced areas, brewed liquor for the
Arabs to drink.
80 We all had to be careful, they could arrest you anytime.
They got Sharia law in 1983, that's when the war started.
They started troubling Southerners, we are Christians.
But not all, no?
No, but most people are.
No.
And they started doing bad things to Muslims too.
Ya.
You know, when I went to Gambella in Ethiopia this time, I saw more Christians than
when I left Sudan twenty years back. I was like what's happening?
But they also have the Ngundeng Church there. You know Ngundeng, he's a Nuer
prophet.
Actually what Ngundeng said all came true.
Even about Garang, I knew he would die. Ngundeng said so, long back.
Was it fate, an accident, an assassination?
We will never know.
I know.
But it was too bad. Even for me, I don't like Garang but I feel so bad.
We needed him to keep the government in North in check.
81 His death is even worse for us in the North, he was our only hope.
He even talked about women and equality for them in the government.
Now you in the South can even separate, for us we are stuck with this same government.
But things are changing in Sudan too.
Ya, but we don't know how all its changing.
In the Ngundeng Church they attack Christianity and the west. I will show you the video
I took, now.
And, if you want I will show you my video with the Beja, I took it when I went to the
East. I am half Beja, and I grew up in the city, in Kassala. We also have another big city,
Port Sudan in the East.
These people are Muslim but they have their own tradition, and they don't like to be told by the government what to do. They are fighting the government. They live like before, they are very simple.
That's me there on the camel, and that's Yasir Arman who's with SPLA. We were colleagues in Cairo University, Khartoum Branch, we are friends. SPLA was then in
Eritrea and Kassala fighting against the Sudanese government.
Many communists, even some other people, went to join SPLA to fight the Bashir government.
And even he, Bashir, has some Southerners in his government.
Do you want to see another documentary?
82 You see this guy, he's crying. They put him in prison, they tortured him and then when he still didn't tell them anything they got his daughter and raped her in front of him.
And you see this picture in this book?
Sorry all this is in Arabic.
They cut off the hands of all these people for small crimes.
But now this kind of punishment is not so much there.
The Islamists under Turabi never cut off anyone's hand. They were quite liberal about it and didn't want a public backlash over the issue.
You know the cutting of hands, was only during Nimeri's time. The NIF never did this.
Still, they catch lots of women, especially from the South for brewing alcohol.
I work with these women, and now they are from the West too. It's really terrible how they treat them. We try to get legal support to get them out of the jail.
They even put their small kids in with them.
Now, when I go home I don't even recognize Sudan that much, even my family.
I always wanted to go home, but I think my home is in my imagination, or in the past.
I am Muslim, but not like how they have become now. It wasn't like this in Sudan before.
They never used to wear the hijab so much before, they wore the thoub. You saw that?
Almost like a saree, from India.
And now they pray all the time.
83 They are not fundamentalists, and they don't like this government. But this government has made some Arabic culture to become almost like normal Sudanese culture now.
But even before we were racist towards Southerners, even other people. I am not innocent, but we didn't even know that before.
For me I realized and am trying to see how I can change.
Oh, when I am in Sudan it is easy to do anything. We can drink, party, do marijuana, whatever.
Ya, you do it privately.
And you know things are so bad in Sudan now, nobody except a few people have a job.
Everyone's hustling in Khartoum.
The government stopped things like prostitution in public and now its happening from homes, even with parents around. This is too much.
But people have nothing to do, no jobs that are legal.
No, it's good there now. There is development, with the oil boom.
No.
Wait. And to go way back, the war started in '55, one year before the independence of
Sudan. The British were there with the Egyptians, who had come with the Turks before.
It was a condominium.
You have Turkish roommates?
Say hi to them.
84 But they are not good.
They are, as much as any others.
Yes.
Maybe.
No.
The British always treated the South as different, a separate zone, a closed district or area.
Same with Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains.
The Northerners needed special permission to enter.
They encouraged Islam in the North and Christianity in the South.
Then, we even had people fighting with British and Italy in the world wars.
The Italians, with their churches, had to leave though, when the World War II started, though they still have ties with the South through the Catholic churches.
Most of this history is erased.
Like how could the Fashoda incident, of 1898, when the French were forced to withdraw from the area by the British, have only been about the colonizing powers and not the
Chollo, or Shilluk as they are now called, whose land this is?
And what happened to all those Sudanese soldiers who died in Europe during the world wars?
My grandfather was there. He came back and then with the war he left to Uganda. Now he's back in Yei.
85 And we had a grandfather in the neigbourhood, who would keep us all entertained about stories of Burma, so he must have been there, during the war.
Most people didn't come back though.
And, when they left, the British gave too much power to the North and nothing to the
South really, from the time of self governance in '55.
The leaders, civil servants, priests, army personnel, tribal chiefs, who were part of the consultations, agreed to this, to being part of the North, but they didn't really know what the British were doing.
The tribal chiefs were also appointed, hand picked, by the British. You know how they reorganized tribes in Africa in systematic hierarchical ways. The British did this in areas where there was no clear administrative structure like in the Dinka areas, with the
Equatorians, actually in most of Sudan. And they also made use of established administration in Chollo, Azande and Anyuak areas.
But there were always administrative structure, customary or traditional, whatever you guys call it. But the British didn't recognize it, and they put in people who would do as they wanted them to, who they could bribe etc.
Anyway, so many Southerners didn't like the power distribution between North and
South.
And they wanted separation too.
Anya Nya I fought the North from then.
But mainly after '63, when it became bigger.
86 Now, with the CPA we hope peace stays this time.
People are tired.
But we are ready for war too.
In 2011, six years after CPA, we will vote, have a referendum, to decide if we will separate from the North.
We want to separate.
I don't. Some don't.
Most of us do, even if not all.
But we don't know what can happen.
You never know with the Northerners, those people in power, they are too tricky.
And some of our Southern politicians can go with them if they get money. Lubanga
Marginalization in Sudan did not occur just because of bad policies. It was deliberately planned, a clear case of policies. There were government policies aimed at economic, social and political development of the Northern Sudan that the British initiated, that were maintained when Sudan became independent.
Sudan became officially independent in 1956 but before that we had a self government for one year. And, even before it became fully independent there were people from the North who were already in key positions. They began writing down exactly what they would do in the South, Isalamization and Arabization of the non-
Muslim and African South.
In Sudan whatever little industry that was there, agricultural schemes or the textile industry, was in the South. The Sudanese, Northerner elite, following the British model, in India, transferred all the raw material to the North and completely destroyed the industries in the South. The idea was to keep us backward and that was it, since a developed non-Muslim and African South would not remain a part of the Sudan, Al
Sudan.
So, the North South conflict in the Sudan was grounded on policies, not on the issue that somebody is a Northerner or he is an Arab. This policy, now as you see it, was affecting the people who call themselves African in the South. And Islam was used to camouflage the marginalization of the African populations in the West and East of the
Sudan, who were continuously told that the problem with the Southerners is that they are anti-Islam.
88 Now through this entire mask you see what is happening. You see it in Darfur,
Kassala, Kordofan, and Blue Nile areas. Those people are even worse than those in the
South. But the Arabs were using religion as the tool, saying if the South becomes Islamic everything will be okay. And there's nothing happening in the rest of Sudan too.
Osama
It is something that happened before, even before independence, since the British. They created this division, because some Northerners were supporting the English. There were areas in the South, that were just closed, you couldn't enter it. It was just for Southern people and they did nothing for the people there, it is something like the idea of the reserve for the aboriginals in the US and Canada.
Then, with these ideas of racism and race system, very bad things, they started to separate Arabs and non-Arabs, based on this sense of superiority and hierarchy, based on colour. We had been ruled by Arabs and Turkish before, and they had the same thing that the English had later. Then people started to claim some relation to those who were thought to be superior, like the Arab. So the suffering in Sudan, it started from then, with the English occupation.
It's not that we are not ruling ourselves now, that you can't blame us. Then, the
Arabs helped to collect people from the South and sell them as slaves. Even now they pick orphans, young girls or boys from the South, and bring them to Khartoum.
89 By the way, this created the idea that Southern Sudanese people used to work as
servants in houses. Over time it became a job. Most of the people who serve in houses in
the North are Southerners, or from Nuba Mountains.
People from the countryside, in the middle of Sudan, like in Al Gezira and Al
Butana, used to sell cold water. Quickly, like in two years or so, they started selling a lot
of small things and, in like five years or so, they got their own shops and left their jobs as
sellers of water. Women from Western Sudan or west Africa, they are called Hajjat al
foul, they sell foul, peanuts, and stuff like that, to collect money to go to Haj. Fulani, they
are from West Africa generally, we call them Falata, meaning from Nigeria or Chad, there are some mixed tribes between Sudan and Chad, they used to come to pick cotton.
They stayed in Sudan and became Sudanese. Shoe shining is for Darfurians or Nuba people.
This is what's happening. I don't pick you, you yourself, like personally, to come
from your area to work in Khartoum as a shoe shine. You can go and chose another job.
But there is nothing much, even for us who live in Khartoum.
And there is nothing at all in Southern Sudan. In most of the places there's nothing, no factories, no schools, even after the early '70s when there was the Addis
Ababa Agreement. They only have a cigarette factory, textiles and some kind of food production, that's it, although the South is very rich in natural sources like water, wood, wild animals, mangos, bananas, pineapples, wild life in general. It's a virgin land that needs just a little work to became a paradise. So, this is a very bad thing.
90 But, it's not just the South, no place in Sudan is developed. We all don't have anything, no one did. Like in Halfaya, there are no good lights in the streets. There are even no proper streets. They didn't have high schools, till maybe in the '80s. But most people there got a little bit of education here or there because you can easily go to
Khartoum or any other big city.
In Sudan the problem is corruption. Even the idea of North and South is about domination, corruption, in the government. If you go outside Sudan you can find corruption in any country, only in Sudan it's happening more.
For example, Nimeri developed Dongola, his home town. He even built an international airport there. What's in Dongola to build an international airport, why he didn't build it in Haifa? Haifa is a port, a link between Sudan and Egypt, the most important neighbour. We have a strong relation with Egyptians, between people and governments.
Between these countries there is just one ferry, and one train. Most travelers to
Egypt take the train. It reaches twice a week to Haifa, and seventy five percent of the travelers to Egypt spend their days on the sand outside, they call it fonduq al remal, the sand hotel, as a joke. Where are you now? I am in the sand hotel now. Kids, families.
And they use public washrooms or the washrooms in small motels.
In Haifa, they built new areas after the floods, that happened when they were building the Aswan Dam, from Gamal Abdel Nasser days in Egypt. They call these areas blocks. In Block 1, till now, since that time, they don't have power. Every time, they only have promises from the government.
91 The funniest thing is, in every house they have got a fridge, even the deep freezer, and they are using ice to run this. They kind of make their own fridge. There ice is very cheap and available for everyone, from a big company that is exporting fish from Lake
Nasser, from Haifa to Khartoum. But there's no stable transportation between the residential areas and downtown, I mean the market place. There are a few mini-vans, transportation, driven by the owners themselves. They take the employees to work in the company, and women for shopping. Most of the time people prefer to walk, half an hour, its sand. There is a small hill between the residential area and the market place because after the floods, they moved them up to avoid the water. The houses, some house are good, or okay, the government built them. The market is a shock. It's kind of huts and tents and that's it, even though the city supports a very important port, the link between
Sudan and Egypt.
And, it's going to be the same if this corruption is from a guy who is from the
South. The same results are going to happen if there is corruption in the Southern government, in this self governing situation now, after the CPA.
Lubanga
Besides, there are tensions in the South that benefited the Sudan government as well. In the South there were two wars, first the Anya Nya I war, and then the SPLA war.
After the first war, and before the SPLA movement, Southern Sudan had certain tensions. It was also the President of the Sudan, Gaafar Mohammed Nimeri, playing,
92 things that he created, agreeing to the breakdown of the Addis Ababa Agreement, which had provided for Southern Sudan to be ruled as one autonomous entity. The breakdown in 1983 culminated in the dividing of Southern Sudan into three regions. This re-division of the South created a hell of problem between the Dinka and people of Equatoria, also between the Dinka in Bahr el Ghazal and the other Dinka when the Dinka gravitated into two prominent groups, Dinka of Bahr el Ghazal and Dinka of Bor. In Bahr el Ghazal the
Fertit, Belanda, Luo and Ndogo became the odd people out because they all of a sudden found themselves a minority. When they were within the Southern Sudan as a whole they couldn't be defined as a minority, but once you put Bahr el Ghazal together the Dinka became predominant. The Dinka began to say the benefits of re-division meant that they have the power in Bahr el Ghazal.
Then, there were also tensions when Anya Nya II was created in 1975, leading up to the formation of SPLA.
These things are not all clear-cut, except that the consequences always have been problems, devastation, and a lot of innocent people being killed. Some of the worst atrocities are committed by people from the South.
There are two things in the South that were justified. One, what the British did, administratively separating the South from the North. Following this the Northerners began to create divisions in the South along tribal lines. Then all tribal hatreds were brought out, people began killing each other. So, if you get one ethnic group in the army they don't mind killing or oppressing another group that is considered anti-government because they all have past grievances against those people.
93 It's a very backward way of looking at things. For instance there is absolutely no reason for the Dinka and Nuer fighting each other. They are the same people. Like the
Dinka from Bentiu and the Nuer always mixed. And even the Luo, like the Anyuak and the Shilluk. There are no clear-cut distinctions between the so called tribes. But there is a similarity with Rwanda. Even people who are mixed, say one Dinka and one Mundari husband and wife, when tensions arise they usually choose sides instead of becoming the people who bring the two sides together. The system is patrilineal, but in war situations children sometimes choose sides. If the father is Dinka and the mother is Nuer they could fight as Dinka or as Nuer, and even one child can choose one side and the other the other side.
So, the created tribal divisions were successfully used to divide Dinka and Nuer, and lots of people killed each other, even in the SPLA.
With the SPLA, the people who first went into the movement were Dinka, the majority. There were some, ignorant, among them who began to define it as a Dinka movement. Nuers were killed. And because the Nuer were predominantly in Anya Nya II the Anya Nya II collided with the SPLA and that led to thousands of innocent people dying. When Equatorians went in to join SPLA some of them were killed as well.
Then, the government also created militias in the South along ethnic lines. An example, a very good friend of mine, a refugee in Canada, he came here from the States, went back and joined the SPLA. Later on he defected to fight against the SPLA. He said he was defending his people, Equatorians, particularly his Madi people, since there were
Dinka officers in SPLA who were supposedly mistreating his people. He said I am a
94 commander fighting the SPLA, these people treat our people as enemies. He began to
form a militia to defend his people, instead of fighting what they first thought of as their
common enemy, the government. For some reason he has now changed sides again.
Two, jobs or making a living. If you want to live well, not by the western
standards but at least by Sudanese standard, in a town, with electricity, running water,
you have to be working with the Sudan government, which now takes these people and
doles out civil service positions to them. Some of these are the people who became brutal
against their own people, being used to carry out government policies of Isalamization
and Arabization.
Elizabeth
For us Sudanese or Southern people there are a lot of ways that people have been killed,
if you look back. A lot of people have died, politics maybe.
That group, Dinka, was really the strongest, it took the lead with SPLA. But these
other people, Nuer, are being mistreated, being denied, and they won't go with their
whole soul helping you to do what you want because they see this treatment as
misleading and they see that they are away from it, the SPLA.
But, if you go to the reality people are being used by other people. Actually people use Dinka and Nuer, that tension between them, that they have that problem.
Earlier, there was a person who had a reason, an interest, I don't know. When he needed his way, he came and used other people. He said the Nuer have this and that, and
95 he went to the Dinka and said I am from you people. The tension started, the misunderstanding and disagreements started, people took sides. But basically there was a cause for it, one person who said we belong here and others don't, and now there is all this fighting.
Now, other things, issues, are just being created, and these things become like oh people killed themselves before. But those people were those people, why should we drag it to here? And now we are in the same country, Canada, and we are fighting too.
If we are going to do something now, we have to leave behind whatever was between me and you and focus on doing that. If we don't really just put it aside, and keep going back to it, then we won't achieve what we really want to achieve together.
People had been living together for decades, for years, even now people like to live together. Still, what we talked about now, is between us. When we eat together, you give me one cup and you take another cup, and I want your cup to be mine. If I don't get it, it's just between me and you, but I will go back and bring in that thing which happened before. I think that's really what's happening, and in a moment people kill a lot of people.
We are still fighting together. What's the point? We should leave it behind.
The moment we are in right now, there are a lot of things. Like I told you earlier, the war started even before I was born, and all these generations have grown up seeing the war. There's a lot of suffering, lot of dying, lot of mess, lot of emotional pain. It's not a time for people to go back to the other things that happened. It's a point for people to move on, it's a point for people to be talking. We had enough of these things, hatred. We didn't achieve anything at all because of these things.
96 At the same time, at that moment, people didn't see why they did it. But later on you see, it's not worth it because people are fighting with somebody else at the same time. Guys are killing each other or putting hatred among themselves, what are you going to achieve by that?
It's mainly opinions of human beings. I have a different brain, you have a different brain, we have a different way of thinking. To bring all this together is not that easy. It will take a lot of work, a lot of time. For a group of people or leaders to bring people together is not that easy.
To me I think that experience goes a long way, things that you have seen for a long time. If you sit down and evaluate them then you will really know that these things have happened and should not be happening again.
And you have to pursue a different way of solving things, not the same things that you did before. What will you really achieve by doing the same thing? It's like writing tests in a school, if you write this way this time and you fail then you have to use a different topic or different language so that you can pass. At the same time I know that people are not like paper, people are people.
So, even now when people are talking peace in Sudan, with the CPA, there is actually too much tension, and we don't know whether peace is going to work because of these other political things.
But I don't want to go there, its too much politics. I should be a woman and say I don't know about politics. I just don't want to concentrate on that because I don't see any benefit of it at all.
97 Deepa: But why do you say this, about politics, women and you?
Elizabeth: I know nothing about politics. But you are studying political science.
Deepa: That doesn't mean I know much either.
Elizabeth: Sometimes what I see cannot be true. Also because what I see is my observation too, to think. But sometimes when you read things, when you study things and you experience things, the observations can become strong. To me, I am only talking with a little bit of knowledge because I really don't know about politics. That's why I told you, for men because they are with that kind of politics they really know, and mine is only my observation. It may not be the truth.
Deepa: Of course.
Elizabeth: Because the questions you just raised, what is politics and how does it work, like how politics runs, I do not know it but maybe you read it in a book and see.
Deepa: But that's what I am saying, what you do everyday is also your own politics. If you choose not to do what everyone else is doing then that is a choice you make and that has its own power struggle in a sense because whatever you are struggling against has power.
Elizabeth: Right.
Deepa: And the moment it has power it's about politics, and I don't know what is not about power, even what you are saying about the men and that they know. And I don't think there is the man, I think there are all kinds of men, all kinds of people. And that's why I am talking to a lot of people because people's experience is what makes things and
I think each person's truth is as truthful as another person's truth. But sometimes people
98 think only those who have studied, or who have studied particular things know, like if
you don't do that then you don't know. That's not true.
Elizabeth: I know that, in studying you study ideas, even the book you read are ideas that
people have. But now like you are interviewing different people because those different thoughts, those different ideas, will bring something to conclusion.
Deepa: True.
Osama
Another part of the bad situation between the North and the South, actually between the
centre of Sudan and the rest, is the mentality in the North to follow the Arab League ideas rather than to be African. They don't use the word African, it is not there, they talk about
dark colour. Mainly, this is Arab propaganda from Egypt.
For instance there's not much relation between the government in Sudan and say
Kenya. I know nothing about Kenya unless I research for myself to know something about Kenya, who's singing over there, who's acting over there. But I know everything about Egypt, something about Saudi Arabian singers and actors, and even about Libya though they don't have many famous artists, I know of them in Sudan. We used to have a good relationship with Ethiopia, which is now Eritrea and Ethiopia, but there was nothing about them showing up in our media, the official media. They used to just grab something from Egypt, whatever it is, singers, daily shows, soap opera, anything. From
99 northern Sudan there are a lot of singers, but there is nothing of that, no daily shows, soap opera, nothing. It's all from Egypt.
And, when we go to Egypt, they treat us as stupid black people from Sudan.
We have to balance this unbalanced thing. Now all the parties have started to realize this. Some of them already had this idea, but some of them not. Like Sadiq al
Mahdi always claims himself as Islamic, an Arab leader, and he is not. Even his features are African, he is African. And most of the supporters of his Umma Party are from
Western Sudan. The main guy, his ancestor, Al Mahdi, who they said was the 'savior', who was shown the way from outside, by a bigger power, who created this movement, is from Dongola. He is a Nubian himself. But he had gone to the West, where he got a lot of support, and then defeated the English.
Khalid
Arab is a contested term. This is one of the issues that we are grappling with. Sometimes the issue of identifying as Arab actually depends on the question. The same person, if you ask him one question he is not Arab, and if you ask a different question he will say he is
Arab.
Arab sometimes means Arab like in Saudi Arabia, like people in the Gulf, Arab like that. But we have problems with them. This is one of the crises of the Sudanese identity. Officially the Sudanese think of themselves as Arab by origin. Culturally they identify themselves as Arab. But the really Arab have problems with that. They don't
100 really consider the Sudanese as Arab or they are not first class Arab or are some sort of
impure Arabs. And they experience this feeling first hand, exactly like when we come
here and we face racism. They go to the Gulf, get employed, and all of them, in one way
or another, have heard that they are abid, slaves.
Somehow they are okay with it, probably because of the money there, probably because the Gulf countries at least treat them differently compared to others, like people
from Taiwan or the Filipinos. There is something in common, Islam, and they speak the language well. Besides the Sudanese do their job. This is part of the myth but they are really trusted.
But, you know that you are not really Arab. And that's why sometimes they say we are not really Arab.
And, from a political perspective, to say they are Arab will deprive them of their
African plank. This goes back to a certain point in Sudanese politics. For quite
sometimes, particularly during the Nimeri regime, from May 1969 to April 1985, there was this Afro-Arab thing. This Afro-Arabism developed, at least in its aesthetic form, in the 60s, when the Arab world was doing bad, when the image of the Arabs worldwide started to be tarnished or stigmatized, and when in some cases Sudanese workers in some
Arab countries were fired and ordered to leave these countries. Then, you could hear people say 'those Arabs' as if they are separate people, they tried to distinguish themselves from the Arabs.
But again, they never got so attached to Africa. Africa sometimes gave them a way to really defend themselves against not being Arab enough, and we considered
101 ourselves a mixture of Arab and African origin. We know we have some African blood.
But if you talk enough with the same person you can actually turn him into an Arab easily because he doesn't really have much to defend his Africanness, unless you find somebody, for example an intellectual educated guy, who can start talking about before the Arab came to Sudan. This Afro-Arabism failed as a political cultural discourse, but there was a chance it could have actually helped. It worked at a certain point among intellectuals. But when you talk about the layman in the North it is very hard to detect this African component, in the way that it sometimes figures in the political discourse.
There is some subtle denial of Africanism, if this is phrased to mean non-Arab. They can tell you that they are not Arab, meaning we are not Arab like those people, we are sort of
Sudani, Sudanese. So a kind of distinction, a kind of non-Arab zone, is completely unidentified. That's why it is really very hard to talk about Arab as colour identity.
I don't know if this is going to complicate your stuff but where I live in Khartoum the term Arab has certain strange connotations.
Let me give you an example. From my village, to Khartoum, if I say Arab al Arab dhel or those Arabs, I mean gypsy kind of people. They used to call them Arab in our childhood, because they were like dirty and, the conception of course, morally loose in the way they do things, and live in a very strange way, crowded, and all those things.
Actually Arab in Sudan, sometimes dhel arab sakit, Arabs as nobodies, means this is just like an Arab, a nobody. This is a negative meaning.
Then, if you go a little bit more towards Khartoum Arab starts having another definition because you start meeting people who are a little bit different, in terms of
192 colour rather than language, and then suddenly you start relying on this concept to actually distinguish who is wad al balad, son of the country, the person who is actually from Khartoum, and who is wad al arab, son of the Arab. Al Arab now means those people who are Sudanese, who have been living there for so long, identify as Arab and talk Arabic, and are Muslims, with a certain moral code. They have extended families who can actually trace their ancestry to a certain point, against those who are coming from the outside, who are mainly from al garb, the West, who have always been categorized as non-Arab.
When somebody comes from the West, from anywhere in Darfur, irrespective of the fact that there are people in Darfur who actually call themselves Arab, he is not Arab in Khartoum. This is how it is complicated, and that's why it may occur at a point that all the Darfurians are being marginalized or racialized. But it's just shade of colours and terms.
Now, the current, modern, national, Islamic political discourse really managed to use all this. Sudanese for long pride themselves that they talk Arabic better than other people, and think that in other places Islam, Arab tradition and language is all deteriorated now. This thirst for Arabism in Sudan is really high, which after sometime goes to the point of fanaticism, to be Arab more than the Arabs, in certain circles. And now the Muslim Brothers, the NIF, who are usually identified by this name, not only because in their formative period as a political-religious organization they took such a name but because of their ideological background going back to the founder of Mulism
Brotherhood in Egypt, Said Qutb, they make a lot of connections, with the people in term of manipulating their cultural, ethnic and religious beliefs, that are actually far better than other people's. They just tap into these beliefs, they start creating actors with their ideological basis, using the mindset of the people in terms of all these racisms. The
Muslim Brothers took this Arabism and Islam to extremes, and even appointed people to just feed on it. That doesn't really mean that they are finding anything, only using fascist tactics in promoting the Islamic and the Arabic aspects of the Sudanese culture.
And, in different places, like the Nubians, from the North, they don't consider themselves Arabs. They are Nubian. But they are getting involved in politics in a certain way. Sometimes they sound like Arabs. Sometimes even the Nubian distinction is just part of their political program, their own ethnic agenda, the Nubians did formulate a separate political vision and structure like other groups in the South, West or in the East, and they distinguish themselves as not Arab but as Nubians. But the Nubians never had a" separatist tendency, it seems like they are taking a low profile somehow. So this has its complexity too.
So, it all depends really, at what point you ask the question, in what circumstance.
But the bottom line is we are not really African or that concept is not allowed, and if we are African then it has to be African with a hyphen, African with at least some sort of an
Arab background. The laypersons don't really go deep into it. It's not African like I can get close to the people from the South.
I always find that obscene, how we can distinguish between the Africans and the
Southerners when we talk and read about Africa. Even Afro-Arabism as an ideology never really created any sense of getting us closer to the people in the South or improved
104 our relationship. It is just insane. My take on this is you can talk about non-Arabism and
non-Africanism to actually understanding things.
So, this Arabism thing is really complicated. And Islam has also added a lot to
Arabism, being Muslim in Sudan is just part of Arabism. Yet it has that sense, even for
the people from the West, that when people turn to be Muslim they never managed to be
Arabs. For the people who consider themselves Arab, Islam mainly sort of reinforces
their sense, their attitude and their identity in a certain way, in the sense of being Arab.
The distinction between Islam and Arabism is also very complicated particularly in the
Arab world, as the language of Islam is Arabic and it enjoys a sacred status, besides, the prophet Mohamed himself is an Arab. So Islam can be articulated to easily stand for
Arab.
But, it would be better to look at Arabism and Islam just as factors within the
dominant political and cultural discourse than just to fall into Arabism, Islamism versus
Africanism understanding. This dominant discourse comes to be articulated in different
ways, elevating Arabs and Muslims above other people, in identifying certain Northern
ethnic groups in Central Sudan to which the members of political or economic class
belong or from which they are recruited. Central Sudan is a vague term too but used often
to refer to riverine, White and Blue Nile groups in the center, in areas such Khartoum,
Omdurman, Wad Medani, Kosti, maybe Gadaref, maybe Atbara. These groups see themselves as Arab-Islamic, and as Sudanese along the contours of Sudanese
nationalism. To better analyze what is going on is to completely not really form these
categories, Arab and African, that people use just because it's easy, like a short cut. It
105 seems like such analyses establish Arabism, that it must be true if there are certain articulations, as there of course are, between Arabism and Islam in the official political discourse. But that doesn't really reflect exactly what is happening. This is just another layer. That is what I am trying to point out.
But, you can't really fight this identity. Nobody can really say, for any political reason, that we are not Arabs. You can't survive for a second. Even if everybody can say we are not really Arabs, we are Afro-Arabs or we are not Arab enough for any reason, because Arabism is starting to lose a lot of its currency after 9/11, after the whole failure of the Arab project, after the defeat of Egypt by Israel in 1967 and the failure of the project of Arab unity, with Nasser as its greatest symbol, to unify all the Arab countries in some sort of larger political arrangement like the European Union, and all the things with the Gulf states, such as images of wealthy kings, the way of life there, the way they treat foreign workers, being considered as mere tools for foreign powers. All this put a lot of negative rap on the whole concept of Arabism. And sometimes in the whole image, an orientalist image comes to play also, of how the Arab are so far away from civilization.
The Sudanese identity seems to play against this, that they are not really rude and uncivilized like people from Saudi Arabia.
So, if you think this way, from a political point of view, Arabism starts losing a lot of its currency and a lot of people are trying to search for a different sense of Arabism, a different belonging to Arabism. I don't know how that is going to play out. But this is going on, and at a certain point, following the rise of John Garang's image in the '90s and the slogan of New Sudan, when after the coup of 1989 the only formidable political force
106 across Sudan was the SPLA or rather its leader John Garang, people even started talking about wearing African clothes in Khartoum despite belonging to Arabism.
This is just a reflection on this Africanism that some of the Northern Sudanese that you spoke to are talking about. It is really hard to understand it in a different context.
Just in semantic terms, it is really hard, it is Arabic. If you follow it you could get very interesting conclusion, what exactly people mean, how this discourse was never really able to settle somewhere, to create trust, what they mean by being Arab, or African. The use of Arab, or African, by those in the North to signify identity varies extremely and depends on different contexts and circumstances.
Osama
Now, people, they are talking about the Northerner and Southerner.
The fights, they usually happen, between North and South, in the area of Baggara,
Nuba, Darfur, in the East, West, South-West of Sudan, about water and green grass for the animals. It happens every year.
From there, this government, even Umma Party before, even other groups, they supported, they armed, the Northerners. These people are Northern by the idea of Arab.
They are not Arab.
The Arab in Sudan is a mentality, a way of dealing with people, like being superior. But this is Arab culture. People dealing with guys from the West call them wad
107 al gareeba, gareeba means 'stranger'. But they are not like junubi, the Southerner, who are even more far away, for them they say abid.
Like, one of my relatives got married to a guy from the West. My family took like years to deal with him as a normal guy. If we are talking about colour he is lighter than me.
And, even for me, I'm a Nubian, I am suffering because of this idea, because of my skin, and I have like a little big nose. A lot of people say to me oh, your nose, there is something African there.
I always keep talking to people, who get this idea between him and himself, the idea of Arab. I always mention his nose, hundred times like bigger than my nose, his colour, his hair, there is something African. I always tell him, that is always there, something Africans, we are black, so don't go far with this idea of superiority, that the others, from South, are abid, slave.
My group of people, even though they were always dealing with all Sudanese, slaves and black people too, they don't use the word abid. They say Sudani, Sudanese.
Some of my people, Nubian, we came from Egypt as workers, on Nile, to Khartoum, to build the railway, working in shifts. These people also set up small businesses later. They were a little bit better, a little bit more educated than the Nubians in Sudan. Nubians are in the area from Aswan Dam to Dongola and in Haifa city. The ones from Egypt came with the British, and the Egyptians who they were using, the invaders. They were not in the army but were doing any work related to British like in railways, in Nile traffic working the ferries, in khazan, reservoirs, in Kosti, and then they moved a little South
- - 108 from Khartoum. These people are in not very big numbers, they settled around headquarters of the main activities and companies of the British.
We don't ask for separation. Even if there is a big thing, a movement, like in the border between Egypt and Sudan, it's very sensitive for Egyptians. There are millions of
Nubian Egyptians, like where my dad came from. So with the Nubian issue we are not going to succeed, to build back, because things will then affect Egypt very much.
And anyway it's a bad thing to talk about separation. We have become like a small village in the whole world. It is not just about the north, because there is the old domination of my people in the north, that's normal. Education, communication, money is only with people in the top. But, we gained the best of Sudan, in education, even though the rest is tough. So if there is a government that is accountable to the people we are ready more than other areas to be part of it.
So I am out of this separation thing, like most of my family. We realized that we are less than one percent in Khartoum. We just have to shut up and live our life as people from Sudan. So, lately we became part of Khartoum and that's it. I lived in Khartoum all my life.
But, I don't know anything about say songs, about anything, of Nubian. There was a very famous program on TV, I don't know if it still exists, it says songs, folk and traditional, from Sudan, but it's only Arabic, not from everywhere in Sudan. The main song, the introduction is Jaali, it's a message, and there is another song, it's a message from Omdurman to all Sudan. Fifty percent of these songs are from Khartoum and those
109 Arab Jaali, and the other fifty percent are from around Khartoum, less than one percent is from Southern Sudan.
It's a bad thing, horrible for me, for me as a Sudanese, when someone asks me you are from Sudan, do you know like Beja. No, where is it? It's shameful, I don't know anything in Sudan. Ingessna is not that far from Khartoum, in Blue Nile, but I don't know anything about it. I know something about Southern Sudan, Juba, there are some singers, but this area no one knows anything about. And it's very, very different, even the dress, even the features of the people, is very different.
So, there is the domination of Arab and their ideas of superiority, and then there's the rest. Now it's all getting to be much more about political power and money. But, it's become the same in Kassala or El Obeid or Juba, all the thing is about North.
But, for me I am not involved in this kind of a thing. Most of Northern people are not involved in this, the idea of Arab superiority. No one is trying to do something really bad against Southerners. And the Southerners did some bad things in Northern Sudan, in reaction to the death of Garang, they destroyed and burnt things.
Personally I am really worried because when I was very, very young or when I was not born yet the same thing happened in Khartoum, in the '60s, the big fights, guns, swords, and knives. I don't know if it was a big thing or it was just in my locality. We mostly don't see it, but if it's in the news then it's a big thing, like junubi, Southerner, did this and that. I saw blood on a big sword, I won't say the guy's name because his grandchildren are here in Canada, but this guy killed many Southerners, he said this himself.
110 The Southerners don't really start things, it's a reaction but their reaction is always big. I don't blame them. And now, as even earlier, I expect most of the deaths are from the South because the power is in Khartoum.
But with what's happening in the South, the government in Khartoum has been blamed for everything. But it's not everything, ninety percent yes but not everything.
So, there is a hate between the two groups. But it's not just hate, its unfairness.
Northerners disrespect Southerners, they abuse them, but it's not hate because they use them. From the other side its just hate most of the time, its frustration with hate.
Like I met one Southern guy in Windsor who was very sweet the first days. When
I said I am from Sudan, Khartoum, he went away. I feel like bitter inside me. A little bit he is right because he feels something against Northerners. But things are mixed in the
North, and generally what's happening is from the leaders, the government. It's good to feel who they are but many Southerners are taking it very far and it's not good. Deal with me as I am, as I am dealing with you as you are. I am part of Khartoum but I am not part of what's happening to you, yourself. Don't blame me personally. There is nothing bad happening between us but always the idea of the Northerner, always it comes up, many, many times during our conversation, normal conversation.
There was Kadara, a woman from South Sudan who used to come to my home to wash clothes. In my house, me, my grandma and my aunt, we used to deal with this woman like she is doing a job. With time she realized the true relation or the true feelings from us. First we all ate together from the same tray. She didn't eat anything anywhere else because they always offered her leftovers in most of her houses, I eat with you
111- because we eat together. Then the relation got deeper, my grandma was always talking about Kadara. And my aunt, she is a worker, she had human relations with different people in the factory with time, she started to talk to Kadara to keep some money for her,
I am gonna buy you something from that. And Kadara told us her story, she is a daughter of a chief, and a woman from her area, as a matter of respect or power or something, used to come to her place to serve her freely. I am just saying this to say we have a relationship with this woman.
Athaia
I have a lot of friends who are Arab. For me it's not because they are Arab that I should have a problem with them. That is not my way of looking at the thing. I know this is playing a role in the government. That is the political part, sometime it doesn't bring people together. For me I see it like they are Arab and I am from the South, it doesn't matter. We all live inside the Sudan land, we can still do things together. Although we don't like each other we have to do things together for the good of everybody.
I can have a friendship with Arabs and they can have a friendship with me. They have to accept me the way I am and I have to accept them the way they are. I am not going to go inside their business and they know they don't have to come inside mine unless I open it to them.
I don't say that I hate people from the North because of the Sudan situation, because it's not her or him who was doing this, that is another part. You can always see
112 in a group of people one person who is not good, and the rest are fine. You cannot destroy other people because of a certain person, say that they are all bad. For me it's not necessary to focus on things like the Arabs are not good, they treat us bad, they treat us good. Maybe others have consequences that come from us too, and maybe we had also done bad to them while not knowing that we are doing bad. Nobody knows, everybody makes mistakes in life.
With the Sudan situation, the war, I know there are too many Sudanese who were killed, and from the South. I know that, and I understand that too. But I don't have to forget that they have people who were killed, innocent people are killed there because lately the Sudan government didn't differentiate the Arabs from the Southerners.
They just get you in the street, any young person who is able to fight. They call it kaisha, when the police, the soldiers, just appear today and then tomorrow, to catch people. Sometimes the word gets out about this. They just put you all in the car, truck, and take you off to the South to fight. This is what was happening, people are missing their kids.
And the Southerners are missing their kids. SPLA on their side are doing the same too. We can blame the Sudan government for some things, and we have people who were taken like that by the SPLA too, they also died in the same way.
Everything has two parts. Everybody wants to succeed. So when you go do your thing there are always damages. They are doing something here, and there it is damaging on the side. The Arabs already have problems, they already have damages there, when their own young kids are taken like that and they die. It's not like one side is safe and one
M3- side is not safe, no. That's why I cannot say I will not be a friend to them, I will not talk to them or I cannot be close to them.
Khalid
We had a lot of friendships with Southerners in school and everything. I got no problem with them whatsoever in terms of friendship and relationship.
But they remain there within their boundaries and we remain in our boundaries, sort of like we meet quickly in a very fragile temporal space, and you say hi and everybody just disappears.
This is another perspective, a self-criticism. But every time I bring it up with the
Sudanese people here in Canada I am kind of an outsider to everybody. And that's why I have a lot of problems with a lot of people.
For example, there was not even a single demonstration against the war in the
South and there was no single action at all by the Northern elite, quite literally, of any political activism in support, in any form, towards the cause of people who are dying in the South.
We never actually engaged in any kind of significant dialogue with the South before 1983, when John Garang showed up doing all these things, calling for New Sudan, unlike previous Southern political and armed movement, and having all this political relation with Northern political parties and politicians in Sudan. But even this dialogue with John Garang was sort of political, a lot to do with the political experience rather than
114 an exercise for us to actually overcome our racial attitudes against the black people, which is against African people or against non-Arab people.
Even as Northerner intellectual educated people we never really had a direct experience with racism. We are sort of intellectually so oriented against racism and all that but we don't really know racism at all. Part of our reading was of the pain of the blacks in South Africa and all. But it seemed as if it had nothing to do with Sudan, which is very strange when you reflect back. We talked about Africa so many times, but all this never gave you that feeling of being black.
So, there are a lot of people, people being identified as non-Arab, that we, the
Northerners, victimized in that country.
The Northern elite can talk about the source of the problem in abstract political terms, they can talk that they have no problem with the Southerner, and they can talk about stopping the war in the South as part of a political deal. There is always this political understanding, that solution of the North, to the political situation, for the establishment of civil democratic government instead of having a military dictatorship, could only be achieved through the solution of the war in the South. So it turned out that the South was now just one political factor to solve the problems of Sudan. Even in
Political Science, they taught us that every political party in the North that came to power had to sort the political, the Southern, problem. The one that did it more had the chance to stay in power longer. This is almost like a fundamental rule in Sudanese politics. It happened, for example, with Nimeri, he negotiated the Addis Ababa Agreement. This guy knew that if you can solve the problem of the South, you can stay longer. So
115 somewhere, always, in the political discourse of Northern policies the issue of the South, of solving the Southern problem, is what that could help you stay in power.
But, we don't really have an intellectual, as a politician, with any experience with racism. You take it, racism, the South, the Southerner, for granted. We meet people from the South on a daily basis but for some strange reasons the South always seems far away from us, like it's the South where the Southerners should be living.
We failed to handle even the huge migration of people from the South. And they all live in marginalized places, they all live in displaced places, they all are living wherever, and nobody seems to be able to look at them and say we can do something for those people. The politicians only think that they just have to first solve the South problem, which is a political problem, in order to solve the political problem of the North, and then everything will fit.
Where I came from politically, in terms of political beliefs and understanding, we are supposed not to be racist by training. But you can't really determine if you are racist or not. To a large extent we are not really Southerners, you could say we are Arabs or
Northerners or urban Northern people. At that point it seems like you are not really black, or black is the term that we use for people from the South or people from the West.
And so, the Communists had totally failed. They had only one prominent person from the South, like a token too, Joseph Garang. Certain other people from the South managed to be only unknown figures in the Communist Party. They are very few in the
Party, you can count them. And most of these guys, the Communists from the North, still have that attitude of distinguishing John Garang from the South, and it seemed like John
116 Garang was getting white, Arab. We have these negative stereotypes about the people
from the South, and then there was this person from the South who was more relaxed and
better able to talk to us. Like with any 'good black nigger' this is okay, he is not like the
rest of them. That's why at a certain point people were not actually dealing with him as a
Southerner.
I don't deny John Garang's role. But it turned out the whole issue of the South is just political, just emotional. This New Sudan inspired us at a certain point, in its promise
of a new political movement and project that for the first time addressed the issue of
marginalization, uneven development, secularism, a broader concept of culture, a more
inclusive state, a just redistribution of wealth and power etc. But shortly after
SPLA/SPLM emerged it stuck to its military non-democratic structure and failed to create
a more open democratic political structure, and their leader became a larger than life and
Stalinist figure. So I detach myself from this discourse because of its failure in creating a
presence in the South itself, its failure to unite the South and the failure of SPLA to
democratize itself. If I want to go to SPLM what should I do in terms of the process of
the political party and this division between SPLM, the political structure, and SPLA, the
military wing?
117 Lubanga
And there are some Sudanese fellows here who will talk that there was no democracy in the SPLM. Some people would have wanted Garang to fight for total independence of the
South from the North. But not him.
We can sit here over a beer or coffee and talk about democracy, democratic principles, and how to run it. But in a guerrilla war there is no parliamentary debate.
There, as in the decision-making models, we need somebody who can look at the situation and decide and also see the implementation through. For me that man was
Garang, because to fight a guerrilla war, particularly in the case of Southern Sudan, you need somebody who can make tough decisions and implement them. Some decisions, such as fighting to create a New Sudan, may not be popular and yet they have to be made.
This is how he behaved in many ways.
Garang has said there were mistakes made, such as conflicts within SPLA/SPLM which led to so many Southern Sudanese losing their lives. No doubt about it. We are going to have to live with that for the rest of our lives, for the rest of the Southern Sudan history. But again the fear of making mistakes creates more problems. That's one of the things that you find in life, if you are afraid of doing something because you might make a mistake you get nothing. It's one thing to say that I don't want to do it because I don't know how but to say I don't want to do it because I am afraid is to do nothing. Garang did things. He was not afraid of doing things, and some of them became mistakes, no doubt about it.
118 It's unfortunate that he died. I wish he would have lived at least to the end of the six-year period, when the South would vote on remaining a part of the Sudan or becoming an independent country, to see how things would have changed in Sudan. It definitely would have changed a lot because Garang was pulling everybody together,
North, South, East and West. This is the difference. For the first time in Sudan we saw somebody who really stood up and said I am a Sudanese. Now, unfortunately he's gone and it is going to take a while before we can get somebody like that. Not in the group that is ruling now, I don't see one of them.
Today there are certain people, in particular in the central government, who I just don't believe should be there because they really don't have anything good for anybody else but themselves. And, I would not have expected the number two man, Salva Kiir, having such a big difference with Garang's position, you were a part of what happened.
In my view, Kiir is not as enthusiastic as Garang about the vision of the New Sudan, the
Sudan that will embrace cultural, racial, and religious diversity, the Sudan that will accept to share power and wealth among people in all regions of the country.
In the beginning, when Garang was duly creating the nucleus of the movement you needed people with the know-how, there was no ground for training yet. Salva Kiir was already a trained Sudanese officer, trained in Sudan. He was one of the founders of the SPLA. He was a very effective commander, but he left the politics to Garang and others such as Joseph Oduho. Garang combined both the SPLM and SPLA, they were not separate, and he was the leader of SPLM, the political party, and of SPLA, the army. He was the leader of the two. And in the war situation there is no structure of administrative
119 pattern, all you have are military units. So, Salva was involved in mobilizing troops, these troops here, those troops there, ammunitions here. It's true this is administration but these
are all military tactics. That was part of him all his life. The commanders also had places
in South which were all under their control, that should have developed, but they never
did. Now, there is time for Salva Kiir to learn to be a politician as well. If not, he will have it very rough, to deal with maintenance of peace, resettlement of returnees,
development of the Southern Sudan as well as with Government of Sudan issues.
About the other SPLM leaders, I know Lam Akol Ajawin. Riek Machar is the one
I don't know. Ajawin is a bright man. But what went into that misfortune of '91 will always remain with him for the rest of his life. He split from SPLA/SPLM in 1991 along with Riek Machar and Gordon Kong Chuol to form SPLA-Nasir, the faction of the SPLA which failed to overthrow Garang. Now a lot of people who I know will not trust him at
all because of that incident. The same with Machar. But I have been arguing on their behalf.
Machar, at least, is the one who can say with pride that it was me who put the words self-determination for the South in the Constitution. Machar signed the Khartoum
Peace Agreement in 1997, which offered the Southern Sudan self-determination.
Although the Sudan government was not going to honor it the fact is that they put it in the constitution. So, at least, Garang already had something to work with, going into negotiations at Naivasha, from July 2002 to January 9 2005, signing various protocols, for the CPA, the final agreement. Garang said the provision for self-determination is already here, it's part of the constitution, we are not starting something new. It was easy
120 to talk about self determination because Machar put it in. And now, under the CPA, in
2011, the Southern Sudan will have the opportunity to vote for unity with the North or independence.
Osama
The leaders now, from the South, are separatists. They talk bad things about the North.
I can't say that I am not favoring separation. But if you go deep between you and yourself honestly, for me a Northern guy or for a Southern guy, there's a lot of normal relation between North and South.
It's the Islamic movement, and from the beginning, they are saying let the
Southerners go. Years later they are trying to hide this because it didn't work that way.
Let them hide this, but there are enough supporters for separation in the North.
But, things were getting better. I can say that clearly, because the Communist
Party, a very important party, was working hard for equality for all Sudanese areas and people, and especially on the Southern Sudan issue. Till now we are talking with SPLA, we have a strategic relation. Its not just in name, it's the truth. And even if you check the manifesto of Garang or his movement or his party, it's not far away from that of the
Communist Party.
That's why when I'm talking about Southern Sudan I am not talking from the separatist campaign, and I am trying personally to fight the idea of Arabism. I'm trying to say even race is not about pure luck but about development. I'm not gonna talk about
121 racism, but that it's about a kind of inequality because of capitalism. Poor are getting poorer everyday and rich are getting richer. So there is something more than just race.
You can become anything if you got money, race can be washed in some certain communities or countries.
Lubanga
In our times we defined the problem as the government. It did not matter whether you were from the South or North, if you belonged to the government you were wrong.
But then the experiences of Southerners in the North, for those people who worked in the North, was not as sudden and not as traumatic as afterwards, during the twenty one years of the SPLA war, when they went to the North and found themselves living in camps and not living in certain areas, not doing certain jobs. They now began to see themselves as foreigners. This came to define the identity of these people and they brought it here to Canada, or any western country.
The SPLA/SPLM time has affected the Sudan, and Southern Sudan in particular, more than Anya Nya I because millions of people were not only coming outside Sudan but also going to the camps, displaced in their own country, in Khartoum and other parts of Sudan. The biggest impact of this war is that it forced a lot of the Southerners to go northwards. That is when the average person came to be affected by what the government is doing and what also the other people, the average Northerner, are doing.
122 Before that the problem was identified as the government and the government was defined as Arab.
So, though the Southerners had not even had the opportunity to be with the Arabs, they already hated them because they hated the government. That is the dilemma. It was also that the Arabs in the South were traders, and they seemed to segregate themselves.
There were a few cases when they intermarried but even then there were few who mingled and felt that they are part of the community. These traders reinforced the stereotype of what an Arab is. Then, especially when it comes to government policies and control of the government the Southerners find that this is the image that is created, that angers a lot of the people. So any opportunity to beat, even kill, Arab traders became acceptable. That is the irony of it. People did not see policies, they began to see Arab individuals and groups as the problem.
Garang tried to kill that idea, don't look at individuals, those are all your fellow citizens. It is the policies, the government, that's the problem. Marginalization is not skin colour, is not race, it is policy. If you don't remove it nothing else is going to make a difference. The irony is that there are definitely some who are Muslim and Christian in the North who are against the policy, same like in the South. But there are other people who did not care, who became apathetic to it or became complacent by not speaking out because it was not affecting them. It was affecting others. I am against hating individuals or groups of individuals, instead of bad policies.
122 Khalid
Actually we, who are living in the North, don't really differentiate much the people from the West and South. How we think of people from the West as even worse.
I went back for the first time to Sudan in 2002.1 took a lot of cabs there. I was asking all these guys, in 2004, what do you think about the Darfur crisis? One guy was saying what is their problem? The people from the West are vicious, the Southerners are better. This is a common perception in the Northern or rather Central Sudan when they compare the people from the South to the people from the West. Not sure why, but could be because people in Central Sudan happened to know the Southerners who migrated to the Center better than those from the West. Remember that the image of the primitive
Southerner does not quite disappear in the perspective of those from the Central Sudan.
Maybe also because they think the Southerner are so different, and that they will finally go home and mind their own business. Between people in the West and in the North there are some connections like Islam and Arabism, which ironically aremaking the animosities more subtle and strange. So, there was no empathy of any kind to the killing of the people in Darfur at all, even at least with this huge media attention.
In the case of the South it took like twenty five years for it to become an issue for the larger Sudanese community, even if it is still not really an issue for most people. But with Darfur there is all this media attention, and at least Khartoum, the capital, has access to these media. There they don't trust the official Sudanese media, and stations like Al
Jazeera are pro-Arab, they are pro-government, they don't really reflect this situation well. But you can watch all kinds of things, even CNN, Cable News Network. People are
124 not really looking for the information, but still they have different views of the cause of the problem. Somehow this time people have access to certain information which completely contradicts what the government says, in a propaganda way. So they really have no excuse, at least not in terms of the information. The way they read it and interpret it, that's a different issue. But there was no sympathy for the people of Darfur.
To the Northerner the people from the West are still from al garb. The Europeans, when they go to Darfur, they come back with the story that the Janjaweed, the Arabs, and everyone else in the West are not distinguishable. They just cannot see the distinctions.
But it's really very clear. I can see it, really know it. That's how complicated racism is. A
Janjaweed could easily distinguish a guy who belongs to the Fur or Zaghawa, he has no problem in identifying his enemies at all. But these other guys cannot see that.
Anyway, look at the confusion between the Centre and the people from the West, from Darfur. A lot of damages have been done and a lot of people notice that. And now, people have started to understand the war itself as Arab and Islam versus African or black.
When we were in university, around 1982, the recruiting pool for the NIF was mainly from Darfur, the political cadre was mostly from the West. Their political setup or mobilization served to put even those people inside the NIF political structure. Islam was, at a certain point, playing a role to make them feel part of the national setup.
But that completely failed, basically because the political elite from Darfur felt marginalized in the NIF, and the NIF is not helping their people with anything substantial. And the Darfurians who joined the NIF, went back to their ethnic, racial
125 thing. I mentioned this in my paper on rape in Darfur, in a conference, it was not suddenly but gradually that the African Arab dichotomy started to circulate in the understanding of the Darfur conflict. There never was that sense before.
We met those guys from Darfur so many times. Most of the time they talk about marginalization, they talk about the racism of the Northern guys, they talk about being excluded from political power, but they hardly ever couched their grievances in terms of the African Arab difference. They could say that you are an arrogant Arab but they didn't then necessarily identify themselves as African. For people in Darfur this is recent. And it's almost like copied, SPLA to Sudanese Liberation Movement, SLM.
Abdul Wahid, the leader of the SLM, a rebel faction in Darfur, one of its original founders, used to be in the University of Khartoum. So one could understand at least his background, we used to be in that place as well. But one is always wondering how he turned himself into an African in this way, which need not be a good thing or a bad thing.
The exclusion those guys suffered is just beyond imagination. It seems like there was no way out, to not describe themselves as African, as Zurga, dark or black, as they have been called by antagonistic Arab groups. They could have described themselves as Western or anything, what the movement could actually call itself. But now even the regular
Darfurians call themselves African, the movement calls itself African.
And, the real Darfurians, the Furs, actually have problems with the Zaghawa in
Darfur who call themselves African. And the Zaghawa have problems with the Dinka, which is very interesting. A lot of Southerners who went to the West don't really have a
126 good relationship with the Zaghawa or with Darfurians generally. The internal racism within the tribes is very interesting, kind of strange.
But, being African will always be a very good, important, thing in an ethnic
conflict. The amount of advantage that brings is very obvious, with the international
community. This distinction between Arabs and African plays well with what the
Darfurians have, to get support from international bodies or states that harbor anti-Arab
and anti-Islamic sentiment.
Still, the problem is in talking about Darfurian political constituency, the ethnic
constituency itself. In terms of culture they can hardly consider themselves as African.
This is one of the usual problems between these political organizations, the political
representatives and the people. They have a problem with talking to the people, which they don't really understand.
Amani
Darfur is a new thing. Earlier the people there refused to join SPLA. They didn't want
anything to do with SPLA. When SPLA was fighting they were quiet, only a few of them were with SPLA. SPLA used to go there to bring people but nobody wanted to join them.
Usually the people there just brought the government to arrest the SPLA people and kill them.
Maybe if they joined the SPLA at that time they would be better by now. Only when the government got to them did they start fighting. That time this peace talk,
127 between SPLA and the government, was on, and in Darfur there was war. So many people didn't really like that. If they had joined SPLA earlier they would be stronger.
But, I don't know too much about Darfur, this is what I heard.
Khalid
This, now, is really a transitional kind of stage in the history of Sudan. I don't know how it's going to be later. But this is a point where a lot of things will play out for a total irreversible change in the history of Sudan, because there is a lot of confusion, there is a lot of loss. People are feeling lost, political parties are losing a lot of their discourses, are getting confused. I don't know, it's one of those times.
It's really sad what the NIF, Muslim Brothers, did. The whole landscape, the social make-up, the way people are getting jobs in Sudan, and the way people live their lives has become totally different.
I don't even know what I would do if I went there now. That's why we are stranded here. The whole country is largely unemployed. Right now the labor structure there is completely destroyed, because they can get laborers from abroad, India, China, and other Asian countries, with cheap salaries. They work for more than twelve, thirteen hours a day. With the salary the government, the employers, give them they find it okay, and can actually make a saving. And then because there's oil the economy is booming a little bit. But this is just at the top, it doesn't reflect in anything on the ground.
128 Earlier the Canadian Talisman company was with the oil, and then they just gave it to the Indians. The Indians don't really care about the war, the Chinese as well. They only care about oil. The Chinese are now controlling a huge part of the oil resources in
Sudan, and the pipeline. The pipelines run for miles up to the Red Sea. It is all protected by the Chinese. The Sudanese government itself doesn't have the weaponry that can cover this distance, no rockets etc. But this is how much the Chinese are helping the
Sudanese government. At certain points there were many rumors that they actually fought with the Sudanese government. This involvement is difficult to gauge, if they actually fight, but they were helping with training, with their equipment. In the South they had their personnel guarding all their pipelines, pushing people really far from the oilfields.
And forget about the weapons that the Chinese sent to Sudan, there are now local factories, I think helped by China, producing small arms and assembling helicopters. A lot of war machinery is now available in Sudan, and this is all through western technology installed by the Chinese. The Indian government also has been supplying the
Sudanese army with a lot of technology. I read all this on some internet news.
So, now Sudan's a totally different country. The government has literally withheld itself from giving any kind of support to the population. It's got nothing to do with the population, it has privatized everything. People don't really have any sense of a public government that actually collects bills because people who collect it are completely different from it. Health, phone, electricity, it's got nothing to do with the government. There is a huge network of companies and networks of armed men. There is no governmental process whatsoever in Sudan. All this cabinet or ministries camouflage
129 this masquerade. Everybody in the country knows that the whole place is being run by a shadow government, close to the mafia setup.
People thought that Garang was like a mini-government. They mistook that he with his Naivasha, peace, negotiations with Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, the Vice
President at the time, could do something better with the government, if he became part of it. But even if they had given him the Ministry of Oil he would not have been able to do anything.
And now John Garang is no longer there, and Salva Kiir seems to be more easy because his whole concern is the South. This is exactly the approach that Ghazi Salah al
Din and the Bashir camp, the anti-Naivasha accord camp among the ruling elites, and competitors against Ali Osman, were trying for. It's traditional, it goes back to the Addis
Ababa Agreement. You get a problem with the South, you say what do you guys want, we will give you some office, we will give you some money, we will even give you the
South. Nimeri made the mistake in '83, by going crazy, and creating all the provinces and imposing Sharia law, but he could have gone on fine if he had continued playing the game with the Southerners, corrupting them.
And now, most of the people with Ali Osman, who were a part of the Naivasha negotiation got screwed. They are not part of the government any more. Salahddin is back in, the guys who were against the Naivasha are back again. Before, it seemed that
Ali Osman in the power center in the North and John Garang in the power center in the
South could strike a political alliance overall within the Sudanese government and sway the political balance to their favour. At a certain point with John Garang, the only person
130 to put him in line was Ali Osman. That's when he started feeling the heat, his position started getting a little bit undermined, even politically. It doesn't really mean that he is weak, he is still the Second Vice President, the First Vice President being Salva Kiir, he has his own people. He has his own army as well, literally financed by his money. It's a mafia division and there are certain areas that belong to him.
Anyway, even the public culture, the sense of general political and public participation, the Muslim Brothers seriously manipulated it. There is nothing called a public domain any more, it's all fragmented. They set up the whole country, and the society.
There are just a few islands where people are doing very well. Some people are getting the benefit of the oil boom. A lot of our colleagues are getting paid very well as well, for example they are finding a lot of jobs with the United Nations. So compared to the others they are doing fine, but sort of like going from one island to another, going through these networks. The whole society outside of this is just totally excluded from everything. It wasn't really like this before. We now have an entire population that has got nothing to do with anything. They have no sense of citizenship. Forget about the internally displaced peoples, these are not IDPs.
The IDPs, they moved them completely out of the city, actually to the desert. And now again, because of the clashes that happened after John Garang's death. The security guys had, for so long, circulated in the IDPs' areas, with all kinds of anti-riot measures.
And everybody knew that at any point of time following Garang's death there would be some friction, between Northerners and Southerners in the capital. The Bashir
131 government could have prevented the clashes from the start, but they didn't want to. This is exactly what they wanted, these guys now back in power, back in the cabinet.
So, this is this is kind of setup we have right now in Sudan. The whole process is so complicated that you can't know exactly how this government works.
And, at a certain point all the people we used to belong with, the Communists and the National Democratic Alliance, NDA, got completely demoralized. For these people their only hope was John Garang. They knew that John Garang could not do much for them but they didn't really have other options. So they started displaying him. Now he's gone and they are totally lost.
There is a total absence of political opposition in Sudan now. There will be nobody when this non-democratic regime collapses. The NDA has representatives within the country, but there is just nothing there. Even the fourteen percent of the cabinet that the government had promised them, during long negotiations before they made the final deal after the signing of the CPA with the South, the government isn't giving to them any more. Now they have to decide whether to be part of this government. The only option that they have with the government is that it creates certain posts in the cabinet for them, the NIF can create any kind of posts for them.
132 Osama
In some part I am happy about this kind of government we have, all the issues it exploded
like in one shot, on the 30 of June 1989. Now, it's like a shock for all Sudanese and kind
of a wake up call.
And, it's good to have a party from Darfur and from everywhere, it's not just
from the South, to say their words, to talk about their sufferings, their dreams and their
hopes. Even though, for me it's a bad thing to talk that we are Beja or we are Fur, or we
are Southerners. But in a certain way it's a good thing to make everyone know his rights
and who he is, because it is like through our history, since our independence, we are
going, we even don't know, forward or backward, blindly, like pulling Sudan or pushing
Sudan forward, pushing Sudan through its time anyways. So, in certain ways it's a good thing to let anyone tell his story, say his words, and try to do, what he or his group of people is thinking of, what is their future, what they need, what they like and what they
dislike, because otherwise one day there will be nothing to tell about.
Lubanga
The Southern Sudan situation is going to take a very long time to resolve. People are all now concentrating on what would happen after six years. All their energies are being
spent on that instead of doing something in the six years. All the time what we hear is what they want to see happening in six years, whether separation or unity. For me it is a waste of time. You have got to do something now. If it comes, new unity or whatever, at
133 least you've done something to develop the country. The South is the most underdeveloped place on earth. In the last fifty years what has been done? Nothing, no roads, no nothing. So there is a lot to be done in the South and it is possible to do it if people get their minds into it.
Osama
I really don't feel Sudan is going to separate. After the peace agreement the Southerners are going to ask for everything immediately to the Southern government and things are not going to happen that quick. That they are talking about everything is a good thing.
But in the mean time it's also a trick from the Northern government. They promised the
Southerners everything, not everything but most of what they want, that they can do what they want by themselves. But they can't do everything immediately, and then people in
South are going to rethink the way they think about the government of Khartoum.
Athaia
I think I am not looking for the separation of the South and the North, it's early. There are people who have a different idea, of having that separation. I don't need that. I need a whole Sudan, whole as Sudan. As long as I can travel from Khartoum to North, from
Khartoum to Juba, from Juba to North, to West, to East, that is all Sudan. I don't need to travel with a passport to go to a city that's inside Sudan. I don't need to separate that
134 beautiful land, to cut it into pieces. It's just like your entire body, if nothing is hurting you somewhere and somebody cuts out the part that is hurting, it still hurts you.
That's the way I see it. Sudan has to be a whole Sudan with all living Sudanese people inside the country, even if the people in North say that we want to live in the
North, you guys live in the South. That's okay, you know that is where they belong too.
There is a reality, that part belongs to you and this belongs to me, although we are sisters.
They have to accept that all the more if they want to be in Sudan. If the Northerners said you can come and live in Khartoum or in the North part that is up to me, if I want to, if I don't want to. It doesn't matter.
The politicians don't have to divide the country into two. There are a lot of things that we need which is in the South, like oil right now, agriculture, natural resources, mango, trees, bushes, minerals, gold, diamond, and there are a lot of things that we need which is in the North, like the education resources, schools and universities. These two parts need each other. North will not be a country without South, South will not be a country without North, even the East, even the West, they all need each other. Even if they divide the country into two, this is North, this is South, what about the East, what about the West? What are they going to do with these parts, also divide them?
For me that country has to exist like it is. What is needed is to get a good leader to lead the whole country. That is the way I look at it.
135 I think, here again, the problem is the (nation) state, any (nation) state. It puts people in quite a state, as Butler (2007) says, when it contains and dispossesses people simultaneously. The nation-state tries to make itself, its identity, its nation, its citizens, through making 'others', some people, actually most people, those inside and those outside (Butler. 2007. 5). As Agamben (1998), Arendt (2004), Hyndman (1991), Lippert
(1999), Malkii (1992), Mbembe (2000), Nyers (1999), Soguk (1999), Xenos (1996) also say...
The refugee is made from inside a nation-state as that person it excludes, and who has to or wants to leave because his or her life within that state becomes difficult, even impossible. And then the refugee is made in all the other nation-states, in the camps, in the cities, as that person who is a foreigner and who will remain that, even if some, usually temporary, help is offered, or is allowed, through the international organizations too.
The irony, the fact, the very condition, of the existence of these international organizations is that they reinforce the nation-state and its bounded territoriality. So that they try to put the refugee back into the box of the state, the nation, wherever they can.
Then, only sometimes really questioning how these people often again become involved in other (similar) process of marginalization within the 'new' nation-states since that marginalization is essential for the existence of the nation-state itself. It cannot include everybody. Its existence depends on boundaries, of all kinds.
Oh, I spoke a lot.
136 And I am trying to listen to stories of people from all over Sudan, about their journeys from there to here, and through those stories to contest the dominant refugee discourse(s).
These discourses are what set out refugees in general as people who are passive, mere victims, and at the same time as threats to host states, their citizens, their identity.
Such discourses are everywhere, in public, in policies, in everyday practices, especially among people who wish to help refugees. It marginalizes. And people who are labeled and understood as refugees (must) fight this.
So, following so many, I am also trying to say the dominant discourse(s) makes the 'self, the state, the nation, the citizen, by simultaneously making and needing to make 'others', in this case the refugee.
137 But, you have not really spoken 'a lot'. As an Author.
If I 'speak' too much then how would the storytellers speak?
But or en 'tyou the one speaking in any case? This is your writing, with your name on it, even if one doesn Y see you in the writing.
Yes, it is my writing, with my name. It can't be any other way. I am the one who collected the stories, 'chose' the ones that I am writing about, reordered them, got them to talk to one another (here). It is my presentation, my doing. I am responsible for what is here. If the 'object' of analysis is to become a 'subject' then it can do so only in acting, thinking, and speaking. I am trying to allow that, knowing that I am the one in a position to 'allow' this, by trying to keep as quiet as possible so that others can be heard. That's my responsibility.
But should you not take a stand?
This is my stand. I am taking a stand, making a stand, by doing deconstructive writing.
By decentering the author, myself, putting forth multiple voices and views. In not fixing an understanding.
Does this then mean not taking a position? No. The way I present the stories is about my position, my politics, to blur boundaries, of identities and taken for granted understanding, including those in conventional maps, timelines etc. that too often frame stories, peoples and places.
And from the very beginning I am saying that I am trying to contest the dominant refugee discourse(s). Through (political) stories of some 'Sudanese' 'refugees', to not
138 show the dominant refugee discourse(s) but to show that these people do not fit it, its explanation, its conclusions.
If I have shown this, then I have disrupted, even if in a limited way, the dominant refugee discourse(s). As is my intention.
Still, should you not elaborate more on the information, history and knowledge claims, especially the somewhat problematic claims? How is the non-specialized reader, in whatever sense, to follow that you are disrupting the discourse, the narrative, the reading? This needs to be pointed out, so that this doesn 't lead to a misunderstanding, of what is at stake, what cannot then be taken for granted. After all there is power involved, differentially, in what you do and don't do, and the positions taken by your story tellers.
I am mediating the stories. Mixing them, ordering them, connecting them.
So that storytellers are saying, I am many, not reducible. To know me you have to know where I am coming from, where I am going, what I am thinking while I am, moving.
We are many, we are like and unlike one another, not just because of our tribes and locations within Sudan but also in spite of that. Like others, we are not at all one.
I do, I think, I tell, together and separately, differently and similarly. My information is what I have, what you will get. My history is what I lived, live, what makes me in parts, how I understand it. My claims are mine, I act accordingly, and often contrary to it.
Same as others. Listen to them too.
In listening we can start telling new(er) stories. Of how things were different, and could be different. Not to make it all the same.
139 So, I am telling a story, many stories, mediated for sure. Without interrupting by analysis but in dialog. Finding my spaces in, within and outside of, them. In another story. Not the dominant refugee story, of the refugee. Not to let people get away with problematic claims, but to let the problematic circulate, not be hidden away. So that it has to be dealt with.
If something jars then let's make it something else. You, me, them. If it's disorienting, one has to ask why. If it's misunderstood, one has to explore. Only by talking, only by listening, only in spinning stories, on and on, making it different.
Responsibly and freely. Without being the author, or even claiming it.
Who are 'you, me, them'?
You, the questioner. Me, the Tenderer. Them, the teller(s). And we are not different, separate, as such. You also render and tell, I also question and tell, they also question and render. Only different in how we say it, and let it be said. And we don't know who can be you, me or them. Till we say who is who, definitely, even while the separation doesn't exist. Till we are, we become, you, me, them.
You ask me to choose, a position, and I ask you to choose. First listen, if you want explore, and then choose. To tell differently. Complex simple stories. Where none can be just one.
And IAm?
The reader. The teller. Not one, but many! All. And shifting. Asking questions. Same and different. Looking for answers. Same and different. Seeking, and providing, directions.
Same and different. The academic, the lay person, the Sudanese, the non-Sudanese, the
140 friend, the foe, the sympathizer, the contrarian, the poet, the philosopher. Could be many,
different. Could be one, same. Readers! Tellers! Who read, and so need to be told. But
who also think, for themselves. Who also act, for themselves. Depending on what they
read, what they know, what they think. What they live.
And what if they have to do a lot, think a lot, in reading? Even more than they
usually do. They protest, they accept, they appreciate. And then they can, and do, tell.
Differently.
And what I want? I want you, to read, with me. Even against me. Patiently,
excitedly, involved. Listening all the time, reacting all the time, doing all the time. Go
with me, away from me, with the storytellers, away from them, know them, make them
unknown, from what you have known, they have known, we have known. They, who can
be, and are, you. Really. Ask them, move with them. Away from yourselves, with
yourselves.
All of you, us. Reading, writing, listening, telling. Changing. The story.
And that story is not one, the dominant refugee discourse(s). And neither is the storyteller
one, who talks about refugees.
Yes. It, the story, is not one. It's many. But then the effect is similar. Of making the refugee. The one who is displaced, who has to be placed. To be okay, proper. Within a
state (of being). It's about what's taken for granted, almost. By scholars, policy analysts,
organizations, people in them, people everywhere. And there are those who believe this only to some extent, even only marginally, who even don't believe it but have to function
141 within what is (accepted), this state (of being). So most stories, by most storytellers, of refugees, for most part, are variations, of the known, the refugee.
And then, yes. They, these, storytellers, are not one. They are many. Especially those who don't take the accepted for granted. Those that have led me to the point of being able to write, a bit different. Even different from them.
Ya, you talked of them before, critical scholars within academics and within
'refugee studies '/forced migration studies'. But then the way you write them is in shorthand. These are complex writers whose concepts cannot be reduced to a sentence or even a word.
Also, you need to say what you are doing, developing on their concepts, and even different from them, who are different from one another. Or the reader may not know.
And the reader is not only the academic, so should you not also introduce all the readers to these critical scholars, so that they can also know them, maybe move together?
You almost make it seem like you are alone, the only one to think or do against the norm.
Oh, that wasn't my intention. But I can see how that can seem to be the case. And a hundred times yes, the critical scholars inform much of what I am doing, have dared to undertake. Reading Trinh, King, Benjamin, and Bakhtin, those who write (of) stories, how can one not think of writing stories, and be humbled by the fact that one is not a storyteller, like them, but can only impersonate, improvise on them, as the (in)numerous others who have influenced one, and them.
And then the question always arises, what stories to write about. I could write the critical scholars, their numerous, amazing, stories, theories. And say as have many, that
142 stories and experiences of the 'people' are important, crucial to changing the way we, all, know things for most parts. And try to write their stories.
Within 'refugee studies/forced migration studies', as in many other fields, critical
International Relations, IR, included, many have tried this, done that, I am not alone. At the least I can talk of Arendt, Said, Malkki, Soguk, who talk against/about the effacing that the field, and others do, of the refugees, their experiences, their histories, their knowledges, and their bodies. To make a political, and theoretical, statement. Differently, about different issues, components of the dominant discourse(s), drawing on their own and others experiences, to talk about placedness and displacedness and the state (of being) that it serves, and how refugees are always more than that. They are managed precisely because they unravel it, the system, of states, as Agamben also says. Even as it displaces and places them, to make it(self), constantly, under threat. A regimenting to maintain the national order of things. As 'refugees' have other plans, processes and ways of being. Like any others.
But I am thinking, what if my stories are not about the critical scholars as such.
They are there, able to speak, and even be heard, to some extent. They sound good, at the least, to many, most, readers who do read them. What if I build on what they say, take what they say for granted, accept their critiques of the refugee discourse(s), and go one step ahead. Talk, write, directly about 'the people', who are many, and are at times part of them, the critical scholars, and even at times part of the conventional discourse, whatever it be.
143 What if I leave the people be 'as they are'. Just like the critical scholars say they should be, to start rethinking the 'field' and its practices. And then not just leave them as they are, since they are not just as they are. They are also in touch with others, and moving, to live. In touch with themselves, others, me, and the critical scholars, if only because they, we, all are speaking from, or approaching, some common grounds. The resistance to efface them, us.
And to not create and maintain a distinction, of who speaks for whom, who hears what who says. They are not them, and we are not us. The doers and the critical scholars, but all are mixed. They are not simply critical scholars on the outside and doers on the inside. Which then doesn't mean that we don't get to know one another, inside, outside, in between, even as we are not, as we are. But the point is also how does one know one another. As what?
So, isn't it enough, a lot. To introduce people as people. And then to see what each brings and becomes in dialog. And cross boundaries, which already don't exist, even in 'reality'. If what I think makes sense, then I use the critical scholars to bring in the
'new' speakers, in the process effacing them, the critical scholars, but letting them stay in spirit. And using the storytellers (including the critical scholars, in some sort of an embeddedness) to tell various stories, and in the form of writing disrupt its content.
To let, as Foucault and Barthes say, the author die.
And that's the other thing. You are disruptive in your form, that's obvious, but how about the content?
144 But the form and content are not separate. Even though that can happen. The content here is not unknown, but not known. The form allows for its knowing, within the context of where it is usually hidden, kept away. In the dominant refugee discourse(s). And so the questions, as critically asked, who are you talking about, what are their understandings, what do they become. And answered, also critically, they are not refugees but made so.
If the content is almost mundane, everyday, procedural, even redundant, repetitive, and revealing, resisting, acting, fighting, staying, moving, then it is part of the form. Same as the form, that doesn't sit in one place, if only because of the content. The form, and content, simply cannot be content, when there's so much going on.
Will the content be more disruptive if I intervene, as obviously as I have with the form? I don't think so, even if only because to speak in between all that is going on, to say ah, let me say what this is all about, is to make all the polyphony, different understandings, stop, pause at the least, not talk, mix, create. The content, as the form, is to flow, meeting contestations, attestations. Not a finality, but a possibility, of the future, of (some) justice.
What kind of a justice? What is it that you really disrupt?
Justice, of possibilities. Of not fixing identities. Disrupting the fixations.
In deconstruction.
In situated knowledge, in its partiality, so that it's not from nowhere, while it's not one thing.
To let it be known, the unknown. Or rather the not known.
145 Living in and leaving Sudan
Our story is all the same.
We all left for the same reason, the war.
Really?
Of course.
But then I insist each person's story is different. Each person saw something, did something, undertook internal/external journeys differently, singularly. Do you want to fit into the mould of the refugee?
We all told the same story.
To me too? I don't think so, I hope not.
We told true stories.
All stories the same?
They were.
And we know what they want to hear.
We tell to move.
We move and we tell.
A true story.
An apt story.
A pertinent story. An individual story.
A story for the occasion.
And the occasion, UNHCR interrogation, and mine, at the embassies.
In different countries, with different people.
Same different stories.
Different same stories.
And yes the stories for each other, we who are family, friends, relatives, acquaintances, from same places and different, who knew each other from before, and here, and now for the first time.
You know what we did.
You know what they did.
You know what he did.
You know what she did.
You know what happened.
You know what I did.
It was so funny, so bad, so good, even all at once. Haha!
In Sudan.
From Sudan to here.
Here.
147 And the war and the politics and those people!
All people everywhere are not the same.
There are some good people, and some bad people.
Even for white.
Even for Arab.
Even us, we have some bad people.
1*8 Osama
We, the Sudanese people, who love freedom and democracy, gained democracy through the big revolution, the April Intifada, April Revolution, often days or so starting from
26th March 1985.
Then, for us, things started to be bigger. Most of our members and leaders were getting old and they couldn't work. We needed to change ourselves, to rewrite our policies and program. And in the meantime doors were being opened for us for bigger work because it was now democracy.
We tried to put foundations inside every one of us, of freedom and democracy, because, honestly, we didn't trust that it was going to last long. It's not the first time this happened, this stupid story, soldiers love to jump and take power.
So we created a big, lovely, good thing, this new organization. But we, even the leadership, didn't have much money. And it meant much work but we gained so much experience from these people, the generation before us.
For the first time in years we started to have our own places in Halfaya. We rented a house with a big sign. A family that was in UK for years built the house, and they gave us this house for a year and then for another year. After that we rented two places, for less than a year each. So, we, this same group of people, were still working.
In Sudan we couldn't just talk to any family about our agenda, but we asked members' families to let us to come over and hold meetings, bigger meetings, in their places. In my area most of the people are very simple, they are like you are my relative, you can come anytime and with strangers. Just say this is my friend and that's enough for them. So we still had the meetings. Families didn't complain because it's normal, six,
seven, eight people getting together is very normal. You don't even have to ask. In Sudan
its part of the hospitality, it's free for people.
I don't know how these years just went, like a moment, these years of democracy.
We, many people, worked with the Communists, the Itihad al Nisaa al Sudani, the
Women's Union. Throughout these days I had my membership with the Sudanese
Communist Party. It was a very big experience.
Then, after 30th June '89, when this government took over, a lot of things
happened. They blocked our activities, of any party or organization or newspaper. They
didn't want us to be involved in any political activities, be members of any kind of
activities or groups. We all had to register our organizations again. We didn't like that, it
was their trick.
We just asked the people of Sudan for permission to work because we are part of them and they recognize us. It's enough recognition for us. We talked to the people in our
area, that we don't support any kind of government, even if it was by the Communist
Party or our union. Our main work was to talk to people about the real meaning of
government. So we asked them not to support any kind of government that came this
way, through coup, not if it was right or left. We didn't ask our Union, for permission to
work or not, to be under their wishes, will and power because it's against the idea of
democracy. It didn't mean we didn't like our Union president, but there were bad things that happened before the April Revolution against Nimeri.
150 Some of us had started to work as a part of that government. It was a very bad experience. We, the members of our Sudanese Youth Union, decided to support Nimeri's government. That government from day one was supposed to be a leftist military coup.
The Communist Party, Quom al Arabi, a nationalist, Islamic socialist group, other socialists, leftists, and Dhubat al Hurr, the free officers influenced by Nasser and his nationalist socialism in Egypt were part of it. Nimeri was put in power because he was considered neutral, a person in the middle. The aim of this government was a corrective movement, to develop Sudan as socialist state, the Nasser way.
But then the Nimeri government created a similar named organization, Itihad
Shabab al Sudan, to confuse our people. We, Itihad al Shabab al Sudan, were sort of independent, unlike Ansar and Khatimiya religious sects, that became big parties later, supported by big families. The Ansar, meaning the supporters of victory, became Umma
Party supported by the Mahdi family, and the Khatimiya became the Democratic
Unionist Party, DUP, supported by the Mirghani family. So, we gained a lot of people's support. But then it was a part of all movements to have youth and women bodies, even this government now when it started it had the youth and women's union.
So, the new bodies like this were created to replace us, and Nimeri government banned our union along with other unions, parties and newspapers. In the two years after
Nimeri became the President he quickly isolated the real communists, out of the
Revolution council, made of those who led the coup and the President. Then Communist
Party and the real communists from inside the army made a socialist coup, they ruled for two days, from 19 July '71. From that point, it's a turning point in Sudanese history,
151 Nimeri cut any ties with communists and socialists and built replacements, of all unions
and people in all unions and everywhere.
Nimeri also formed Itihad Nisaa al Sudani to replace Itihad al Nisaa al Sudani.
From 1948, these groups and unions were existing, from day one when the Communist
Party was established they formed them. These groups were socialist broadly, and they achieved a lot, culturally and politically, from '52 till '69. From '71 Nimeri put many people from the unions in prison and killed many women's leaders and Joseph Garang, a
Southerner Communist Party leader. He damaged everything in Sudan. Then it became easier for this present government to work with the corrupt people who supported the
system.
Nimeri established this corruption. He moved way to the right, from starting as
left. He didn't use his chance properly, he had the support of all the people when he
started. And he was already supported by the communist countries. Then he went to the right and to the west for support. For a few years in the mid '70s east and west were both
supporting Sudan, it was a unique situation for a third world country. He was fully
supported internationally, Sudanese were free to travel everywhere around the world, even though he was a dictator and at the time he was putting people opposing him in the prison and even killing top leaders. But at the same time, he built roads and some factories, they don't work, because it was all corruption. And some communists and
Uinma Party leaders still supported him because they considered him in the middle. At that time, in '75 and'76 the DUP, Umma Party and Turabi, for the first time, with his
Muslim Brotherhood movement, the far right in Sudan, formed a coalition in Libya, with
15? Gaddafi's support. They established an army in Libya, and smuggled back the soldiers
into Sudan in July '76. After fighting for a couple of days Nimeri defeated them. He then
established his full power. There was a lot of bloodshed in Khartoum, unlike before, even
on the streets.
Anyway, after '89 it became very dangerous to be a member of the Communist
Party, and of most of the parties. You started to gain enemies from the Islamic Movement
as a big body, as a whole movement and not just this party or that party. I am talking
about this mentality, I am not talking about the people themselves, the regular
government employees, the ones who are dependent on or who are with the system. They
need to keep their position or maintain their situation. Those kinds of people don't need
any change because it shapes their position. To them what's the meaning of equality and
women's rights?
But, this is no way to be. Some of us had to say we are here, we are working, for
the people or for the government. And there were younger people who took over things
because they were energetic or had much knowledge about many new good things, not just any new thing but things related to this big place or big area named Sudan.
So, we were the people doing these activities. We chose to work underground as
usual, the third time for us and for many organizations and even the newspapers, with the
third dictatorship. It became like its normal to work underground. It was just some people
from the Communist Party who succeeded to escape and publish their magazine, Kadaya
Sudaniya, Sudanese Issues, from Cairo.
153 In Cairo some people just started to do some other things, cultural and literary things, while still working with this party or that or independently, but mainly not pure politics like party things. They were well known people who used to always defend the idea of democracy and freedom and justice and equality. Here they started to get in touch with everyday life and ordinary people for the first time. Some people I know, in
Communist Party, they said they learned a lot through this process, interacting with people without the barrier of the office. Even between parties people were able to work together, talk to one another.
Anyway, so we had to reorganize ourselves. Like in our area for eighty members we needed less than six people for leadership. But it was impossible those days for six people, for the Youth Union, to get together, to talk about anything. We had to reorganize and even change our programs, to work through clubs like sport clubs.
We started our work again, but did lesser and lesser. It was not easy to get new members and we lost hundreds just because they were afraid. Some even decided to support the government because it's the government, they have guns and they can kill anyone, sure kill them, even me, myself. Our program shrunk to two, three things.
Internally, we had to secure our members and make sure that new members were not frightened. And outside we told people that we can't support any kind of dictatorship. In
Halfaya we worked with environmental groups, creating a small garden in the middle of a small neighbourhood, we supported the youth football team, helped with women here and there. Our strategy was to gain back democracy. But it was not easy to talk normally,
154 openly. You had to find out who the enemy are. If you try and read between the lines you
see what's going to happen next.
Still, some of us worked openly as usual, talking about the Sudanese Youth
Union. This is not a communist youth union. At the time there was somehow some
confusion because many people started to say that our Union is a part of the Communist
Party.
So, I was working with young people, and many of them were really afraid. Its
guns, prisons and torture, and they knew that. We kept on talking about it, if you lost
your freedom and democracy the prison and torture means nothing.
Some of them came because they heard that we had a summer scholarship from
Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Romania, the communist countries. Some others came because it
was a good opportunity to be in touch with girls.
Girls, that's a big thing in Sudan. In our area, even at midnight, you can be in
touch with any girl as long as she's your relative or your neighbour. But in our kinds of
activities you meet a lot of girls and the environment was open. You can talk, you can
laugh, without someone monitoring. We were always hoping for a healthy relationship
between males and females.
Anyway, we succeeded, and some of these young people succeeded in gaining the
trust of each other, and in their power, the power of unity, that if you work together with
others, hand in hand, you can do a lot. Yes, sometimes it's simple and stupid, but there is no way to succeed unless it's you with some other people you believe in. Some of us
started to be loved.
155 Then I decided to stop my activities, with a young girl, the newest member among us. You just wake up one next day and you see like everything has been stolen and destroyed.
Then I just went meeting some people, poets and singing groups, in certain places, and playing music, even in the church. I gained much knowledge, I started reading like crazy, maybe because there was something inside me telling me that you didn't finish studying, you didn't go to university, you have to do something.
I had always been in touch with, working with, good educated people. There are a lot of people like me, most of us love to read and talk and do some critical things. One of our things was to encourage the youth to read and to gain their own knowledge, out of the mainstream schools. Schools always teach people basics of general knowledge, not any useful things.
Those days I started to know Gabriel Garcia Marquez, which for me was a huge thing, and I saw movies like Colour Purple. This encouraged us, to know that there are other people who share our view of equality and things.
Khalid
It was awful. People were so depressed. When '89 came everything in Sudan seemed to completely fall apart, and a whole different atmosphere started to be the reality for the country. There was a lot of harassment, imprisonment, torture. Most of our intellectual political activism was shut down, like the Association for Sudanese Writers. Theatre was
156 shut down. There were no newspapers, nothing. People were either being laid off from their jobs or put in prison. People had no interest in doing anything, and anything could happen to get you in trouble and in prison. And the prisons were not regular prisons.
These are prisons where there is a lot of torture.
And thinking of what exactly happened with the previous Sadiq regime, nobody supported it. But nobody went out in the street against them, not the people who usually go out on street but the other people. They were sort of ambivalent and started thinking things are not real, because the Sadiq al Mahdi regime was completely out of touch with reality. So it was smart timing for the Muslim Brothers to do their coup d'etat in '89, when the political parties had no clue what to do.
The problem was that the Sadiq government was formed as a compromise to the political turmoil, with the demonstrations against the Nimeri regime in 1985, the memorandum from the military to improve the economic, political and military situation in Sudan and the NIF opposition. The Communists were a part of it but not officially, they had some representatives in that government. And at the time negotiations were going on between John Garang and Mohamad Osman al Mirghani, the leader of the
DUP, and the Khatimiya religious sect, to get Garang to support the peace agreement, the
Kokodam Agreement, that SPLA reached with a previous transition government.
In '85 after the fall of Nimeri, for one year, there was a kind of technocrat government composed of trade union organizations, shared with the military, and some of them were discussing peace with SPLA, in Kokodam.
157 The problem later, was that Mirghani was negotiating with Garang when he was not in power, and at that point of time Sadiq was trying his old tricks, which was to say to
Mirghani that you are not part of this negotiation, my party is doing it, I might well have another partner. And his partners were the same people who later thrashed him out, the
NIF.
Sadiq, to our surprise, actually had information about the coup d'etat from before.
Some information came to his desk but he didn't do anything about it because he always thinks of himself as somebody who can play a lot of strategic games.
Then, these four years, from '89, when we didn't have democracy were one of the worst years for us in term of how hopes could be completely dashed away. The
Communists were so demoralized and weak and completely out of any wit or ability that they failed to be an alternative. What the Muslim Brothers did is very interesting. At least in universities, they struck a lot of fear, with nasty violence. So, a lot of people just stayed paralyzed, not getting involved, creating this atmosphere of political apathy. The opposition became totally isolated, without any base, and then the NIF completely destroyed them.
What they did was something new in the Sudanese politics. Before there had been two dictatorships and three democratic governments. In all these years the whole culture of political opposition didn't really have any history of torture of this kind, in this form, with this fierceness, this crudeness. You could go to prison, but usually the political prisoners would spend their time writing books and poetry. They got a lot of hardship but
158 not in terms of torture or of people dying in prisons. Earlier, with Nimeri there were a lot of such cases, but not in this volume.
Now in the political sphere there was a lot of violence, unknown violence, guns and all, used against the city populations. The NIF inflicted a lot of fear in the country.
And people just became strange. They started leaving the country. This is actually one of the biggest mistakes ever made by us, and the entire Northern political opposition.
Suddenly there started emerging these wrong ideas among people that the only way to topple the military dictatorship is by a new way, from the outside, with any kind of opposition but mainly military or armed opposition.
Everybody saw this Northern military opposition turn out to be a mistake, after a few years. The only way the NIF could have actually gone out of power was by using the same thing as before, the civil demonstrations, the general strikes, and not armed confrontations. People had to at least survive in the country for the first, the second year, and then gradually start to resist.
To a large extent this usual political discourse of opposition was produced by the
Sudanese Communist Party, like the earlier popular uprisings by the people on the street, general strike by trade unions and all that. Communists played a major role in the
October Revolution of 1964 which toppled the 195 8 Military Ibrahim Aboud Regime.
Since then October Revolution become the revolutionary prototype for overthrowing military government, through popular uprising. The same tactics are also largely perceived to been used to overthrow the Nimeri regime in April 1985. In '64 and '85 trade unionists were the main political organizations, they managed to organize people's
159 unrest, into a general strike against the government, people just refused to go to work. In both cases the government was a military government, and the army had to make a choice, what to do about the uprising. In both cases the army, part of it, refused to hit back at the people on the streets and the regimes collapsed. This is why the first thing the
Muslim Brothers did was to destroy the unions. And there was no longer any point in making a political statement through any kind of strike. If there is a normal oppositional political uprising as before this fascist regime will just kill people, like shoot everybody in the streets.
Anyway, this thinking developed later on into attempts by the NDA to create armed units in Eritrea and Ethiopia, similar to John Garang in the South and the SPLA in
Ethiopia. This is how John Garang got involved with NDA.
So, that was the climate that actually led a lot of Northerner intellectuals or what they call the modern forces of educated people to finding their way out of the country.
Part of it the people they know are not there, part of it some people out here told them that they can come here, part of it was a retreat, part of it was a total disappointment because we are the generation who actually lived the sixteen years of the Nimeri regime hoping that this Nimeri period would go away and we will finally come to really feel what democracy means.
My friend was tortured so fiercely. I used to meet him every weekend, on Fridays.
He was the only person left in Sudan, from our small group. He suddenly disappeared.
Then, all the time, I would go and talk to his mother and support her. One year later he came out of the prison, and then he escaped from Sudan. He managed to get out.
160 This is just a summary of the whole climate there.
Athaia
My husband got arrested, in 1993, because he was related to the church. He was working with the Sudan Council of Churches and Sudanese Bishop Conference.
This was formed inside Sudan. It's not like something coming from outside, it was supported by the churches, the Catholic Church as well, in Sudan. They had a lot of branches. They opened in Wau, Juba and Malakal in the South, and in Khartoum, in
Omdurman.
The government tried to close these down until in the North they were left with only this one office existing in Khartoum. The government saw this office as supporting a lot of people. It was working to help some students with school supply, medical assistance and scholarships, to sponsor children to schools that at a point started asking for fees.
So, that was my husband's job. The government knows that kids are going to learn, and if they are going to learn they will become better persons with good ideas, smart people having a good mind. They didn't want that. They started to bring some policy, like the office has to work with the government. Then many offices didn't have enough power to continue, like the one in Juba. The one in Khartoum exists up to now.
But all the time the security goes there, to see who is there, what is happening. The government just suspected the people there like they are giving people ideas or filling
161 their heads or trying to analyze the situation with things that they didn't otherwise know about.
They came to the office to ask for Henry. That time he was there, standing at the reception, and he was the one to tell them that he is not here.
The other time was when he went to get his passport. Normally you go to the front desk, you submit your papers there, and they give the passport to you at the window when it is ready. But they told him that he has to come in to get it. He didn't want to go in. When you go in that is it, you are not going to see anybody again for the rest of your days. The next time he went to get his passport they told him to go to Omdurman to find it, and we live in Arkawit side, far away. Now he knew there was something wrong, he can't come for it.
Still, they got him when he next went to collect his passport. They locked him up in the prison. Luckily the day they put him in prison, one of his friends, James, was there.
He said I am not going to open the door officially, I am just going to leave the door open,
I will make a sign, and you get your way out of here. Later while people were praying my husband was able to escape. James then closed all the doors, took his car, and came home. It was night. He said to my husband don't deal with these people, if they take your passport let them take it. Why do you need it?
Another time they came to our house at night. They said he insulted an officer in the Ministry of Interior, the passport office. I immediately called his cousin, a police officer. I told him they took your brother to the police station. He took his car and before
162 they got him in he was there. It's like you really need somebody with two stars, three
stars, to stand behind you, all the time focusing on where you are going.
So he didn't end up in prison, but they had located where my husband went until they got him. From that time he didn't have the intention to be in Khartoum, it was only
going to be worse.
Alek
I came back from Egypt to get my traditional wedding done, in '95.
At the Khartoum airport I went with the passport, I did everything, and I went home. Then I went to Wau, and my dad and my father-in-law did the ceremony. They
said you are now Adol's wife, we bless you, now you can go to Egypt.
After that I came to get my passport stamped in the Ministry of Interior in
Khartoum, to go back to Egypt. They caught my passport. The guy there asked are you
Alek? Why are you going to Egypt? I said I am going back to Egypt. He said could you
wait a little bit? I asked what happened. He asked did you know someone called Gurguri
in Sudan? Someone's name is Gurguri? No. I know gurguri, the spinning top, I don't
know Gurguri a person. Then he asked me do you know Joka? What Joker? I know joker
in kushtena, cards. Are you okay? Yes, I am okay, I know joker in the kushtena but this is the first time I hear from you about Joker a person. He said this lady is not okay, if you talk more like that we are going to kill you. I said it's okay if you want to kill me, you kill
a lot of people, not just me, it doesn't matter for me. Adol's cousin had taken me there. I
163/ told him that's too much, they do a lot against us, this is nothing new. I told the Ministry guy you want to do something, do it right away, I am not scared. He just looked at me, and another guy said don't give her the passport. I said keep it with you, it doesn't matter to me, I left the passport there.
After that every time I went there they said we will not give you the passport. I asked could you tell me exactly what happened, why you won't give me the passport?
Three months later they gave me the passport, when the visa expired and I lost everything.
I took the passport, I wrote a note and went to the Egyptian Embassy to get the visa again. I told them what happened to me, they gave me another visa to go back. I came back to the Ministry, I want the stamp from here to go to the airport. The guy there said no, again and again.
One day he took my passport and just threw it. I took my passport and again asked please could you do this for me? He said no. Then another older person, from the
North too, came to me. He said please, I saw you here, like three days, four days, you just come and then you go back, what exactly do you want? I said I need a stamp to go to
Egypt. He asked don't you know anyone big working here, higher than this person? No, people were working here before but the government took all the Southerners out from there. He said you have one person here from Equatoria. His name is Jonathan I think, I don't know why I don't remember his name exactly. He is working inside, where the big people sit, you can go and see that guy.
164 That time I wore a short lacy skirt, and I didn't cover my head, my hair was
braided. My cousin-in-law said you are going to get in big trouble for these clothes, they
won't let us go in. I said I will try. Then I asked the Ministry guy, Ahmed you don't want
to give me the passport? He said I won't give it, if you go down or up, I will not give it to
you. I said you don't want to do it for me for three days, I will now look for someone and
then you will make it right away. He thought I was joking.
Then I went with my cousin inside one door, we knocked and the security guy
asked what do you want? Do you have an appointment? They have an appointment list. I
said no, this is an emergency. Jonathan knows that I am going to Egypt, he has some
letters and stuff to give me to take there. He wanted me to come here, how come I will
make an appointment? He just called and said come right away. I am going to Egypt
tomorrow. The guy said you both are not going in, choose one to go in. I said, Marial you
go, if I leave you outside here you can't be going in, you will find me inside. My cousin
took my passport and went in to the reception.
Then my uncle-in-law came out. He works in the police, he came from inside, he
was leaving and he saw my cousin inside. He asked what are you doing here? Nothing.
What are you wearing? I am wearing clothes. Where are you going? I want to go inside.
Are you crazy? He told me nobody can go in. If you go there I think you are going to
mess a lot of things. If you are lucky you will be okay, if you are not lucky then they will put you inside the jail for that dress you are wearing, and you didn't cover your head. I
said you are not from the North, you are from the South, who covers her head in the
South? You are supposed to know that. Khartoum has both Northerners and Southerners.
165 They can tell the Northerner that they have to cover their head, that is their culture. This
is not our culture, why should I cover my head, it is not my religion. He said okay. Then
he took us inside, the security didn't say anything. I said thanks.
Inside we found big Army officers from the North, when you see them you can
get scared. They saw me up to down. The person I went to meet was at a big table, many
people were with him. He said salaam aleikum. I said salaam aleikum. He said sit down,
and everyone left, one by one.
Then he asked us what we wanted. I said sorry, I just came here, I have a
problem. My passport stayed here for three months, the guy at the Ministry asked me
stupid questions. The last thing was when I wanted to get a stamp, the guy doesn't want
to give me the stamp. Every day when I come he throws my passport down. He gives the
stamp to people who come after me and he leaves me there. I come from six o'clock in
the morning until four in the evening, and then I just go back, I live far away. I want to go
back to Egypt, I finished studying in Egypt and now I want to go to bring my certificate,
to come back to our country. Then I want to look for a job here. He said there's no
problem, who's that guy? I told him the name.
He called a young soldier, could you take this passport, give it to that person, let
him stamp it. The Ministry guy told him no, I hate that passport, I said before I don't
want to stamp it. So the soldier brought it back. Then Jonathan went by himself with the passport, he was so angry, he was shouting. The guy saluted him, everyone was putting their feet up and now they were standing in attention. He said please could you do this now? The guy took the passport and stamped it.
166 When Jonathan opened the passport he saw my name. He said are you George's daughter? Yes. This is my colleague. I said I never knew you. What is your mom's name? My mom is Teresa. I know her, where is she now? She's here, at home now. What are you doing here? I just came from Egypt, my fiance is there, my traditional wedding is done and I want to do the church wedding there. He said okay, congratulations and thank you. I said thank you for your help. I didn't know that you are here. The older guy told me that we have one guy working here, go there, if you don't then you are going to stay in Khartoum and not go anywhere. He said it happened, everything has changed, people from the South are not working here, they took them out to other places. He was the top officer for the people from the North and they just left him there. I said thank you and I left.
Then I went back. I said Ahmed, you see that passport. Why did you cover your legs now, you are supposed to leave your feet open, why did you salute, you are supposed to say you are the top person. That's the way you want it, all the Sudanese Arab want to be on top, and then you put down the others. He was angry. He said I am going to kill you. Kill me, you kill a lot, if you want to kill me, kill me, it's up to you. Marial was shaking, and stamping my foot, I think this guy's going to take a car and run us over when we leave.
Then it took like two days and I came back to Egypt. That's my story from Sudan to Egypt.
157 Ajak
We suffered after my father left in 1984. The movement was considered such an awful thing, it is anti-government. When my father left they took us out of the government housing, and nobody in the government would meet with my mother or talk to her.
Sometimes at night we would get a lot of threats, people would be knocking at the door.
You feel scared, especially at night when somebody comes and knocks at the door so hard and you are not expecting any one.
When I was young life was very scary because you didn't know what would happen next. You only know something has happened, somebody has been shot somewhere or the army came last night to so-and-so's house and took someone. You hear a lot of stories about what's going on, they are merely killing people, the army is against people who are rebels. And even though you don't know why your father left or why these things were happening you know it's happening, something serious is going on.
I remember my father once sent a letter and my mother dug behind our house to bury the letter because if somebody, say the army, comes in and decides to check and finds this letter we would get killed only because of that letter. When my father left it was so unsafe for us.
We had uncles who would help us. My mother used to be a primary school teacher and in Sudan teachers are not paid very well, teachers are not paid at all, and it was very hard for my mother to support all of us with her salary. But again everybody is scared for their lives too, you do something but you have to protect your life as well.
Where our safety was concerned I don't think anybody could really protect us.
168 At that time Wau was not being attacked as such, sometimes you would hear the shooting but it wasn't shelling. The heavy shelling happened after we left. But there was a lot of fear going on around the city when we were there. It was when things were really getting bad. People were really afraid of the government, not of the SPLA, not of the rebels at all.
AIek
From 1984 I was in Wau. I was staying with my uncles and my aunt, and I was working in the hospital as a statistics clerk. I had finished my high school, Sudan's School
Leaving Certificate. After that you can go to the university.
I kept thinking a lot, what to do. I didn't have school, just work. My dad was not there, he went to Aweil for work. And then from Aweil he went to Khartoum, he was there. My mum was not there, she was in Juba, the war cut her off there. Only me and my step sister were in Wau. My younger sisters were in Khartoum, some in Juba. If I didn't have something to do I was supposed to go to the war, with all the people going to
Bilpham. I wanted to go there. Then I talked to my dad, he said okay.
In '87 my uncle came from Bilpham to bring the soldiers who finished their training there to places in Sudan. When they are done they bring them out and take new people to Bilpham to start training. I went to meet him. The Sudan government wouldn't let them come in, so they stayed outside the town. When you go there you just go secretly, you don't let the police or the other soldiers, the army, see you. I found my uncle and we talked. He asked are you ready to go? I said yes, I am
ready. I bought my boots, my pants and everything, they are with me now. He said give
me three days and after that you can come.
Then my other uncle, I was staying with him, he went to the church. I was a
volunteer in the church. Everyday I was there doing a lot of things, all the fathers knew
me. My uncle talked to the Father, Fr. John, do you know what Alek is doing? She wants
to go to Bilpham, blab, blab. When the father heard that he said yes, she looks stressed,
like she can't go anywhere. She has decided she wants to join the SPLA, but you don't
want her to go there. Could you let me go talk to her? I didn't know these things.
The Father took his motorcycle and came to our place. I was busy doing
something in the kitchen. I was in home clothes, it was dirty. He said get on the
motorcycle. I said what happened, let me go change. He said no. And he took me to the
UNICEF office.
The guy there said we have one aeroplane coming from Juba, bringing students
from Juba to Wau, and then going from Wau to Khartoum, but the list is full. Sometimes
the UNICEF aeroplanes were so small, they take like eight persons, not a lot. Fr. John
said just put her name in the list and give me one seat. The guy respected the Father and
put my name down.
Father then said do you see your name, you are going. I asked where am I going?
He said you are going to Khartoum, to your father. You are not going to the war. I said
but I want to. He said no. We just kept fighting. He said now you are going to be standby, just wait. Any time, today or tomorrow, the next day, when the aeroplane comes I will
170 take you to the airport. If you find a chance you will go right away. I said what the hell, like that? I didn't prepare anything. I just kept thinking, and then I said okay, I will go.
He brought me home and then he went to my uncle and told him that Alek is going to go to Khartoum. My Uncle said that is good. I was crying, I was not happy.
My other young uncle asked why were you going to the war when you know Adol wants you both to get married and he is in Khartoum? If he heard you went to the war he will go to the war too. If something happens to him in the war, his parents are going to blame you. You know he is the only son for his mom, he has four sisters and stepbrothers. I said no, it's not about Adol. I was going by myself, I want to do something for my country, let me go. If Adol wants to go, he will go by himself, not in my name. He said no, you are not going.
So, I came to Khartoum in 1987. It took me like two weeks. First, the guy from
UNICEF called Fr. John, we have an empty aeroplane coming from Juba and it will go back to Juba. Father wanted me to go there, to stay in the Mission in St. Joseph's Church, with the sisters, because I didn't have someone in Juba. That day, when he was talking to me, my mum went to Khartoum with my other sister. He would give me money to pay for gas, if people wanted to take me to the airport to go to Khartoum and they didn't have gas, and for the days that I was going to stay there, for food, everything. He prepared everything for me.
But my uncle said no, Alek's not going to Juba. There is a war, we never know, if she went there and something happened, and she stays there, and she cannot come back to Wau and she cannot go to Khartoum. How will she handle that? Let her stay here till
m she gets the chance to go right away from Wau to Khartoum. Father said okay, I can't push when you say like that.
Then after five days an aeroplane came, and the Father took me to the airport. The pilot said I have three seats but they put some stuff on the seat and there was no seat for me. Father said could you help me with this girl? She's a student, she is going to study in a university in Egypt but couldn't find the chance to go from here to there. The university there has started now and she is late. We want to help her go from here to Khartoum.
Could you help me for this, please? The pilot said okay, it's just one person. I will take her.
And then some other people who were waiting asked why Fr. John put me there when the place was for them. The pilot said just go up. Before I went in the Father said thank God, he prayed. When he finished he gave me an envelope and said don't open it, you are going to see what is in it, money, when you get to Khartoum. I said okay, I said thank you.
I was in Khartoum at nine thirty in the night. I took a taxi from airport to my cousin's place, I stayed with them. The second day, in the morning I went to my father.
He was in the hotel, it was his temporary accommodation, with my mother and my other sister. They were so happy to see me. That's my story from Wau to Khartoum.
In Khartoum I sent my papers to a university in Egypt. They also took me in
Khartoum University for Art, I studied with them like three months. After that I got admission to study Theology in Egypt. I left Art and went to Cairo to study there.
172 I told my dad I have two things to study, and I want Arts and I want Theology.
My dad wanted me to do Arts, but I told him that I wanted to do Theology then because I could find Arts later. My dad thought I wanted to go to Egypt because Adol was there. I said no, I am going to Egypt for myself. I want to do something for myself.
My dad was a little sad because he thought I didn't want to finish Arts and that my younger sister in Egypt would finish university before me. I was supposed to be faster but I was in Wau before. I couldn't go anywhere, I couldn't come out. My sister was in
Khartoum, she applied with her papers and was studying in Egypt, doing Adab, Arts.
Khalid
I will tell you one story. In attempting to actually get out of the country you have to do a lot of work. It's very difficult to get out of the country. You have to get a totally different skill set. It's just insane.
People start circulating information that you can get a visa from this embassy or that and people just raced there. I never did that. To get my visa from the US I planned for almost a year. Everybody you know gives you feedback, like how difficult it is to get a visa, what the requirements are. I acquired all the requirements to the letter. That's why maybe I got lucky.
But it was sad, they actually gave us the visa very quickly. Suddenly this just became real. And it was so traumatic for me after I got the visa because I had no idea what to do. Everybody comes and congratulates you for very strange reasons. People
173 really envy you. It's almost as if you are a smarter person, to be able to convince the guys
in the American Embassy to give you the visa you must be a very special person.
Athaia
It is difficult to cross the border. That's why we needed someone.
Like, when David tried to come that way, he got beaten at the border. He returned
back home, because there was no one to direct him. Some of the boys get killed there by
the Khartoum government, especially at that border.
We were a selection, all different people, one Acholi, one Pojulu, one Madi, and
me and my husband, all going to Uganda, they said it was easier to go there through
Ethiopia. We were all Equatorians, we had one Dinka with us but he changed his mind
immediately in Humera and went back to Sudan. He found things were not the way he
wanted it, he said he came away looking for education, but everything he found was only
SPLA, so he said he was not comfortable, that it was the same like in Khartoum and he just left in the morning.
I knew Yahya Kang. His fiancee and I went to school together but he was in a
different city. That time when I came she was pregnant. She told me my husband is trying
to go out and I am just holding out here. Let him go and then I will see later what to do
about myself because if me and him go together it will bring a lot of complication like we
are running away from the country. We don't want to do it that way. Fortunately I met
174 him there in Humera, and then we went everywhere together. I knew Apara and his family from before. And we met Edgar there in Humera.
With us, one SPLA guy was there to help. There were two of them that we knew in Khartoum but we didn't know then that they are with SPLA. They would just disappear for two months, three months, and then just show up. Hey, how are you, miss you guys. Oh, you are still here? Where is your husband? Blab, blab.
One day I was complaining oh, they took my husband's passport, blab, blab. They said we wish we could help. Then like three weeks later they came again. I told them I am deciding to just go out from here. I am very frustrated with the situation, I don't like it. The government is moving people from place to place, they destroy their houses.
There were Sudanese, who mixed with Falata, in Ishesh, near the big market, they called it Soukh al Sha'abi, meaning for civilians. These people lived there for a long time, and then the government made a place for them, near Ingaz, they named it that, meaning you are saved. This was random, they moved them in 1990, without notice. People were arguing, fighting, I don't know how many people died. The timing and the process was destruction, even though in the end it was good, because the place now is good, for the people. Those that they moved from Jabel Aulia from Dar al Salaam was not good. They first moved them to the desert, and they were like temporary people there. Then some people just came and claimed that this was their grandfathers' land, and they moved them again, far into Jabel, into the desert. They moved twice.
Then, these guys said why don't you talk to your husband, even we are going, we will all go together.
175 When my husband came back with his police officer cousin, after they tried to put him in jail, he liked my decision. He was happy because he was wondering how I am going to tell my mom that I didn't want to stay with her. He saw me like I am a baby, all the time saying my mum, my mum. But I started talking about this, and I gave him the support for him to decide now we could leave the house, leaving everything, and get out ofthere.
We came from there one weekend, together with the SPLA guy, from Khartoum to Wolqayit, and we went across the border to Ethiopia.
We had to cross a river, in season it gets full, sometimes it is low. That time it was not that deep, above my knee. Then when we came closer to our shore the water became higher. I almost drowned, they pulled me out very quickly. I was so shocked.
Then, after we went across the border that is when the true colours came out. The guy started knowing people there that we didn't know. He knew all the streets, all the corners, he knew everything. But he was so nice because when we crossed the border to
Ethiopia he could have forced us to go where he was going, to Haikota, and to the SPLA headquarters. He said right now you are going to Tessenei, but I am going to tell you before you cross that border with Eritrea that I am one of the SPLA who you are going meet there.
We were all shocked. You stay with a person for one month and you don't know who he is. He can let you go to the UN offices, and he will act like even he wanted to go.
But we didn't feel so bad in the end. We just hugged each other because he was not forcing us to go with him. That was his job, to go to Khartoum and recruit people from
176 inside to come outside to the SPLA. He told us this only at the last moment, maybe he
was scared that we would report him when he was in Sudan and he could just get killed.
Then he also told me your cousin is there in the barracks. I was shocked, my
cousin James left earlier and we didn't know where he went. He said if I go there I will
tell him you are fine and you are going to Asmara. My brother later came to say hi to me.
The SPLA guy went back to Khartoum.
SPLA people are in the city day and night but the government doesn't know them.
And, at the border we didn't know but there are a lot of SPLA people. The SPLA put a
lot of Equatorians in that area to make some communication, and make people come out
to say that the country was having a problem, we don't need to be inside but to go and join the movement. They act like those people who live there, but they are not from there.
There, at Wolqayit they are all black, the people there look like Darfur people.
They speak broken Arabic, connected with Amharic, and they are Muslim too. So that
Arabic and this Arabic Juba goes together. The security cannot differentiate them, and the
Khartoum government didn't know that there were some people there from South.
Osama
Our neighbour became like the first guy in our area to work with the security. The NIF,
the Muslim Brothers, called it at that time the Revolution Security, the same name used
by Khomeini in Iran, because they were trying to copy from here and there. By the way,
177 now the name Muslim Brother doesn't exist in Sudan. Turabi, when he merged with
Nimeri, in'71, he called it the Sudanese Socialist Union, that he is the leader for that.
One of my other neighbours, he was like seventeen, you see his picture there, he told me you have to take care with this person, he got his membership with our Union to study abroad. Then, in the first days of the Islamic movement, they had some relations with Indonesia, people say they invested a lot there. So he changed his mind and went to them hoping to go to Pakistan. For me it was not shocking because he had started to skip meetings all the time, and he was trying to avoid me and a lot of people of the Union.
After I escaped Sudan, everybody started to talk that this guy reported my activities. It's not me personally but about the Communist Youth Union and the
Communist Women's Union.
Anyway, so the security came to my place at nine a.m. After a long night with my dying grandma I was sitting outside on the ground, tired. I couldn't concentrate on anything, and then I went to bed after seven. I heard someone knocking on my window. I woke up, my whole body started sensing something's wrong, I was like between here and there, and dreaming, but I was not. I found someone I didn't know, he started to talk friendly to me. I opened the door.
They parked their pickup truck, Toyota or Mazda, I don't remember, to block the door. Four of them came inside, they showed me that they were armed. The youngest one of them, maybe twenty four, greeted me and said we are sorry about your mom. Then one of them closed my door.
178 My room is not big, it's bigger than rooms here but not that big like rooms in
Sudan. I had in my room two single beds, four chairs and one big single chair. I sat on the single chair, my favorite, and they all sat on one bed. Then the youngest guy introduced himself and told me we are going to take you out with us for a talk. They used these kinds of words, like we are inviting you. They started to search everywhere very quickly.
I had to go out of this room because I felt that I couldn't breathe. I told them this is the time for my grandmother's glucose and salt. They said okay, we will go together. I said no. For some reason they accepted this, but they asked one guy to follow me. But it was not easy for him to follow me to the women's part. It was not really a women's part because it's a small house. It's just across my room, through the verandah to the other room. Over there my grandma and my aunt were sleeping.
The guy following me decided to stay in front of my room, he was reading one of my letters. I used to keep all of my received letters since I was nine, there was a leather bag full of these. It meant for them that I am an active person, its papers, very important reports. So they were very busy for maybe an hour.
I don't remember the time, not because it was a long time, even that, but because it was really this kind of a moment. I acted like I am really doing something. Then I touched my aunt's leg to wake her up, I told her they are here. She told me this was one of my worries that one day you will go to jail. I then told her, without thinking, I am going to escape. My aunt didn't ask me why or how.
I found one window way up. A wall was shared between two houses and this window was going to lead me to our neighbour's house. For me till now I believe it was
179 just three steps that led me outside, free. But the security guys didn't know about this and they were waiting inside. Even if they saw me go it was not easy for them to follow me because it's another house.
Their car was outside. Everyone knows the white pick up truck is security in
Sudan, and people knew that they were there to pick me. Many neighbours started to surround our house from outside. One of the security guy even slapped my young neighbour when he started to complain and talk to them. That made it worse for the security because that was on the street, everybody could see it. There were old men and women outside, you can gain anger and disrespect from the people, and the security still depends on relations and people's respect.
Later when I met my aunt, twice in some relative's or neighbour's place, she told me that they told her roughly, you have to bring him now or we are going to take you with us. She told them okay, but I am going to take my mom too because no one's left.
She told me they took your personal album. I had a lot of paper cuttings. At that time news release was illegal, but there were a lot of magazines in the bookshops, like the
Tariq, meaning the way, same like the Palestinian magazine, for intellectual issues. They took everything. After I reached Cairo I heard this big thing they were talking about, me, a leader in Halfaya being caught and with him full details of activities, lists and documents. It was one of the funniest things.
My aunt gave me some clothes, money and my passport.
Then my grandma died, and the security used to come every day waiting for me to show up anytime.
180 Anyway, when I escaped I found a guy and I asked him to open the door. He
started questioning me but he couldn't open his door, he was shaking, he was confused.
Then I met another guy, I appreciate him, what he did for me. He told me to just get in
their car, with his brother, sister and another young girl. First they asked me how about
we take you to this Communist leader in our area?
He had been released just two month ago after spending a whole year in prison. It
was obvious the security would go there, and even if they didn't it was not a good thing
for him. I knew they came for me, but he had taken his turn already. So, I told them let's just go to a road leading to downtown, I am going to one of my relatives.
It was the same area but the far end, close to the farms and the Nile, no one could
think that I was there. And I didn't stay just like that. Those days I had a beard, I shaved
it, and I wore a Jalabiya and beneath it pants and slippers.
I walked from there and reached the central market, at Shambat. It was very
dangerous but at the same time there were hundreds of people waiting there at the
vegetable market. I took the general transportation and I reached a friend's house.
I stayed there a while, and then I went with his wife to meet my neighbour to my
parents' home. We took a taxi and she paid because at that time I didn't have anything.
I decided not to go to Egypt. I went with my neighbour, a Communist Youth
leader in that area, to meet a Communist Party leader in Khartoum North. I told him it's
too bad to run. He said it's just a stupid idea of yours to think its bad, because it's in
everyone's mind to leave. You can leave, but we do care about papers and documents. I
told him I believed they didn't find anything. A year ago he had said I had to stop the activities in my area, that there were names with the security. We still had people working within them, they released information to the opposition generally if there was any new list made by the security, any new names added, for people to be monitored or to be jailed. He told me your name showed up, you have to stop for a week and change your hiding place for your documents and things. I changed my activities but I didn't stop doing things.
Then, after escaping, while they were tracking my steps, I was doing nothing, just chatting, listening to music, reading. I wanted my normal life. I was not really working, I was doing some construction work, for a few Sudanese pounds. It was okay because it kept me in touch with people and youth for a year when I was hiding at my friend place, till my brother took my passport to renew it.
The police officer at special office where they issue quick visa and those kinds of things, maybe he is a good guy to renew my passport and give me a special visa to Cairo.
He was in school with my brother, they know each other. My brother was honest with him, he told him my brother is facing something. The guy said that's okay. It's Sudan, it's about relations, this guy was just a police officer. Then the leaders were all from the
Muslim Brothers but not in all the places, police department and army. But now they are all Islamic people, they replaced the people who were there before, over time, they brought their own guys, from inside and outside Sudan.
A couple of days later I took the train from Khartoum Bahri station to Haifa. I stayed a while in Haifa till I got a ticket for the ferry between Haifa and Aswan in Egypt.
182 Through my relatives, as usual, I found a ticket and a seat. The journey took about less than twenty four hours.
In the train and the ferry, for me emotionally it was as if I was swimming against the waves of an ocean because it was really the turning point in my life. I left like that, I escaped. I was starting to judge myself, my acts, to review my activities and my beliefs.
I went past Abu Hamad, a very important station and a small very old town. I was shocked, it still didn't have electricity. It's just a desert and it's poor, poor. It added years to my way of thinking, it like made me grow. I gained much. And I decided to continue to be a member of the Youth Union and the Communist Party. We have to still work and work for these people to get something, to be human.
I reached Aswan on 30th July 1991. On 1st of August I took a train again, to Cairo.
It was the first time for me to go to Haifa, and the first time to visit Cairo.
I met four Sudanese students at the station in Khartoum North. I went with them to their friend's house in Cairo, I spent the night over there. The next day we went to look for an apartment. I found some friends, and my friend who was a leader of the Youth
Union and a communist, he is now in UK for years. This is the end of my journey to
Cairo.
Elizabeth
In '91 war broke down in Itang. People moved back to Sudan from Ethiopia, traveling by foot. But I never went to where my family was, I didn't go back to the village. I stayed in
18? the middle. In between there are villages for people to stay, people let us stay in the village. The good thing was that I had some relative there. If you know somebody there it's okay.
There were lots of camps too. At that time there was also war in Sudan, and so people had to live there. Most of the people didn't go into the villages, they just stayed around. It was tough, very tough actually, life wasn't easy. But then you just have to handle whatever there is.
Later, I didn't move back to Itang. Most the people who moved back to Itang were people whose cities were very far and who came from different tribes, like Dinka and rest of the Sudanese people. I came to Ethiopia, to Addis Ababa, and then from
Addis Ababa to Kenya.
Ajak
In '91 we traveled to Sudan, and then to the border of Sudan and Kenya.
In Itang with Mengistu in power we Sudanese were living quite peaceful. When
Mengistu ran and his government ran people had no idea what to expect. I don't think anybody told people to leave but people just decided to leave, they got afraid. I don't know if people stayed.
What happened was when the rebels in Ethiopia were fighting, and things were getting bad, SPLA sent their own troops to go and fight them. That of course put the
Sudanese on the other side of the fence. Probably that's why people were so afraid, that if
184.: the Ethiopian rebels come they would do something to the refugees, to us Sudanese. I have no idea why people left and how people left, people just panicked and people left.
When we left Ethiopia after the government of Mengistu fell we walked. When we left it was a lot of chaos. It wasn't planned at all, and the UN wasn't there at all. I don't know, maybe in other cities it had been planned but when we left Itang it wasn't.
We walked for days, I can't remember how many days. It was raining, it was flooding, there were animals.
It was very scary, you walk and when you get to a place where everybody is gathered, oh have you heard so and so has been attacked by an animal or something on the way. There was always somebody missing or somebody drowned or something. It was a lot of drama, I don't know whether drama is the proper word but there were lots of things happening. There was no food. You go to villages and sell every cloth we had to buy food, to buy just some maize and some corn to make corn flour or to buy some fish.
It was tough, you are traveling and it is raining. You have your mosquito net and things, you are sleeping and it rains. I remember we would sleep and you never turn because one side is very dry and the other side is wet. If you turn you would be so cold, if don't then at least the bottom side keeps you warmer, so you stay like that until morning.
And your net would fall on you. It was crazy. It sounds funny, it's funny now. And things were heavy to carry in the morning because they are so wet. The good thing was it was hot. You thanked the sun for the few hours it came, sometimes things dried a little bit.
But usually you walk and you get to a place where you are supposed to rest and you see thunder and it beginning to rain. You cook so fast, so that you can eat and sleep.
185 Lots of people were traveling at the same time. That was the good thing, it was not isolating at all. But again you see there are people who were shot in the war, they lost their leg or an eye or something. And it was raining, there was lots of water on the way, it was muddy. Sometimes you see people stuck in the mud with crutches, they cannot move and everybody is tired, everybody is struggling, and no one can help. I have no idea what happened to them now but no one could help, it was that bad.
These things, when somebody asks you like this you remember them but usually you don't. Just that it has happened and gone, and you lock them up somewhere, you don't think about it. You wonder sometimes what has happened to those people, whether they made it or they didn't.
Amani
In '91 my husband just brought us to Sudan from Ethiopia, put us down and left immediately to go back.
I think three year after we first go to Dima my husband came back, for a couple of months and then he left again. He was away for so long, and he just came for a short time, not to stay. That time I got pregnant with my son.
I didn't see my husband for the whole nine months until in 1991, when the leader of Ethiopia, Mengistu Haile Mariam left. The Ethiopian government then didn't want the
Sudanese there anymore and there was a fight between Ethiopia and the SPLA.
186 We had to immediately leave from Dima, Dima is not far from the Southern areas like Kapoeta. At the same time my son was born. Even before he was born people started moving, so many people left. They had to walk, I said I can't walk because I was in the last days of pregnancy. But the day my son was born we had to leave, there was no choice.
The good thing was that the guy, the doctor, a military person, the leader in the camp, appointed by Garang to take care of the refugees, sent somebody to call my husband to come with a truck and get us, me and my girls and some ladies who had small babies. Then we went to Kapoeta in Sudan, close to the border with Kenya and Uganda.
Soldiers helped you make tents and set up things. It was thousands of people, especially ladies and kids, and those teenagers, those people, who were injured in war.
The UN opened a new place for refugees, a camp in a place called Pakok.
The UN is there every time, in the refugee camp, when something happened.
They escort people, and we go to another new place. Then they open a new place there.
People stay and they bring you food and all this medications. So, we stayed there, again for so long, almost a year in that refugee camp.
Then, when some of the Sudanese divided the SPLA, started fighting themselves, the Sudanese government got the chance to come in. They took back cities, Kapoeta,
Booma and all these.
And then the UN said, you have to again move from there. We had to go to
Kenya. All these people started walking. Oh my God, how are we going to do this again?
There were so many different groups helping refugees, the UN and the Red Cross.
187 Then we came to Narus, close to Kenya. We stayed there for some time, maybe eight or seven months, in a refugee camp. But every time the Sudanese army went, they fought, they took a city the refugees had to move. You have to go far and far because the war was coming, people kept fighting. Every time they fought so many people died but the people who could move just had to move.
That time my son was already about one year, we had to move. That was so hard.
My girls were so young, and we had to walk, from Narus all the way to Kenya. We started, I remember, like five o'clock in the evening. The UN said everybody had to leave immediately, take your kids. We just took some things, a little bit of food, water, and then you had to walk without anything else. We walked until ten o'clock in the morning.
People were walking. You see the UN, the Red Cross, they were going by the side in their car, the other people were walking. If someone fell they could pick him up and put him in the car, otherwise we kept walking.
Around ten o'clock we were almost getting into Kenya. Now you guys are far from the war, you can sit, it is a two hours break and then you have to continue. They were going to open a new refugee camp. After two hours we got up and again walked, walked.
188 We walked.
For three months.
For one month.
For weeks.
For days.
And we walked all the time, even to different countries, fighting.
Even us, we were children then, we fought.
I don't know about Garang and child soldiers.
I wanted to become a soldier but they actually beat me when I went to join them, they said go to school.
I was a child soldier.
But you didn't tell me that the other day when I was recording you.
Yes, I didn't.
It's a lot of trauma.
Also someone told me that they didn't always want children to join the army.
They did, especially before. If they need you then you go fight. It didn't matter how young you were, if you could carry the gun.
If they didn't need people at the time then they didn't send you to fight.
When we are young we are not scared of anything, we didn't care if we died.
Can you tell me this story later, please?
No, that's it. You won't hear more from me. Okay, but if you can...
No.
Okay, no problem.
I was very young, I couldn't even carry guns.
I had to support them with both my hands and pull the trigger with my big toe.
I am still SPLA.
I am not.
I never was.
We need a separate South Sudan. But I hate Garang.
I like him, respect him, he is my leader.
Why did he use us?
They even taught us songs, to kill our mothers and fathers if they didn't support SPLA.
They kidnapped me to join SPLA, the Red Army for kids, even though my father was with them.
Then I left SPLA and I was a body guard for Riek Machar.
But I heard Riek in Kakuma, in Kenya. He also wanted young people, boys to join in the fighting.
I got flashbacks after I came to Canada. I didn't have them before, the discrimination here, in Canada, is too much.
I can't deal with it. Here, I get a job, I lose it, I get a job, I lose it. I try hard. Then the police always picks me up, I never did anything. They even beat me. I don't use the back
19G alley anymore after dark, they get me there where nobody's looking. Just because I am black.
I joined SPLA, the Red Army, on my own.
I ran away from home.
I didn't want the control of my parents. But you know later on, what they taught me helped me in life.
I was never in the war. I was going with others to fight, but this good officer stopped me and sent me back, he said I was too young. I was the youngest in the group. I really appreciate him, but at that time I was angry with him.
I was just walking with people, with strangers. I was so small, I escaped the government bombing in my place in Bahr el Ghazal. Finally I landed up in Itang. There they put us in groups, in the Red Army.
They divided us as Dinka and others, mostly Nuer.
No, they didn't.
It was a bad life.
No.
We got up in the morning, did army training, then went to school, and afterwards we worked hard to fix houses, collect grass, wood, cook.
We, like five people, ate from one bowl of asida once a day. We divided it equally with a spoon and ate our share.
We fought only sometimes over food.
We were a team.
lftl Even now we are all of us everywhere, in the US, Canada, Australia, Kenya, Sudan, other places, but we stay friends. We keep in touch.
I tried to escape but I was always caught.
I didn't fight in the war, by that time they didn't have child soldiers anymore.
Hmm, after that young people fought but not that young.
They still came to force people to join, in Sudan and in the camps.
But it was not like in Itang before. When Mengistu supported SPLA, the SPLA could openly do things, train there.
And then in 1991 I went to Nasir, with so many people, from the Red Army too. We lived near Riek Machar. We struggled to get food and all.
Nobody in my village knew that I was alive. When the Red Cross put my picture up in my village, my cousin even after so many years recognized my face and then my family contacted me. I went to stay with my parents.
I went to Kakuma later on for education, there was no high school in Bentiu. From there I came to Canada, also for education. But it's too much here, they don't want you to do what you want to do. It's better if I stayed back in Africa, I will go back if I can't become a doctor here.
Then, they called us 'Lost Boys'.
You think we were 'lost', if we walked in thousands, and with other people too, big people and families, and we knew where we were going?
'Boys', that's another story.
192 One American Catholic Bishop visited Kakuma, I think he discussed with the US government that so many young guys were growing up in Kakuma without any mentorship. Then the Joint Voluntary Agency, JVA, and the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, INS, started an immigration program for us, to take us to US.
JVA, an American organization, I think was responsible for the settlement of Lost Boys.
And INS mainly determined whether someone gets admitted to the US or not.
Australia also took a few Lost Boys.
I gave my name to my cousin, he's in the US now.
They took girls too, though not many like the boys.
I was supposed to go with them to the US but my aunt said no. She was coming to
Canada and she brought me here with her.
Ya, the girls trained in Itang too, though they didn't stay with the boys in groups as Red
Army, even when we came without our parents.
Like me, I came with my aunt. Before my uncle died he got me from my parents, he said he would put me in school in the city. There was only a primary school in Yirol.
But I didn't go to school at all, the war started. And then in Nairobi they didn't have money to send me to school.
Ya, my cousins somehow went to school. I am going to school only here in Canada. It's good that I can study here.
193 They wrote books, made movies, about the Lost Boys and their journeys till they reached the US, as if they traveled from the most underdeveloped to the most developed part of the world, as if we all came from a backward country called Africa.
I think the stories are ultimately more about the good Americans, the saviors, rather than the guys themselves, and them feeling good about themselves.
But why did these guys allow their stories to make them seem like they were from the jungles too?
I don't know, maybe they thought if they said what the people here wanted to hear, what they asked them to say, then they could get some help to get out of their bad situation in the US. You know it's the same for us all over North America, in Australia too, all over the west.
But you know those guys there in the US are better too. I know that they are in better jobs than us when we finish our university here. It's frustrating here.
There too.
Did you read What is the What by Dave Eggers?
Why should I read my own story?
And I know how they write it.
I read it.
But I know it's not Valentino Achak's, true story. He is not a hero, other lost boys are not that pathetic, and all these things in the book didn't happen to him.
194 True, especially about the other lost boys, but the author and Valentino both say that the book was fictionalized autobiography, like it's his stories and others as well.
Ya, in that case it's not bad, far better than other books on lost boys, but it's still in the same mould.
I don't think so totally, but yes.
When I read the book I thought my dissertation was already done by someone else.
Eggers gave life to people, gave context to their stories, wrote stories that weaved into one another, didn't make the west seem innocent or as the place where people could then automatically live good lives, and importantly didn't make people seem like mere victims who had known nothing and done nothing before their western experience.
But then I thought, he wrote the stories of mainly one kind of journey among people from
Sudan, of the lost boys, from Bahr el Ghazal to the US. And he didn't really question the politics of what it means to be calling people refugees and how that consolidates citizen identities.
So I still had a dissertation to write. And one even more difficult than the book he wrote.
Generally though, I was happy that someone wrote like he did, through stories.
But he also wrote about the lions killing people on the way to Itang.
It did happen sometimes, but not so much.
It's like every story about the Lost Boy has this story in it.
195 I too traveled the same way, from Bor, so not as far as some of those guys from Bahr el
Ghazal, and this is not my experience.
I think people like to read this.
The other thing was that, like with most other writings on South Sudan, he seemed to talk of the Southerners as mainly Dinka.
I don't agree, show me where he does that in the book.
He does.
He doesn't
Does too.
Doesn't...
Did you read Emma's War by Deborah Scroggins?
I liked it.
Yes, not a bad book.
It is critical of everybody, Sudanese from all over, the leaders, international NGOs, people from the west.
Can I borrow your copy?
Actually I was there in Nasir and what Deborah Scroggins writes in the book is true. I was working with the UN distributing food in '91.
196 That time so many people came back from Ethiopia when Mengistu was defeated and the
Sudanese, SPLA, in Ethiopia were attacked for supporting him. Riek Machar after breaking up with the SPLA was there too.
But how can they call it Emma's war, the conflict in SPLA between supporters of Garang and of Machar? What was her role? She isn't important, she was just a western wife of
Machar.
I didn't read the book because of the title. So typical.
And how can they have a book and a movie called God Grew Tired of Us, by John Bui
Dau and Michael Sweeney, directed by Christopher Dillon Quinn and Tommy Walker.
Its all about making the Sudanese people seem like nothing.
Maybe.
And first there was the White father of the Nuer, he called them my people, Evans
Pritchard.
It's like all those conservative Christians who seemed to take over the Sudan Studies
Association conferences.
Always talking of an unfortunate them, the Christian Southerners, and as if they are mainly Dinka and Nuer. And talking of how they will or did save the Southerners, even from themselves, especially through their evangelism.
Many had been working in Sudan for decades.
They know so much.
Ya, but they are part of the problem.
197 No.
Yes.
No...
At the conference, in York University, everyone, them, the Southerners, the Northerners, the Darfurians, everyone was bashing the Islamic fundamentalists in Sudan.
But these guys got out scot-free.
Nobody questioned their role in the problems in Sudan, their evangelism, their patronizing, their understanding of the issues in Sudan as predominantly and conveniently as the unbridgeable divisions between the Christian African South and
Muslim Arab North, and in the South as between Dinkas and Nuers or between tribes.
Yes, but they are not the only one's to think like this.
They all do, even many of us.
And most academics too.
I was telling the Darfurians at the conference, please don't make the same mistake that we, the Southerners, did in the '70s and '80s to label their war this way. Don't reduce what's happening in Darfur to an Arab African conflict. I saw them talking exactly how we were talking before.
And even now unfortunately.
You know I was one of the first people to go to school from my village, then the only one in my family.
198 We had only Christian schools in the South.
The Northerners and the missionaries are both responsible for our problems. They both tried to colonize us, change us.
But those from the North came with only force and attacked us and we rejected them outright.
And till the war of '83 many people didn't even pay too much attention to the church.
Even now I don't think they are really Christian.
We were Christians for so long, my grandfather was a pastor.
And we are Muslims.
But we don't have a problem with the Muslims in the South, they are our relatives too.
We live separately sometimes though, like in Juba.
When I was running away, trying to escape from the Red Army, I was saying all my ancestral prayers. Yes I am Christian, but these are my prayers too.
I am Christian, and I know the white missionaries came as colonizers to the South and they spoilt everything there.
No, they are good.
Even when they use the images of underdeveloped Africa to help the Lost Boys. They have to do that, otherwise how will people give money to support them.
So why is charity always about making the one who is giving feel good and superior?
And ya, they did give Bibles along with rice during the famine.
199 You know it's interesting, in the Bible in Sudan Kush is Sudan but in Ethiopia its
Ethiopia. How can that be, same Bible different stories, places?
I am very religious, I read the Bible everyday, but sometimes I think maybe it's not true.
And me I don't have any religion. Like some of us.
Well, I don't believe in anything at all.
You should believe in some God, any one.
Maybe you can come to the church with us.
But it's okay, how you are.
200 But, how are you? A reflection.
I am good. And you?
Me too.
But I feel a little funny.
Why?
Because sometimes I don't know what I am doing. I have some questions, about things.
Like what you asked me?
Yes, and also many questions, mainly for myself.
You want to talk to me about it.
Yes, but it's a somewhat long thing, and maybe with no answers.
I will help if I can.
Okay, so listen. And of course, say whatever you feel, whenever.
Who are you?
Me? lam...
Wait. That's the question for me, remember?
Are you, am I, the reader, the teller, both? And then are you, am I, different, only a reader or only a teller?
So how much does it matter who you are, who I am? Doesn't it matter more what you, I, think and do? When you are telling me, when you are reading me? Whether together we push for certain politics, of disruption, of the norm, which is quite brutal in
201 its exclusion, its violence, while it says it maintains the order, peace, like (with) the dominant refugee discourse(s)?
But, why do you feel funny, about this?
Because if it doesn't matter who you and I are, as a teller or reader, even when you are both or not, but what we say, think, do, in terms of disruption of the norm, then what am I doing here? As the person who writes, who is writing here. Who tells the reader, what I think, about what you tell or read. When I would rather just place the tellers, who are also the readers hopefully, with their stories, in dialogical ways for the readers, who are also the tellers, 'originally' at times and then later, hopefully, to participate, in acknowledging, knowing, agreeing and disagreeing, in the disruption.
But then I wonder, do I have to say all this to the reader, the teller, myself? Is this not obvious? I suppose not, maybe because how, now, recently, over a period of time, we know to read, listen, as we are told. But still, different things can happen if I don't explain, what should be thought, done. If we can think together, first by starting to know differently, in a doing way, if only in telling and reading, without knowing who all we can talk to, knowing that it can be anyone, who will listen.
Hehe, ya. Like I am listening. And then I tell you too, what I think and do. When we sit together, respectfully, with one another, to talk. Also to fight, concur, play, tease, joke.
Live.
Ya. You think I am able to do that, having read so far? That I am able to get people to sit together, read together, listen together, to say what they will, with me as well? Not the same way, but in different ways, while still contesting?
202 Depends, I think. Also on what one wants to hear, participate in. If I think there's a particular way, even broadly, to do things, even in contesting, then I don't really
understand what you are doing. You are writing stories, letting people tell their stories
but then where's the end? When do we get up and do something collectively? But I think I
understand what you are saying. Only, one still has to see how that makes a difference,
how we can then collectively do, be, different, differently, for, or is it against, similar
things.
Ya, the question is really about how to be with one another, while we are not and cannot
be one. Many a times when agendas are already set, when strategies are already available,
when actions take on particular known, well practiced, forms, including certain kinds of
people, then the 'collective', while visible, may not be so, and many people for all kinds
of reasons are left out. The thing is, how to reaffirm as well as contest identities, in the
face of that which has become the norm, the dominant way of thinking, being.
Again the question. Am I doing this? Able to? By telling the stories of refugees,
Sudanese, against a particular, but pervasive, set of norms and practices, that are about,
and conflate, the state, nation and citizen?
And then how do I approach you, in doing this? Who are sometimes even part of
that which I try to contest, even while I too am part of it. The teller and the reader.
/ can't answer that for you. I can only think for myself, and see where I am in thinking
and doing, with you. Even as I oppose some of what you say, think and do. I also have to see who I am, the asker, the teller, the reader, the renderer, and of what kind.
203 Hehe, so we both keep asking! These questions. And be unsettled, so that we are disturbed enough to not know the final answer, even as we in the meantime do, as we think. Disruptions.
I hope you are well.
204 Journeys
Through the international refugee regime. UNHCR.
UNHCR, UN, I know their politics.
They support the international system and states.
But if they were not there in the camps then it would be too bad, we would even have no food and no security in a foreign country.
But aren't they part of the problem, and isn't it a problem that they are also part of the solution and maybe the only support especially for people who stay on in the camps or return to Sudan?
Maybe for you Canada is a solution, but isn't it the problem too?
It is, I told you already.
When we went, so many, to the camps, and then even with them from Ethiopia to Sudan and then from Sudan to Kenya, we went in other ways too, they accept most people as refugee.
When we came to the camp the first time, they don't ask you much questions.
But you have to register to get food and a place to stay.
And ya, some of us we did all kinds of things to get more food, have small business, some even made fake ID card, otherwise you will starve.
Even then we ate only once a day, most of us anyway. . - 205 In the cities, there they take up your case individually.
They question you, they don't believe you.
You have to write your story the way they want it.
And you go again and again and again before you are accepted, you keep telling your story.
Most people don't get accepted even then.
And if they close your case you can't do anything.
Sometimes they can open your case again but it's hard.
When your case is closed, you don't even know how you can live, it's not easy as a foreigner, without papers, to get a job, or you get a very low paying job.
UNHCR gives very less money but it helps a bit.
In the camps, to get into the UNHCR compound is like entering heaven. I planned and planned, tried and tried, and I got in and got the forms for resettlement, and then got here.
They don't give the forms to everyone.
I know it's like business there.
And sometimes others come here as Sudanese too.
In Dadaab, near Ifo, in Kenya, we went to strike at the UNHCR office, because they were sending people who paid them to Canada and other places. One of our guys who was
206 working there complained to them that these people don't look like Sudanese. They did nothing to stop this.
We walked there, not too far away, only men, to reach the UNHCR compound. It was sometimes dangerous for others to go there. We closed the place, and finally then they said they will look into the matter. But nothing really happened, they only said that from then on they will become more strict in processing the cases.
And ya, me I went to Uganda from Juba pretending to be a Ugandan, when they were repatriating them from the camps there.
We treated them good. You know there are many refugees in Sudan too, all over.
No, we were so bad to them. And I didn't even know that then. Only later when I became a refugee I knew how that feels, when you are really not included, are treated different.
We had to lie, otherwise we couldn't get out.
In Juba people were dying, too much shelling and too much hunger. It was controlled by the government, and the SPLA were surrounding the city. They would say, like from 9 am, they will start shelling. There was no food coming in. And places around were all mined, people couldn't even grow food.
Some like my mother did. They have to go out of the city to where the gardens are. We are scared for her, a guy who was gardening near her lost his hand, such a big explosion.
Luckily the Sudan army soldiers were passing by, they took him to the hospital.
?07 And yes, the organizations and the churches in Juba got food flown in for them, from
Lokichokio, the UN base in Kenya for South Sudan, the centre of Operation Lifeline
Sudan during the war, from 1989.
I think of the place like its Sudan, it's so easy to go there.
If you knew someone there in Juba like in these organizations or church you could get food from them.
But you feel bad, everyone else was hungry.
If you had money you could buy food too, sometimes. The army guys also sold their food at high price secretly.
But mostly you only had money, because there was nothing to buy.
And the government soldiers could catch you anytime, say you are SPLA. It's too much.
Sometimes you didn't even know who was the enemy, it was very confusing.
We left if we could, if we wanted to.
To the North too.
In Sudan, with displaced people in Khartoum, I was working with them, with the international organizations. We had nutrition programs.
They couldn't do much, they can do only what Sudan, their host government, allows them to do. The government controlled who they employed, what they did, and sometimes stopped them from working too.
Southerners were not many in the organizations, like me I somehow got in.
208, Then if there was a problem, with the war, like when I was working with them in Wau, they just leave and they leave us, the national staff, behind.
They even had a different compound for them.
In Kakuma I saw they had a swimming pool in their compound, disgusting. We had no food and had to go far to get water.
I don't know about Kakuma and their compound in the camps in Ethiopia, but they definitely had everything, even swimming pools in their compounds in the city, in Addis
Ababa.
In Dadaab they didn't even stay near the camp. We had so many bandits, shifters, we were in danger. They came every day from the city.
That camp was near Somalia. We went there because they were sending people to the west from there. There was no hope in the camps.
People said they were not safe in Kakuma.
Really some people were not.
I was attacked by some SLPA soldiers with a machete, because of the Garang Machar
SPLA split. I became unconscious, I almost died. And then they immediately sent me here to Canada. But this life here is so bad.
There are no Sudanese in that camp anymore, in Dadaab.
209^ While we were there, from '91,1 think to '93, they started implementing a policy of locating people in camps within hundred kilometers of their countries of origin.
Anyway, there it was too dangerous.
And we had floods too, one time, when I was there.
We used to dig underground rooms to stay, it was the only way to be cool in that desert.
When the water came we were all flooded. We had to live outside, but there was water everywhere. The UN had no idea what to do, they kept telling us to put up heavy sacks to block the water. It was of no use, luckily nobody died. And it became so bad. The water didn't go away, it was all smelling.
The good thing was that after that we had so much fish to eat, for a long time. People caught fish and dried it. Before there was very less to eat, just enough to survive, to eat once a day, and the same thing, beans, corn flour, sorghum and oil.
I was a teacher in the school there.
You know the UN people like women more, they think the men, Sudanese men, are too aggressive.
So, I was able to be make good relations with the UN people. I was the one who talked to them about our case and that helped to get us, me, my husband and my daughter, out of there quickly.
They wouldn't talk to any man. But we were asking for our rights, asking questions.
So, what do they ask you when they interview you to come here?
21G They ask our stories about what happened to us, how we came to the camp, why we can't go back, our journey.
Like you.
They were like me?
Yes.
No.
I am not judging you, no?
You are not going to decide my case.
I am not nervous with you.
Thank you.
But I told the same story to them too.
You have to tell them the story they want to hear.
All of us we had the same situation but they want only your individual story.
And I am asking you about what you did, are doing, here, in Canada, too.
And oh, the UNHCR asks these questions too, when they interview you for resettlement, and also about your education.
Then, at the embassy they mainly ask you what you will do when you get to Canada, if you will stay there or you want to return. They don't ask your story too much.
You know you are going for education but you have to say you will work, you know you want to come back but you have to say you will stay.
We know from other people, they don't take you otherwise.
2M And they tell you all lies about Canada, it's not like what they told us there.
Sometimes, like in Egypt, in India, the embassies can take you as a convention refugee even if the UNHCR rejected your case.
In Egypt we had to struggle to convince the UN and the embassies to accept us as refugees and to resettle us.
From the mid '90s the UN started recognizing us, on case by case basis. This was not the case for Yemenis, Eritreans and Somalis then. For us I think they did this maybe because
Nimeri and Muhammad Anwar al Sadat had an integration agreement between Sudan and
Egypt, that the nationals could go to the other country without entry visa just with the passport, this was from '70s to early '90s.
But it was the US and Canadian Embassy that directly resettled a lot of us.
It was still a struggle. To come to Canada, US, Australia and other places too, it's not enough to say that the war affected you, you have to say how the war affected you individually and what danger you still faced if you went back to Sudan.
And more about your education and what you will do after resettlement, if you will work and stay.
Now after the peace they don't want to give refugee status to many people in the cities, only to people from Darfur.
But I think they have to also give individual stories.
We do.
212 And in Cairo in Dec 2005 they killed so many people because of this.
They were from all over Sudan, on strike for three months outside the UNHCR saying they should accept them as refugees and resettle those they accepted, that they couldn't return to Sudan or stay on in Egypt. Even after peace was signed in Sudan the conditions there hadn't improved enough for them to be able to live there.
The UNHCR just called the Egyptian police. Then people died, many were injured, even children. They took many people, especially men, even from Darfur, to jail to deport them to Sudan.
And still nothing much is done.
We protested, even here in Ottawa.
Ya, that day was so cold.
One hundred fifty people, they came from all over Ontario, were in a demonstration outside the Egyptian Embassy and UNHCR, and nothing on the TV, anywhere.
Shouldn't they also have protested outside the Sudanese Embassy?
Did you read the UNHCR report when they started the strike?
The way they tried to discredit the Sudanese people, calling them economic refugees, defaming the leaders of the strike, trying to isolate them and divide the people.
The Egyptians are bad, the staff in UNHCR are all Egyptians, they don't like Sudanese.
But isn't the problem also the UNHCR itself? The way it also works. The way the international refugee regime works, the international system works.
213 And, always working for peace deals.
Hmm, but when was the last time a peace deal really worked, solved all or even most issues.
There are some cases.
Ya, if you want to look at it like that, like no war means peace.
Ya, war is not only on the battlefields or in the bushes.
Funny, how they call it the bush.
Ya, we actually lived with people, in the villages.
Then they try to resettle a few people.
Most people are in camps, waiting for better opportunities.
Shh, don't say that loud, or they will call us economic refugees.
Even they are there for economic reasons, not humanitarian reasons.
Everybody wants to improve their lives, we also had war.
The UNHCR, does try to protect the host state, the country of origin, the country of (first) refuge and the country of resettlement, without whom they can't operate in any case. The states all don't want too many foreigners, others, even if the host states need them, even if they can't really stop their movement. It is too threatening to them, even if only in their imagination, and if only because of their imagination of hordes of people coming or wanting to come and if only because of their imagination of who these people who are coming are.
214 We have a real case, a real problem.
I invented mine.
But really I couldn't stay in Sudan.
Me, I always wanted to leave since I was young, not only because of the war.
I like to travel.
I always wanted to go to the west, not this west though. But most of the people don't think like me.
If it wasn't for the war I wouldn't be here.
And people who left Sudan always came back, especially before.
215 Lubanga
I left Sudan in September 1962.1 was among the first students to leave the country. We knew already what was going to happen, an uprising against Northern domination and policies of Islamization and Arabization. I went to Uganda.
A lot of ethnic groups such as the Kakwa, Madi and Acholi are divided between
Uganda and Sudan. I am a Kakwa and Kakwa are in Uganda, Sudan and Congo, I have relatives in the three countries. In fact if I have to put my place of origin and ascendance I should be a Ugandan, except that I was born in Sudan. People think of the boundary as something that divides them. The Kakwa are Kakwa, it does not matter where you are the
Kakwa nation is one.
So, when I came to Uganda I had relatives in Uganda. It is easy for me to just blend in. I could not think of myself as a refugee while I was living with the same people, my own people, speaking the same language, having the same culture. I could not get the feeling of being a refugee, it was non-existent. I could still return to live in Uganda. It's only that there were difficulties in getting an education in Uganda because we had to pay fees and so on.
Later, in 1966, when my brother came to Uganda the United Nations had begun recognizing refugees. Then, in order for you to get an education you had to go to a village called Bombo or to whatever designated refugee camps in Uganda, even if we have relatives in Uganda. The United Nations would not give you the benefit of education if you stayed at home, we had to go to the camp. So, although my brother was staying with relatives, in order for him to continue with his education in Uganda he had to go to the
216 camp, Bombo. From there the UN could then look for a school, a place for your education. That was it.
Resettlement is very new. UN got into it in the '80s once there became too many refugees and the countries began to complain that they cannot afford to maintain these people. For instance, if Uganda or Kenya was going to give the Sudanese refugees a chance of education, it would be depriving its own citizens. This would not be popular.
Athaia
We had different ideas in going to Ethiopia. Some, maybe, were looking for a job. But that is not the point.
In Ethiopia we went to the UN office, UNHCR, they were helping their own returnees, Ethiopians, in Humera. We asked where we could get accommodation, if the camp was close by. The lady there said you have come to the right place but we don't have a camp here, unless you go across the border to Eritrea.
She said I am going to Tessenei in Eritrea now, I will be back in two weeks. I will see what I am going to get for you over there. Right now I will not tell you that I am going to take care of you because you are not yet accepted as refugees. So you could come back. I don't know what you are going to do for the two weeks. You have a little child and you are five grownups, you have got to manage until I come back.
217 One lady told us you can go to Addis Ababa from Humera, it is easy for you to go that way. You can take the bus, go through Densa, and get another bus from Densa to
Addis Ababa. So we, five of us, tried to go that way.
When we got near Addis Ababa they told us Sudanese were not allowed, no refugees were allowed, to go to Addis Ababa right now. We asked why? They said
Hosseni Mubarak, the President of Egypt, had gone to Addis Ababa and he got into an accident there. He was going to be killed, and they suspected Sudanese terrorists, associated with Turabi. So they backed up all the exits to Addis Ababa, like nobody could come in and nobody could go out. If you were inside Addis Ababa at that time they would arrest you.
We were stuck there. The security definitely knew who came new there and who are the locals around the places. They located all the foreigners in a motel. There were other Sudanese there. Then they said come, you have to do some process in the police station.
There we got arrested for coming illegal during that time. We were there for one day. The next day they said you have to take the bus and go back to Humera. You are not supposed to go this way, it's security time, and the security are doing their job. We said fine.
We came back to Humera. It took us like four days, two days to go there, coming back was four days. We stayed in Humera for three more days.
Then it was Tuesday, we went to the office. That lady told us there was a small camp in Asmara, the UNCHR was just starting to put refugees from Sudan together, now
218 that is the way you are going. She wrote a small letter, keep it, don't throw it away, don't forget it, because the SPLA are there in the border, they need people to join the movement. It's for you to decide for yourself, it's for you to be strong to defeat them. It is you who is the one to make the decision, not the UN. It is not going to speak for you, you have only the letter. You can go right now.
We decided we have to go early in the morning before the border was crowded.
We crossed the border around five o'clock. The border was clear. We took the first bus that was going to Tessenei.
This was a tough journey to go through when you don't even have enough money, then hunger, and sometimes you get sick, you have a headache. You had all this and you are stressed too much. It's just you and your faith, to say I am going to make it one day, like hunger won't kill you, it takes some time. We managed to just bear the hunger and see everything like simple and say that there is a future ahead of us still.
Amani
When you are young and the first time you leave your family it is hard. I got married when I was eighteen, when I just finished high school, in 1984.1 went to Saudi Arabia with my husband after a couple of months, he was a teacher there.
When I went to Saudi Arabia I stayed home, taking care of my kids, for five years. As soon as I got there I got pregnant with my daughter. She was born and then just one year later I had another baby.
219 I never even thought about work there. Maybe I could have worked if I wanted to.
There were so many people working, you can. They applied from Sudan and then you go work there.
So, it was a little difficult but not for long. And from there every holiday, July to
September, two months we went back to Sudan, for five years.
Then, my husband decided to go join the SPLA in 1989. People went, they were staying in refugee camps, fighting. He told me, I am going to join the SPLA, if you would like to come with me, it is okay if you don't like to come.
So many people went without their wives. Some refused to come from Sudan when they directly joined SPLA from there, and some were in Saudi Arabia but went back to Sudan. For me my husband gave me the choice, if you want to come with me or you want to go back.
His uncle and my nephew were in Saudi Arabia. My husband told them I want to go to SPLA. When you go there nobody expects you to come back alive, this is war. So, first they tried to talk him out of this. You can help SPLA from here, with money, with support, you don't need to go. But he said no, I have to be there physically, I have to go, I have already decided, nobody's going to stop me. I just asked Amani, I am not going to force her. Four months from now March, in July holiday, I am going. I am not coming back to Saudi Arabia. I am going to Addis Ababa and from there I am going to join
SPLA.
I was thinking what to do. Every time my uncle and nephew talked to him my husband said you can't change my mind, I am going, I am going. Then my nephew, who
220 is married to my husband's sister, told me, you go to Sudan. His uncle said you are not going to take her, I am going to take care of her, and then next year I am going to take her back to Sudan. My father, my family, everybody was in Sudan. You go by yourself.
Everybody told me you take the girls and go back home. But I didn't like that, and then they grow without a father. So I said no, I am going with him.
Everybody thought I was crazy because so many people joined SPLA and all the ladies said no. Some divorced immediately. Some said I am going to go and wait there in
Sudan, if you come back it's okay, if you don't come back it's okay. Only me I went with my husband. Everybody told me if you go there you are not going to see him, he is just going to go train and go to war and then you will be staying by yourself. I said I will try and see, maybe something is written for me, I will go. And it happened exactly like that, I went there and I didn't see him for so long.
We just flew to Ethiopia like we are going on a holiday. Anybody can go anywhere, so it was easy. At the same time that we left, three families from Nuba
Mountains also left from Saudi Arabia but they went to different camps.
Athaia
We got to Tessenei. Now we had to go to locate the UN office, in Asmara. But first, we went to a motel.
The next day an SPLA soldier showed up there. That's what the lady told us, you are going to meet them, it's not that you are going to escape from them. He said you guys
221 came and now you make the decision for everybody to join the movement, if you like or you don't like. This is what happened.
My husband said I am going, and all the guys were going. But I was strong enough. After talking to them when he came to talk to me. I said I am not going to give up and just say I won't do what I want to do. I know the SPLA, they are strong and everything that they are doing is for the best of the country. But I have to make my decision too. I have the right to accept and I have the right not to accept. I said I have this daughter, just two years and a half. I am not going to take her to that hot place. I would rather stay here and get what I want for this little girl. She is not the one to go to the barracks, it will be me not her. She is under my responsibility and I am not going to punish her. If her dad wants to go I am not stopping anybody. I am talking on my behalf, that's it. And I am not going there. He said oh, now it's like I am making a divorce for both of you. I said this is my decision. I am a different person, we are married but everyone has a decision. I already went to the UN and they know about me. I was recognized as a refugee and I will remain as a refugee. He said wow, you went to the UN.
I said I did, all of us went. If these guys go today from here, they will know where they went, and I am not going. He said if you are not going, it's okay. This movement is like a train, it takes people and drops people, you will have your turn one day. We will see you in the same train and we will be going to the same place, the end of the journey. I said ya, you will definitely see me there too. From there he left me alone.
He thought this lady said they went to the UN, it means the UN has a clue that they have refugees here in this motel. If he tells them to go and join the SPLA it is going
222 to spoil their record there, the UN will say refugees were there and the SPLA forced them to join them. This was going to make their relationship not good with the Eritrean government too because the refugees were under the Eritrean government. It would mean the SPLA was going to break the rules there.
Then he went back to the guys, you guys went to the UN? They said ya. Okay, because you went to the UN and you are recognized as refugees I am not going to tell you that you have to go. There are rules, refugees are refugees, fighters are fighters. Fighters don't go to UN office, they remain out, they go from where they are. After you went to the UN you are not allowed to go to the SPLA. I will leave you guys.
When are you going to Asmara? They said we are going tomorrow in the morning. The guy was nice, he bought tickets for us and he booked a motel for us in the city where the buses were going to be for the whole night. When he came back he said guys thank you, I wish I see you again in life. It is good that you walk with a strong woman. She can talk, speak for herself and is not afraid of me, if I am SPLA. She knows what she wants for herself, she knows that that is not a right place for her. If she went there maybe she will die in a short time because this is not what she wants, so it's good that she stands like that. And she told the truth that you guys went to the UN office. That is good for me to know than if they later say that SPLA came and took people from the motel without permission, that will be a problem for SPLA too. I will meet you one day in Asmara.
223 We arrived at Haikota at night six thirty or seven. It is walking distance from
Barentu where the SPLA was located. We got some SPLA soldiers there too. They said you are booked in that motel, you are going to sleep there and there is food for you.
When we went to the motel we got some SPLA people there also. They were wondering where these people were coming from, how they got here, like the SPLA was not doing their job. One of them said hey, where do you come from like this? You guys don't mind you are Sudanese, you don't mind that people are dying, with hunger, with war, and you guys are escaping from that, the country needs you, blab, blab, too much talk.
Everybody was quiet. These guys couldn't talk because they were so mad already, they would rather be quiet. I have that long patience, I can take all your garbage and in the end I have to talk to you. I will not let you go like that. I asked him what is your name? He told me my name is Rin Jal, I can't forget these two names of his up to now.
And I said my name is Keji, and my real name of my mum and my dad, my clan name is
Athaia, I am from Kakwa tribe. I just want to tell you that that fight took a long time, that fight started when I was still just in kindergarten, and this fight is still going on. It is not for you to liberate us, all the Sudanese have to liberate themselves, this is my policy. If you are saying that you are going to do it, you lie. You are not going to do it, we all have to do it. If it was you to do it Garang would have done it long ago, but because he needs us to do it that's why he calls everybody. Don't say that I come after you liberate Sudan, that is nonsense. In this war I have a lot people who I have missed, I am missing my dad,
I miss everybody there by the way. I told him when they took my dad we never knew
224 where he was, we don't know where he is. I said when you die you die inside, in the war, they know where you are, but the people who they just take at night, we don't know where they are. So you don't have to stand here in front of me and tell me all this. And you know what I am a refugee, I am recognized by the UN. I don't want a lot of stuff in my head.
After that he came and hugged me, oh, sorry. I said no, you think everybody just opened the door and walked out, you don't know what people are carrying in their mind and their heart. If I lost one person I don't have to lose myself too, I have to exist.
Then he asked now where are you going? I said we are going to Asmara. Okay, we are there too, there are a lot of SPLA soldiers there, and they will talk to you. I said ya, if I hear from them I will talk to them by myself, I don't need somebody to speak to me. He said okay and he greeted all these guys.
He never even knew that I was married because since we entered Eritrea I took my ring out. That is how the Eritrean policy there is, with the SPLA. The guy, the first
SPLA guy we met said you better take your ring out because when we get there they don't want to see this. They say two people always complicated things for the movement, if there are a wife and husband. Like if it is dangerous for the husband to go to some places the wife will be holding him back and the husband will be indecisive saying oh I am going, oh I am coming back. So we all have to go like just people going. That's what happened.
So, he didn't know. He said oh, you are going with your daughter, by yourself. I said ya. He said okay, so we are going to see you in Asmara? I said ya, if you are going to
225 Asmara you will see me there. Then luckily another lady came and said guys your food is there. We went with her.
I think the SPLA had a motel there. One of them went and called the head office, there are some people and a woman and her child. They got the same man who met us before. No, no, these people are recognized by the UN, don't try to threaten them, if you do that it will be a big problem. Then they left.
Early next morning we took the bus. Three of them were in the same bus, two at the back and one in the front. We didn't have to even go talk to them like where are you going or anything, we knew they are Sudanese, they spoke in Arabic, we could listen.
At twelve o'clock we reached Asmara. These three guys were still there. They came, where are you going? We said we don't know, we just got that this is Asmara, we don't know Asmara yet. Then we asked about the taxi. You guys, you are refugees and you are taking taxi? Everybody was quiet.
We just called the taxi and asked if he can take us to any UN office, World Food
Program, WFP, whatever, if it is UN they know what to do. The guy took us to a UN office. They already had the message that some refugees were coming. When we got there everything was ready. Then they said now you go to the camp.
The camp was long, it was in the barracks, in a hangar, that was already there.
That time they were not set up to have refugees, but because the refugees came they said we can use these barracks for now until we see that the numbers is increasing and then we can build them their places. The place was cold, it was cement, and we had only four windows in that entire long barracks.
226 Then the UN officials came in the morning. They said they had to divide something like rooms for the families, for privacy. What privacy do you need after you get there? They just said the families have to be like this. They designed it the way they wanted. They opened some windows, told you where you locate your bed, and put one lamp inside. If you want it is dark, if you want it is light, but the light is not controlled by everybody. This is what they did. So we stayed there. And later they built their own places, houses, separate for families and singles.
Ajak
I lived in Ethiopia for a few years. I was in Itang with my mum most of the time because my father was in the war most of the time.
Itang was a big camp, it was I think one of the biggest in the world from what I heard. Probably Kakuma is bigger, when I went to visit there it had grown.
We were on our way to Itang through Nairobi. We were not going to stay in
Nairobi because how would we live there with no jobs, it wasn't possible. The SPLA office in Nairobi supported us for a few months until we left. They were supporting my family because my father was in the movement, they were paying for food, accommodation, the basic needs. But then we were asked to leave by the SPLA office in
Nairobi.
Also, I think my mother didn't know what she was getting herself into going to the refugee camp. Rumors coming were that the refugee camp is really good. They give
227 you food, you don't have to pay for food. The way they talked about it was as if everything is just given to you for free, you don't have to struggle for anything. No one tells you how bad that place is. Probably if my mum knew maybe she could have struggled a little bit to know what was in Nairobi. There were UN offices in Nairobi. I am sure they would have helped, maybe. But I don't think she really explored that option.
And at the time my father was in the war fighting in Kapoeta. He came to Nairobi but he was being sent to Cuba for military training and he had no time to stay with us. He came for only twenty one days, after not seeing us from '84 until '86 and then he had to go for that training for a year.
So, we decided to go to Itang. It was bad, really hell. We didn't have proper housing at the time. The place is muddy, like in the rainy season no one wears shoes, its mud until the knees, in some places even higher. We walked bare feet the whole of rainy season, I had never seen, never heard, of something like that in my life until I got there.
Mud, lots of mud, everywhere is mud, and it rains. It's a refugee camp, people open cans and throw them anywhere, sometimes it's under the mud, if you step on it you get cut.
That's what life was all about. When you are there you don't think about it, it becomes part of your life, you don't even know how bad it is.
I remember we didn't have sugar, we didn't know what sugar tasted like. The UN never brought any sugar for years and no one had the money to buy sugar. My mum worked as a teacher in the refugee camp but that money wasn't enough to do anything, and she was building too, a small house for us in Itang, a house from mud and grass.
When we went there my father already had a land there, I am not sure how. I don't think
228 it is very difficult. I don't think anybody planned, you just pick a place and build.
Another thing, when fire starts from one neighbour it burns the whole neighbourhood, because it's windy and its grass, it jumps, and then you have to rebuild again.
Amani
At the refugee camp the thing that hurt me the most was that you have to go to the Red
Cross and the United Nations and line up in order to get a cup of corn, a cup of beans, and then you come back and cook that.
A family of four, you get maybe a cup of corn, you see how hard that is. You boil it, you can mix it with the beans and cook it, or you grind it, make flour and cook, something like akuop, and then you cook beans, and people eat it. That was so hard because I grew up in a family where we had everything.
Most of the time I didn't line up, I just asked somebody to get me corn in a cup. I had my friend, the first lady I met there, most of the time she went to bring the corn.
So, at first when we stayed in Dima it was so difficult. I was from a good family in Sudan and then I went to Saudi Arabia. You can't imagine it, from there you go stay in refugee camp. It was just a jungle, with nothing. The UN opened a place and built some huts, and people stayed there. All the men trained in Bilpham and then they went to war, with SPLA. The ladies stayed at the camp.
I had my two girls, one was two and one was three, and as soon as we got there my husband just left. I was left there with some people, I didn't know them even though
229 they were from Sudan. I stayed there for almost three years, just my two daughters and me.
I even got sick, I would just fall down because of too much thinking, crying, because of the situation, and I had to be taken to the clinic, they had some doctors there, some from Ethiopia and some from Sudan.
The leader in Dima camp, Dr. Luak, I told you about him before, he was also there. He is from Nuer, from Sudan. He talked to me about how I was going to lose myself. My husband was not there, I have come from Nuba Mountains, and there was nobody there from that place, all were from Southern Sudan. He said if something happened to you, and your husband is not here, what is going to happen to your girls?
You have to be strong and take care of the kids. That was really good advice for me, and since that time I started to think differently.
Things changed immediately, and after some time everything in Dima was a little bit easier. When you are new, with some stuff, and maybe if you try to do something different, it is hard. But when you become a part of it, it becomes easy. It was so hard for me at first but after I got involved with the people, with their activity, their dance, their singing, eating, other things, it wasn't so difficult.
I just started to mix with everybody, all kinds of people, you have so many different tribes from Sudan. I had to learn all this different culture, different stuff. I learnt so many things, like how to make corn flour. In Nuba Mountains we cook asida, like fufu, from the corn flour, but it's different from this walwal they make. And then to go
230 bring water and do so many things. You still got some problem but it was not like the first time.
Sometimes it was very difficult to become friends with all people in the camp because especially people from some groups from Southern Sudan, especially Dinka, want to force you to learn their language.
And nobody there understood my things. I always used to say oh my God, I wish somebody was there from my place. But nobody was there. Dima, in particular, was a new refugee camp and only I was from Nuba Mountains.
The others from Nuba Mountains went to different places. They had four refugee camps in Ethiopia. In Itang, Pinyudo, Longkuei, those other refugee camps in different places, there were so many people from Nuba Mountains. When I went to Dima, this lady, my friend, Amal, went to Itang from Saudi Arabia. She came before us, I think in
'86, she went to a different camp.
After sometime the SPLA brought this other guy from Dilling in 1991 to Dima.
But even after sometime when some people came from Nuba Mountains they didn't speak the same language as me. They brought maybe three or four ladies from Nuba
Mountains to my house, but we still communicated in Arabic. Each of us had our own mother tongues, and we all spoke Arabic. If you want to do your dance nobody could understand it, even though we are all Nuba we still have different things.
When we left I think there were three families from Nuba Mountains. In between only girls came, not women, married women, from Nuba Mountains. The SPLA went there, to Nuba Mountains, the South, they brought boys and girls and trained them. I
23-1 didn't like that part, the soldiers used to go to the cities, the villages, in Sudan and they brought all these young girls and boys and trained them.
Anyway, so for me the first year, the second year, everything was good. At that time I adjusted to my life, and the camp became like home, you slowly change from that initial stress. There was a school, people went to school. When you are part of the UN then they send all the young boys and girls, even women, to school. They also do some training, and then you can work.
I did first aid training with Red Cross and then I worked with them, with children, young kids like ten, fifteen who were coming from war with injuries. I didn't work for long because I didn't like that job, so much blood, somebody with broken leg, broken arm.
Athaia
In Asmara, it was like June '96 when we started to receive SPLA soldiers who were getting wounded in the war, around Kassala and Port Sudan, people who went and fought on the other side there. Some people were sick, and we were receiving people who were wounded from there.
On my side I said even if I am not in there I could still help. I attended a lot of seminars. I even attended the conference in Eritrea made by John Garang, I was the only woman among the Sudanese women. The women even tried to frighten me, you go there you will not go to Khartoum ever. I said I don't care, as long as I came out from there I
232 can still go in. So in that meeting it was me, my husband, my daughter and the boys we went together with.
That was a huge meeting, it impacted me a lot, that I can help SPLA, if I am out or if I am inside, I don't need to be carrying guns to help them. Garang was talking,
Asmara doesn't have a lot of refugees, but you are going to see refugees who are wounded, you are going to see refugees who are coming for resettlement, and you are going to see refugees who are coming through the SPLA, who have problems, like they are wounded or something but he didn't want to say that openly. It is your duty here, as refugees, to stay in Asmara and to try to see them as your own brothers, when they come you need to help them.
When these people came, the SPLA said we have like fourteen people injured around Kassala on the battlefield, we are bringing them to Asmara. By the time we heard the news it was two days later. I went to Yasir Annan's office to ask if they came, he is now one of the highest people in the SPLA. He said they are already here, I have a lot to do but if you want to go right now I will drop you there, say hi to them and then go tell the camp that you have brothers who are wounded, they need support. I walked to the barracks with Yasir Arman.
I saw the guys, I cried because I never saw so much blood. I never saw somebody with one side of the face gone, with the bone showing. What I saw in Juba was destruction, like death, bomb destroying the human body. You don't see what is the leg, what is the hand. That will not give you the impact of so much pain like when you see somebody with one side gone. Its better you see him dead than you see him alive, because you don't know when is the next day he is going to be alive. That's what hurts me so much.
When I came home I was really desperate, it was one o'clock daytime. My husband asked what is wrong with you, you went downtown, what happened? I said you haven't seen something, you guys want to see the real thing, just go in the evening.
Then seven of us, two women and five men, went to the barracks. These guys cried because they could tell that these people are hurt for life. They started talking to them, asking them what they need, the help they want.
I tried to put some volunteers from inside the camp to help the wounded soldiers who were in the hospital. I didn't hesitate to be with them, to listen to them, with their talents and all that they have, the knowledge they have. I started to give a little bit support to these people, and a lot of ladies started to feel that this is their duty. We started cooking food and taking it there for them, to feed them. The boys went and dressed them up, gave them baths, took them out for a ride. We made like two groups, one would go for two days and the other group rested. We didn't have that mind of this is a Dinka, this is a Nuer and this is a Shilluk or this is from Equatoria, because we just wanted to help, that is all.
We encouraged the men to bring the people who were able to walk to come to the camp, to support them till they walked to the camp where they would stay for one day, the whole day. They would have a fresh mind with the kids running around, at least they would feel like they are inside the family. This is what we did until these people were better.
234 Then some of them went to Asmara, for medical care, and some were sent back to the South again.
We received another group before I left on 19th September '97.
Then I left all this behind, with other people handling the people when I came here.
Amani
In the camp, most of the women and the girls trained, maybe if the SPLA needed them they would go fight.
I didn't train, I didn't like it how people train the women, exactly the same as the men. When I came there was training going on. They told me to go, but when I watched how they did it I said no way, I can't. You can say no, if you are married you have choice. When you come as young girls you have no choice, you have to train.
I like the idea to train, I wanted to learn to use the gun, just out of curiosity. But I didn't like the way they train, it's insulting. I don't know if you ever watched how they train soldiers, maybe in TV, I can't take that, it's my heart. Sometimes we used to go to watch when they trained beside the nearby river. They can push them under the water, running in the water you get wet and then they hit you with this big rope. I asked why are they hitting them, this is not training. They said it makes you strong. I don't know, I don't want to be strong like that. Then they kick you with boots, make you run carrying stuff. I don't know if this is part of training, I didn't understand it. You can run, you can do sit
235 ups, crawl, sometimes you need to hide, but the kicking, the pushing and the hitting, I don't think it has anything to do with becoming a soldier. When you go to war nobody is going to come and hit you, maybe you fight with a gun. Sometimes I used to cry when I watched, it could be so stupid. How could they do that, especially to the girls like ten, eleven, twelve, and boys like my son's age, eleven or twelve, even younger than that, ten or eight even. One of them they brought to my place, when he was sick.
But oh, they knew how to use the gun and all, that's what they used to do. They wanted to fight, especially boys like young, young. So many of them, so many kids, died.
Later on Garang changed this idea, and kids just trained and stayed in the refugee camp in case something happened. But the SPLA used to take fourteen, thirteen year olds to go to war. They fought with so many people, with the government, in different places within Sudan, mostly in the South and Nuba Mountains.
I don't think the girls fought. I don't know why they trained them. I think maybe they used take care of the injured people, cook food. The ones in the refugees camp, some of them trained, some of them just went to school.
Ajak
I went to school in Itang. For the Sudanese children until grade six it was mostly UN schools. Then grade seven and grade eight was in Ethiopian school, for Ethiopian kids.
That wasn't for refugees, but most of us were refugees in that school, with Ethiopian
236 kids, so I don't know if it was an Ethiopian school. In high school we went to a mixed school again but the UN sponsored most of us.
When I went to high school, some of us, who had good grades, got like a mini scholarship. So I went to a boarding school, Walega Adventist Academy in Gimbe, in grade nine, far from my home. That was really good, and when we had long holidays we went to Addis Ababa. It was good. Doing well in studies paid off, like it helped in schools. And I finished grade nine there.
Amharic wasn't compulsory for us in school, but I did pick it up because I lived with Ethiopian girls in the boarding school. I used to speak Amharic, not fluently but I could get away with it. Now I forgot everything. And I learnt Nuer too because most of the students I went to school with were Nuer. I spoke Nuer fluently, actually better than
Dinka. But again not speaking a language, not practicing it, you lose it.
Amani
In Sudan, Arabic is the first language, everybody speaks Arabic. For us in Nuba
Mountains we have like ninety nine different languages. In Southern Sudan they have
Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk and so many more, they speak different languages. But everybody in Sudan knows Arabic.
Still, when I was there in the refugee camp, especially after I worked in the office, the women's association, people could come and just talk to me in whatever language they liked. I don't know the language, I didn't understand them.
237 I spoke to them in Arabic, but they think when you speak Arabic that means that you are Arab. They were like why are you coming here? We run from the Arab, and you come here and you talk to us in Arabic. If you don't want to learn our language you are not supposed to sit at this table. But John Garang put the three of us there, and we all speak different languages. Two of them are from Equatoria, I think one from this group called Kuku and one from Acholi.
Garang created this office to help people in need, I think in my second year in
Dima. He appointed us three ladies there. In the office we had money that came from him, we had oil, we had sugar, we helped many people. If your child is really sick and you need to go to Addis Ababa, or somewhere like Gambella, from the refugee camp, you came to the office. We filled the form and gave you money, we sent you to certain places. We had communication with the hospitals in the city, we knew the hotels. The
SPLA taught us to do all this, the SPLA was with the Red Cross and UNHCR, and they had some offices in Addis Ababa, Gambella and other cities. Rita was the leader, I came after her, and Madina was the secretary. We worked as a team to help refugees.
At first we had an election. The three of us contested, but Rita I think got two votes, Madina got maybe three votes and I got maybe one. When Garang came and saw this, he said no, this was not to be done. He changed it to appointment for the office, he said I want these three ladies to be in the office. The three women who were elected were okay but Garang said it wasn't fair because we didn't have enough people to support us.
He said if you are going to support only your people it's not fair to the others, they don't have that support. That's how we got the office.
238 For three nights people were striking, how could he change that? But Garang was the leader, he said no, that even he himself, somebody just appointed him, you Garang we want you to be the leader, that's it. He said we wanted to be fair to each other. If I am going to support only my person then other people don't get any chance to anything.
I think this made people get angry and start pretending that they don't speak
Arabic, to just drive us in the office crazy, to tell us to leave.
So, we were given a very, very hard time. We went through hell because we don't speak their language. Every time we went to complain, John Garang told them I put these three ladies in the office, I know they don't speak Dinka, they don't speak other languages, but I want them there because they have education, they have to take care of the office.
Then it became a bit better, some of them, most of the educated people, started to respect us a little bit. Still some people never understood us until we left. People came there and each would talk whatever language, till we told them that we didn't understand.
Then they would get up from the chair and yell, you don't understand, you are not supposed to sit here. The person who sits in this chair has to talk my language in order to help me. And then if sometimes there were some nice people they would say it's okay, please don't do that, what do you want, and then they would explain it to us.
But all this was just in order to give you a hard time. They know Arabic very well. They can tell you they don't know but they know. The way we speak Arabic, different groups speak, is different, like Equatorians speak Arabic Juba. How they speak
23% is different from us Nuba and other tribes. We speak it just like you write. But Arabic
Juba is special, and most of the people there spoke that.
And some kids, all these refugees kids, for example my girls when we went there, learn and speak all the languages. They play with this kid, speak Dinka, they move here, speak Nuer. Sometimes even to me they started talking in Dinka or in Nuer. But they speak good Arabic, they were not even born in Sudan but all of them knew Arabic because me and my husband speak Arabic.
So, somebody of twenty five years can't say I don't know any Arabic, you have to talk to me in Dinka. This is because people have this mentality, they saw that Arabic is
Arab's language. That was the problem for most people, if you speak Arabic it's like you are against them. But for some people, like people who were educated, it was not the problem, speaking the language. The problem was the power. You can't just say we hate somebody because he speaks a certain language.
Every time Garang came there we had a big meeting, and he talked in Arabic. He said for all of us Arabic is our first language, we can't see it as an Arab language. We all speak that language and we have to respect each other.
The first time I met Garang was in the camp, he came every three, four months.
There were so many people, with one leg, one arm, he came and visited people, gave them morale and talked to them. And every time SPLA got a new city he had meetings, you are almost there, we now got a new place.
Anyway, so twice I left the office. I said I am not going to work in this kind of environment where someone doesn't respect me, I am not going to be helping them. I
240 went back though. Dr. Luak said you three are in charge until Garang comes and changes this. You are not going to leave, you have to work. If you are going to get angry that means you are not leaders. Whatever people say you have to leave it aside, you have to help them, you are there to help them.
And actually we didn't stay long in the office, maybe one and a half years.
Elizabeth
The last time I was there, in Itang, I didn't stay for so long, just for two or three months.
Then we came to Kenya, me and my husband.
I was not with my family then, I came to Itang in '90.1 married in '91,1 met my husband in Itang. I think it was five months after that when I went back to my family's place and stayed there like two or three months. Then the month that I returned to Itang the war broke out. Then, we were going to where my family was but we didn't reach there, and ended up in the middle in some village between that place and Itang.
We just came back to Itang in February when things settled down. Then we went straight to Addis Ababa, then to Kenya. The situation in Itang was not stable, there was also another war, between us, in the SPLA. Also people were having the mentality of coming to America or to Canada. I think Kenya was the proper place to get the form. My husband decided to come there.
But, Itang for me was actually a good experience too. In Itang I came to know a lot of tribes, different cultures, different ways of life. Like Anyuak I did not know them
241 before, Dinka I did not know even their way of life, and I did not know there were
Equatorians, they were very far from where we live.
In Itang people were mostly divided into zones for tribes, but sometimes they were mixed. In those zones there were Nuers and Dinka. Some zones were mostly Nuer, it's like when you speak the same language you feel close. If someone came first and you are the person who came afterwards you want to build your house beside the first people.
You know you can get along with them and have the same type of life.
Athaia
In Eritrea they didn't divide people into zones, based on tribes. The policy was different there. The camp was mixed. Most people were from the South, but there were people from the North, we had people from East, from West, from Nuba Mountains, from
Darfur, from Shaygiya. They were all there, like all the Sudanese from all the four sides were all there in that camp.
The Eritrean government had one thing. They said when they fought before they had the same thing, of this is North and South and some other parts, but they all stayed in one place. So, we were Sudanese and we had to stay in one place, Sudan is divided but it is one country, you stay as one people, all of you are the same whether you are Dinka, you are Nuer, you are Shilluk. They mixed even the rooms, boys from Nuer stayed with
Equatorians, the Dinka, the Arab. They mixed them, unless you wanted to move later, maybe by yourself.
242 For me if they keep it like in Eritrea's camp it will be the best ever because I think in that way you guys can sit together and solve problems. It can even make people decide not to go to either the Sudanese government or the SPLA, if you all sit down and are all focusing. For me when I am far from you it means I have an issue with you and that issue develops hatred, that issue will just make me think I am not going to leave you alone. But when they put us together, no matter what the difference is, we will try to fix it, it will be better than being apart from each other. You know when they put me in the distance knowing that I have a problem with you that will not bring me close to you again. That is what happened. I think that idea of putting people apart like in other camps is the one causing a lot of problems there. In Eritrea we even used to celebrate the Sudanese
Independence Day. I don't know if people did it in Kakuma camp or in other camps but we Sudanese as refugees in Eritrea celebrated independence on the first of January.
I don't think any African country handled the Sudanese as the Eritrean government did. That was the best camp in Africa. It was very good. The camp was different. It was near downtown, only 10 minutes by walk from there. It means it is inside the town, just circling the town. We had a medical card to go to any hospital in Asmara.
As soon you get there, and you are a refugee, you are the first one to get medication, the doctor has to see you as soon as possible. We had an ambulance in our camp that was standing there twenty four hours for us, paid by the Eritrean government. If a Sudanese got sick at night they didn't need to run to look for a taxi, the ambulance was going to take them to the hospital. If the ambulance was out of the camp that day, they just called a number and the ambulance would come right away to take the person.
243- And the accommodation, we never slept on the floor, we had bed, we had mattress, we had blankets. We had very good housing. Like if you have a child and a family, they give you two bedroom house. You take one bedroom for the small child and a bedroom for you, and it was connected, it's just the same as here. Then the food, we had enough food.
They were providing us with food because the Eritrean land will not encourage you to plant, it's all stones and rocks. We asked to plant, if they can give us something to do. They said okay, try close to your house and if it doesn't grow well then it means the soil doesn't help. We tried and it didn't help, everything was dying. It didn't help where we lived, high in the mountain. Eritrea is up and down, and people who are higher can't plant anything unless you want to plant teef, its like wheat, that is all that grows there.
And we had enough clothing. We had everything that we wanted, even shoes, and they gave us pants, even suits to wear because Asmara is cold.
I think the difference between a refugee in Eritrea and a refugee in other camps was that they were really handling refugees in Eritrea with good care.
There were no fights in the camp, people can't fight. In Eritrea if we fight, we yell, we talk, no problem, but like you use your hands, they put you in jail. That is the policy. They lock both of you up. They don't need any problem at any time. You fight today they think that you will fight the next time too. You fight today using your hands, next time they know you will use something different. They stop this by arresting people.
With that thing nobody liked to fight.
244 And the prison there is not a nice place. It is inside the rocks, like from a long time ago, they just opened the mountain and made a door. They lock you in there, there is no air. Who wants to go there? We had two boys locked there for their fighting, when they come out their skin was peeling.
When people did fight in the camp they normally didn't fight politically. They fought like insulting people, you did this to me or didn't respect me, about ignoring people when they are really telling you something and you know that they are talking to you, things like that, small things. Even later, after the UN left, there was not too much fighting in that camp, even when the Somalis were there with us.
And we interacted with the Eritrean people, we have friends among them. When they had parties they invited the camp and we would go. We asked permission from the gatekeeper if they can come in too, and they come. When we invited some friends from outside to come inside the camp we made sure that they went safely from us until they reached their place, it is not far, we are all inside the same place.
We didn't need permission to go out but when we left like for two days to three days, because they don't know where you are, just for security matters, they asked, just to know that you are there, you are alive. That's the main point. People would go and stay outside for a week, and then when they came back they could stay in the camp.
But you couldn't bring somebody from outside to stay inside the camp without telling the camp manager, that somebody is coming to stay with you for two days, three days. Then in case something happened inside the camp, they will know how to deal with the medical problems. Refugees had the card that helped you to get medication but if
245 somebody came inside they had to use money for that. So if anything happened the manager could help.
And what I liked, one thing in Eritrea, one thing I will not forget in life about that country, is that they see everybody as the same. They see like they are white and you are black, this is the attitude, they don't differentiate between their colour and the white people's colour. They think they look alike, they have the same skin colour, only you are black. They don't know that that colour is also black, they are counted as black. But in terms of racism you don't feel that in Eritrea. They are open hearted. When they don't like you, you see that they don't like you. When they like you, you see that they are so happy, they smile.
People inside Asmara, a lot of them were abroad a long time ago, they know about social life. They associate a lot with us, and most of them have been in Sudan. But in countryside you can't survive for two days because they will not accept others. Even if you went to the bus and some woman gets you there, she just shows you like where do you come from? From there you will know oh, this one is different. It's like that.
It was good to be with the Eritrean people, to learn from them. Like you go to the offices, they know English but they don't want to speak in English, they want to speak in
Tigrinya. That's what made me learn how to speak Tigrinya so quickly. It was like they don't care you came today, if you want to buy something they talk to you even about the money in their own language. So it is for you to decide either to catch up with them or to just leave it like that.
246 Sudanese have some people who don't want to learn a lot of these other things.
They don't know where we came from, we don't know this language, why do they have to speak like that. But in the end for me it's a language, it's a good language to learn. So I just started putting my effort to learn it. I could speak with them, I could have friends and really I did, I had a lot of friends that time. If you know the language it's so much easier, like you know Swahili when you live in Kenya, I think it's the same way.
Ajak
From Itang I went for high school to a boarding school in Kenya. I had to speak Swahili there. I had a hard time with Swahili because I didn't pick it up well. Learning Swahili wasn't an option, I had to take it in school and pass the exams. I did it but it was hard.
My sisters speak Swahili fluently because they started it in primary school in
Kenya, they are better than me by far. I went first to Nairobi, before my family, because my father had a friend who was willing to take me to school there, and my mother wanted me to do this.
When I moved I didn't have a choice, but I didn't feel anything at the time. You feel things, sometimes, when you have the choice to feel them. But when you are not given the choice to feel anything I don't think you really feel things. I don't know, that's my thing.
The only difficult thing was with the education systems. I remember when I came from Sudan and went to Ethiopia. In Ethiopia everything was multiple choices, that's
247 how they do things. And when I came to Kenya it was writing compositions. I remember my first exams, I couldn't do it because I didn't have the creativity. I left it like that, I could not think at all. It is because of the different education systems, how they do things.
So I had to relearn again the whole thing. It was hard, really hard to adjust, and you have to be really, really strong.
Elizabeth
I really can say that at that time we were really, really lucky for some reason.
My husband went to UN in Itang, talked to them about being in the military,
SPLA, and not being safe. The UN provided us, my husband, with some kind of support,
I don't know what exactly. Of course they do that for you, it's like these agencies that you go and get help from, they don't take responsibility for you but they can help you with whatever the thing is. I think they paid for the bus, they paid for our expenses. But we didn't have a lot of money, there was no money when we came to the Kenyan side.
We took a bus from Addis Ababa to Kenya, to Moyale, at the border between
Kenya and Ethiopia. At the border, Kenyan policemen caught us, they put us in prison.
They talked to my husband and the rest of the people, we were a lot of people traveling, where are you guys going, where you guys come from? God, they delayed us like three days. Three days there was no food, no place to sleep, nothing, that was really very hard.
Actually, we reached that place in the morning and they detained us in what they call a camp. They took one person at a time for questioning. Luckily there was a guy,
248- who's also from the same tribe as my husband, who knows Swahili, he interpreted for us.
They released us after nine hours or something. They said you go now. But there was no
way to go anywhere. The bus that we came with was already gone, and we had nowhere
to stay at all.
That time my older son was just born. It was very tough. We actually ended up for
two days sleeping under a tree, with nothing, and no food. Then on the third day an older
guy came. I don't know whether he's from Kenya or Ethiopia because at the border, in
that city, there are Ethiopians and Kenyans, I really didn't pay attention to that. He talked
to my husband and he decided to take us home. He gave us a place to sleep and on this
third day he gave us food.
Then my husband decided to sell all our clothes for transportation money to
Kenya. We took some kind of a car and came to the refugee camp called Walda.
A few days later my husband got a job in the United Nations, so quickly. It's just
luck I guess, and also because he actually knows English. There were not a lot of people there who actually knew English. He became the interpreter for the camp.
We just stayed there for six months and then we got our form for resettlement,
and came to Nairobi to do all our process to come here.
Amani
When we entered Kenya, it was just a jungle, with nothing. The UN just went, cut the trees, SPLA soldiers helped them, they made room. Everybody was given tents, you put
249 up your tents, and they brought some water, some food. Food was corn and beans always.
At the beginning this was what you got, corn and beans, maybe one month later other stuff came, like some oil, flour like this all purpose flour. Still most of the time it was corn and beans, that was the only food.
We stayed there for one year. This was the new camp they opened, Kakuma, the only camp in Kenya then.
My husband was with us then. He got asthma, he was very sick, and they let him come from the war to the hospital. Later on he joined us, and he was working with
UNHCR.
One of those guys there, Jim, is very good. He became a very good friend to my husband. He always came and saw my kids when they were sick, bringing some medicines. Later on, one day he told my husband why don't you take the kids to Nairobi, let them stay there for sometime because all their life they were running, let them do some checkup in a good hospital.
So we came to Nairobi. First we stayed in a hotel for a couple of days. But then
Jim told my husband to look for a place to stay for maybe three, four months. He helped us a lot, he gave us money, he paid the rent and everything. It was good, we stayed there.
My husband still kept working with the UNHCR. Everyday he went to the camp and came back to the city. It was '93 now.
250 Lubanga
I ended up leaving Uganda for Kenya in 1964.
Until the Addis Ababa Agreement the chances of me going to Sudan were almost zero because of the warring situation. And I had an uncle in Kenya who said if you come to Kenya I will be able to provide you with education.
It's in Kenya where the word refugee now applied to me. In Kenya, strangely enough, I could not blend in with the Masai and the Kalenjin, although I am ethnically related to them. It's in Kenya that I began to feel the difference because Sudanese refugees were not officially recognized by the Kenyan Government as such, and were restricted to certain residential areas. Then, when the Government finally recognized us as refugees, and we had educational opportunities through church schools, we had to report to either the nearest police station or Immigration office every month. Those are the things that remind you that you are different, that you are from somewhere else.
These are inconveniences, just that. We did not appreciate it at all. To report every month was a pain. They don't care where you live. Once you are registered there you have to report every month even if you are a student, just because you were registered. You are called a refugee.
Later on they began to build refugee camps, away from Kenyan centres, in the desert. And that makes it very expensive to come to town, Nairobi or other towns. It's not easy. So the Sudanese live in camps, just like they live in Khartoum, except that those ones were within the city in Sudan and this one is not within the city, it's outside, in
Kenya.
251 Anyway, in Kenya my uncle put me straight away into a school. Unfortunately he
died, and then I ended up in a refugee camp in '64. These were camps, Eastleigh and
Riruta, that were organized by NGOs and churches, they rented places for us to live in.
They were mainly concerned with the well being of students, and we were all students in
the camps. A lot of people who were there were from my region because the Anya Nya I war started in Equatoria and at first we were the most affected by it. I knew, from home,
almost three quarters of the people at my camp.
So, the Kenyan government allowed the churches and the NGOs to give us
support. But at first it refused to recognize us as refugees totally. So, getting an education
in Kenya was a problem. Kenyan government said since we don't recognize you as
refugees we have no obligation to give you an education. For me or anybody else, as a
foreigner, to get an education in Kenya, particularly in the high school, a policy required that the foreigner prove to the government that there is nobody in Kenya who could take that place.
This was the situation that I confronted. I spent a lot of my time in the library
reading but that was not enough for my education, beyond that of the knowledge of
current affairs.
So, my education in Kenya was kind of very discreet. I happened to walk into the
office of a Catholic priest in Kenya, with a friend. I had no intention of going in but my
friend told me that there was a priest from Holland that he knew there. When we went in, there was also a Dutch Bishop from Holland who just arrived in Nairobi. He became keen
when Fr. Ruurd Van Klose told him that we are student refugees from Sudan. The Bishop
252 could not understand that as young kids we were working in the streets, we were supposed to be in school. When I told him that the Kenyan government would not let us into schools he couldn't believe it. He said don't worry, I will do something, I will get you into a school. You don't need to register with the government, we will pay the fees, and you will get this education. Then, at the end of Form Four, Grade Twelve, you write your Cambridge exams, if you pass we will again do something about this. So I went to
Mumias Secondary School which was operated by American Sacred Heart Brothers. My name was not officially in the list of students in Kenya. There were two of us from Sudan who had this chance.
The next thing was that you had to go for Advanced Level, A Level, in Form Five and Six or Grade Thirteen and Fourteen, to prepare for post secondary education or university. I couldn't go because then the same situation happened. So, I went back to Fr.
Ruurd Van Klose, and told him that I had finished, what is the next thing? He said I am waiting for the results. Then I went to Uganda to visit my relatives. There I got a very urgent message from Fr. Van Klose, asking me to return to Kenya immediately, that the results had come out. He looked at the list. I did well, but I was not selected for A Level because it was again the case of me being a foreigner.
Now, it happened that Fr. Van Klose had taught the Director of Education, a
Kenyan, in Nairobi. So he called this man. He said here is the situation, this man, one of the best candidates, has no chance to go to school. Can you explain the reason to me? The
Director said that's impossible, if you are telling me these are the grades that he got he must be doing his A Level. He checked it out, oh but he is a foreigner, Kenya does not
253 take foreigners to A Level unless something is done about it. The priest said see what you can do, and the Director said that we will offer him a scholarship. So I became the first
Sudanese refugee student to get scholarship for high school in Kenya. That's how I ended up in A Level, preparing now for university.
I was preparing myself, most likely to study Economics because that was not considered one of the sciences. It was a government policy that non-Kenyan should not be allowed to study science. So I took English, Economics and History at the A Level.
Now, Immediately I began working to get out of Kenya because I knew that going to university was going to be another big hurdle.
Alek
I was doing Theology, in Abbassia, in Cairo. My sister was in the second year and I was in the first year. Ours were four year courses. After she finished she would go back and then I would stay there one year. When I finished Theology I planned to go back to
Sudan. Earlier, all the people, when they finished from Egypt they went back to
Khartoum.
Then, after I finished, my parents-in-law finished the ceremonies for my marriage.
And my dad wrote a letter to me and my dad-in-law wrote a letter to Adol. My dad said everything is done, we want you to come now for the blessings, after that you can go back. The same thing with Adol.
254 But Adol couldn't go back because that time Sudan, Khartoum, was not good.
Earlier, in Egypt some people including Adol did some protest. And the government of
Sudan put some people in Egypt as spies, to look. Like, if I come to talk to you, you know I am Alek, but you don't know I am working with the government, if you talk for some time and I ask you why don't you like the government, then you talk with your own heart, you never think something bad from me, and then I will report back those things that you told me. After that when you go to Khartoum they will catch you and put you in jail, or they can kill you, you can disappear. That happened that time, they did that to some people. People heard that, some people who got arrested escaped and came back to
Egypt and told all this. So these people who protested couldn't go back. Adol couldn't go back, he was scared if he went back they were going to catch him too.
I said I am going, I cannot stay here. When everything is done I will come back. I was also in the protest but my name was not there with the government. They never used to put ladies' names, they just put for the men, young men. I never saw ladies' names with them.
Then, I don't have any story in Egypt, after I came back from Sudan. When we were done with the university we were just working as housekeepers because we needed the money. We had to pay the rent, we were six ladies in the same apartment, we had three rooms, two in each room. Then we paid for the food, and we needed money for ourselves. That's why we looked for a job, to support ourselves. If you don't do that, who can support you for that money? Then we make some money and send it back to our parents to help them. That happened in Egypt, that's what we did. Some were working as
255 babysitters, some were cleaning houses, some were working in the kitchen, working in different ways. I don't know about students now, but people, even now they are working like this.
Osama
I first stayed in Egypt for a year. During this year I renewed my membership with the
Youth Union, actually we established the work over there, especially the Youth Union after a couple of months, when I got there. Our colleagues started to establish a new thing in Cairo, they were building the NDA. We started working with every party, with everything, like we did anything related with any party, repairing things, replacing chairs, putting up posters, anything. It was good days. It was like a golden era in my life. This was like Sudan, we worked as just one hand, against the same enemy, against the same danger. After three and a half years when I came back this had changed, every group was working together but against each other.
Anyway, then all of my friends, who were at that time in Egypt, started to look for a better life outside Egypt, because it was the same in Egypt. It's less dangerous than
Sudan for us, but it's the same, dictatorship is the same.
With Hosni Mubarak in Egypt they used us. They used to treat us special, when they had problem with Sudan. Like if they caught us for anything, like me once they were asking me about someone's murder, other people for visa, they asked me if I knew someone from the Sudanese opposition, when I gave them the names they just released
256 me. For other people if they didn't let you off immediately then you call some from the opposition, and they call the police and they released the people. Then with the usual underground talk between them and Sudanese, between the two governments, to give back to Egypt what they had in Sudan, like property or land, when the negotiations failed, and they put Egyptians in jail in Sudan, in Egypt they immediately would pick any black coloured person from the street to put in the jail. They did it many times. It became like something we were used to.
For me I decided to go Libya because my brother and my sister were over there, with their families. They were working there. In July the next year I took a ship from
Alexandria to Tripoli. My brother was passing through Egypt, returning to Sudan, his family already was in Sudan, and he helped me, gave me some money, for ticket, to go to
Libya. I went directly to my sister's house. I stayed in Libya for three and a half years.
In Libya three of us, one guy is now in Canada and the other is in Australia, we were trying to organize a group of people as a band. I knew these two guys in Sudan and
I met them again in Libya.
The situation, politically, in Libya was very dangerous too, if they knew what we were singing about. We were singing about freedom and more than that. We were talking about life, encouraging Sudanese people to go out and take their freedom again. I don't want to say to gain it but to just take it, force the new government in Sudan to go out. We were starting to talk with the other Sudanese who had been in Libya for years, about what was happening in Sudan, kind of updating them, what we were doing, about the opposition in Cairo, because those days things were still really cloudy for most of the
257 Sudanese. Most Sudanese, they are interested in politics, they were asking about what was the opposition work in Egypt.
This was the first time a lot of parties were working together. It had happened with three parties before in Libya and in UK, when Umma Party, DUP, and Turabi invaded Khartoum in '76 with Gaddafi's support. They didn't succeed then. I think they gathered the idea in UK, but the main work happened in Libya. But I am not sure what was happening at that time, in 1976, that time I wasn't really into all this. Now, it was a lot of parties and in a different way. They were signing a kind of agreement or program to create a front, a new body to work together to actually regain our democracy or freedom again.
I had tried to do my best in Cairo and now I worked on the same thing in Libya, to talk to different groups of Sudanese, different friendly people. But, in three and half years
I gained nothing. People over there have just been working to collect some money and go back or to send it to build a house or to renovate their places, for this kind of human needs. They were a lot of very simple people, they came just to work, they came freely, they heard that there is some place over there, an oil land.
Alek
The bad thing in Egypt is that the men cannot find jobs.
258 All the jobs are for ladies because they work in the houses as housekeepers. For the ladies you can usually find two hundred fifty and up Gineh el Masri, Egyptian pound.
Some are lucky they can find five hundred, six hundred until eight hundred.
Some men can find jobs, like they take care of dogs, walk the dogs outside, it pays a lot of money. But our people, African people, don't like that. They say it's bad if someone sees you walking with dogs outside. If you close yourself, and some people are closing themselves, you can do it, you find the money and then you go do your own things, if you have a wife or kids you go serve them.
Adol found a job in a clinic, with one doctor. He registered people to let them see the doctor inside. They paid him ninety Gineh el Masri per month, that was the salary for
Adol.
Men sometimes can find eighty to a hundred, that is not money. What are you going to do with that money? But you are going to do the job because you need it. Some people don't like this, they just stay at home. They don't want to deal with Egyptians, they are going to tell you some bad words everyday until you just came home angry. That happened to us.
My first job in Egypt was as a babysitter. They paid like four hundred Gineh el
Masri, like one hundred fifty US dollars or two hundred Canadian dollars. I was there to see the baby when the lady, Fatima, she was Christian, when she went to the kitchen for a little bit. Alek, could you clean the house, and then after that I did a lot of things, couldn't be just a babysitter.
259 From a babysitter it became something else. When I saw that I said no, I don't want this job because my job was as a babysitter, to stay with the baby, do everything for the baby. And if I do all the things in the house she is supposed to pay me more, four hundred fifty is not enough. And the bad thing was, when I was babysitting that lady's son, after I was done everything, I clean the house, I clean the washroom, when I wanted to take a shower she said you cannot take a shower, I don't want the bathroom to get dirty. I said who cleaned it? It's me, and if you don't like it I will just clean it after I take a shower. You say I can make it dirty, so I cannot take a shower and I can stay dirty. I don't like this, and as a babysitter every day you are supposed to be clean because you are carrying the baby. Like when I am done in the kitchen I am supposed to take a shower, change my clothes and then I can take your baby and walk around. How come I am going to stay dirty at home? Just because I am working here and you pay me money I cannot do this, no way. When I work here it's not for the money. I just want to get the experience because I am engaged now. Afterwards when I get married I am going to have a baby too. I can see the baby, how you are handling the baby or how it's going to be to feed the baby. That's the thing. I don't like money. My dad has money, he sends money for me. Now you gave me a lot of things to do, more than for that money, and I did it for you. That's the last thing, that you said I cannot take a shower. Now you cannot see me. I will look for someone else to work with.
Her son, her mother, her father and her sister, the whole family liked me, just not the person I was working with. Sometimes the mother came, Alek could you dress up, we want you to go out to the restaurant. When I dressed up the lady was not happy, and I
260 said if you are a person like that I don't like to deal with you. Then I told her mother, your daughter is not good, I don't like this. If you want bring someone who can work with her, I cannot. I quit the job, and I left the money.
She was crying, you don't need your money? I said I don't need my money, if you want just take it to the church. After I quit the job I went to the Father there, Fr. Francis, and told him the story. I said I don't want to go again to take my money. If she wants she is going to bring it here to you, and even if she doesn't want to it is good, I can find another job.
The church is called Sacred Heart. All the Sudanese are there. They have a nadi, a small community club, inside the church, where you can see each other, play bingo, dominos, cards, dance, watch movies, listen to news, do different activities. We stay there until eight when they close. Then everyone goes home, and the next day we meet together again. If you are looking for a Sudanese you go there, you can get someone if you need a job done.
So, the lady went to the church and talked with Fr. Francis. He had sent me to her.
She came there with the money, she gave it to the Father, this is Alek's money but she doesn't want it, talk to her, I like her, if she will come again to work for me. Then father talked with me for two weeks. I said no, I am not going back there, I am looking for someone else.
Then I found another lady, her name is Aboud, she is a Muslim. She was a pilot and her husband was a pilot too, both of them were working in the airport. Sometimes they went to United States, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, China or somewhere,
261 sometimes they went together. She paid me like four hundred Gineh el Masri. I was only
with the baby, not going to the kitchen. I washed my clothes and then the baby's clothes.
Someone else washed their clothes and I just put them to dry outside. When she went on
a trip, I took care of her son. If her son got sick I could call her sister, she would take him
to the hospital. Sometimes the trip took like three days, sometimes it took seven days. I
would stay with the baby seven days at home, sleeping there. When she came back she
gave me like four days off to go to stay with my friends or my sister or my aunt, and after
that I came back when she went somewhere. And she brought a lot of things for me. That
was a nice person that I found. And the salary was good.
But I quit the job because of her husband. He wasn't a good guy. One day he
came near me with just his underwear, the small thing, no shirt, nothing. I was with the
baby and I was surprised that he was like that. He was asking me, you, in Sudan, when
you are young lady, when you get married you have to be a virgin? I said yes, like in
Egypt. When you get married you didn't find your wife is a virgin? He said yes. Then he
said why some young Sudanese ladies you can find them, they are not virgins? Then I
remembered the Sudanese woman who brought me to work there, the first day when I
went there I saw her, she was wearing like a transparent dress. I asked her then, why are
you like this, and this guy is here? She said that's okay. Now, I thought maybe they were
doing something wrong. Then I got scared, in the night he could open my door and do
something to me, nobody will know. Then the other day I was with his son, and he came
and touched my necklace. I asked why? He said I am just straightening it. Then I left the job. I left all my stuff there, I never went to get it. I told Adol all this.
262 The lady kept calling me, she liked me. I lied to her. I said I want to go back to
Sudan to stay there longer and get married. When I get married I will come back. If I told
her the real thing, then something could happen between her and her husband, that
happens in Egypt, I didn't want that.
Then I was looking for another job, that job paid me two hundred fifty US dollars just for cleaning. It was with an older woman. Her daughter and son were married and
she stayed at home by herself. When I found the job, I talked to Adol, please could you
take me there? I do the job for six days and then come home for one day. Adol took me
there. When she opened the door, ah I brought you here, paying you money and you
come late. Adol got angry with that. He said Alek, could you leave that person? Let's go
look for another person. I said this is an old lady, I think older people talk like that, she
will calm down a little bit, I think it's just today, she's angry about something else. Then
he left me there.
Everyday she was talking. At four thirty in the morning she said wake up, you
think it's your father's place or your mother's place, you keep sleeping like that. You
Sudanese, you are so lazy, you don't know how to do the job at home. I said who did the
things in your house, is it you? She said you don't know me, go clean the steps. She was
in a building. I said let me try, I will see what is going to happen.
I opened the door, started cleaning from up there until down. I did that like three
days, the fourth day I asked what's happening exactly. You brought me here to clean the
steps, all the steps, from door to door, am I working for those people? She said that's
your job. I said my job, could you take me back please? She asked why. I said I will
263 never do that again. I just respected you, you are an older lady like my grandma, and I
didn't want to talk to you too much. But if you don't change your way just leave me
before I do something, talk something bad back to you, I won't stay. She said no, you
can't go. I said then don't tell me again go do this. She said okay, just clean inside.
Sometimes in the morning she just left me like two olives, a little cheese on the
side and one bread, like three weeks old, dry bread. Alek, I am leaving, you have your
food on top of the stove. That is not food, I didn't want it, it stayed there until she came
back. I would be doing my job when she came back at three thirty or something. When
she went to the kitchen and found the thing there she asked why didn't you eat? I said I was busy. Sometimes she came early and opened the door so I couldn't hear, to see what
I am doing. But she never came back and I was sitting. I was always busy, when I am
done this I do that, she gave me too much stuff to do.
If you didn't work with Egyptians you couldn't find something bad in Egypt.
They are bad people. You just push yourself because you need the money, otherwise you
are not going to do these things. Every day I was crying. I was singing every song I
knew, singing Dinka, when Dinka was done I started to sing Arabic, when Arabic was
done then I sang all the songs from the church, and then I would cry. I said what is this
life, if it is not for the war who is going to stay here, to do things like that? Sometimes I
said to myself this is a good thing, it makes you become strong. If you are someone who
can get strong you can handle a lot of things, more than that, that you find in the future.
That's the good thing you learn from Egypt. A lot of people, who came from
Egypt are strong. You can stay alone, you can do a lot of things. If you don't have food at home you can stay like two or three days, it doesn't matter to you, you can handle it.
Some people from Egypt they do that even for seven days, no food, just drink water,
sleep, and the next morning you wake up, the same thing. That's what happened with our people in Egypt, when everything, the university, is done, and there is no scholarship.
So I worked with this lady. Then she turned off the hot water. I couldn't take a
shower, I just took a wash with cold water, I put soap on a towel and cleaned myself. I
was just shivering, and I felt like I had a flu or something. Then I said I cannot stay here much more, it would get me sick.
She had two granddaughters, they love me so much. They asked me how come you handle my grandma? I said she looks like my grandma, in our country if your
grandma talks too much or does something like that you can't talk too much with her, you just cool down. But your grandma did a lot of bad things to me, I just handled it, but
I am going to be leaving soon.
Then, when the older lady found me praying, every morning I wake up and pray,
she asked what are you doing? I was quiet, she just kept standing on my head, talking
until I was done praying. Then I said I was praying. What are you praying? I said what
are you praying in the morning every day? You stand up and pray, did I ask you what are you doing? She said you are not allowed to pray. I asked you are allowed to pray, I am
not allowed to pray? Yes. Why? She said I am a Muslim. I said what's in being a
Muslim? You are a Muslim, you pray for your God and I pray for my God, it's one God, the same God, but you pray one way and I pray in the other. Then I said please, next time
265 when you see I am praying don't ask me anything, let me pray and when you see I am done then come and ask anything that you want. Then I said that's enough.
She had two bedrooms. She was sleeping in one and one was empty, she was supposed to give me that. No, she just put me in a small balcony, covered with just glass, she put a curtain there. How come the glass and the curtain are going to handle the cold?
And she gave me a small folding bed, no I think a folding chair. When I slept in that bed my leg was out. It was so painful everyday when I got up, sometimes I was crying.
I said I had a better place, why I am doing this to myself for the money, for the two hundred dollars? I just kept asking myself this. The person who brought me from the church took fifty dollars, two hundred was for me and fifty for him.
Then the other day I almost fell from up. I went up with a ladder to clean the balcony glass from top. I was falling from the eighth floor but I caught a pillar with one hand. An Egyptian lady in the other building in front was screaming, she was crying. She said what are you doing, just for money? If you don't want to fall like that please get down and quit that job, don't do it. I got down. Sitting in the balcony I put my back against the wall, I was crying. Then I went in, I took everything, my clothes, and put them inside in my bag and I waited for the lady.
When she came back she was happy that day, I don't know what happened to her.
She said Alek, where are you, could you get ready? Go take a shower and put on a nice dress, we are going to my sister's place. I said no, I am not taking a shower. She asked why. I said that day, from three weeks ago when I started working with you, did you let
266 me take a shower? And the day when I wanted to take the day off, to go to my place, you made me not go, my people don't know what happened to me.
She locked me in, I could not go down to use the phone and I could not use the phone in her place. Nobody knew what happened. I didn't know what happened outside, people didn't know what happened to me inside. I just looked like someone she put in jail.
Then, I said I am ready, I want to go home. She said for a visit, to go to see your parents and then you come back? I said when I started this job did you let me go to my parents, they don't know what happened to me. You said you are not going now, you have a lot of work that you are supposed to do. I did everything, still you didn't let me go.
Today I want to go forever.
She started crying, Alek stay, if you are going to leave me what am I going to do?
I love your hand, when you do things it looks nice. I said because of your tongue, everything that comes out for your mouth is not good. If you pay me like thousand, two thousand dollars I don't want to stay with you. If you had nice things coming out for your mouth I could stay even if you pay me one dollar.
Before I left I brought my bag, I said could you check this before I leave? She didn't want to check it. I said okay, I am going, I want to use the phone. She said okay, she said she didn't want to talk.
Then I phoned my cousin. Alek where are you, three weeks, what happened to you? I was crying. She asked did the Egyptian do something to you? I said I am coming, wait for me, I will come and tell the whole story. Then I called Adol's friend. I said could
267 you put your book down and run to Adol, say Alek said please come to me now, pick me up from here. I was crying, the guy was scared. Alek what happened to you, did the
Egyptian do something to you?
They know the Egyptians, sometimes when something happened they can kill you and then say he died by himself. Nobody can look for you, your story, what happened to you. I said please go tell him.
Then I asked the lady if she checked my bag. She said no. I took the bag and pulled everything down. I said you guys are not nice, if I left now without you checking, you are going to say the lady who was working with me took this, took that, I don't want that. I took my clothes one by one and shook them, did you see, and I just threw them inside the bag. Then I said bye.
What about your money? I said keep it, if you want to give it to the guy who brought me here or go to the church. Every work I quit I said go to the church, the place where you found me you will find me there again. If you didn't find me give the money to the Father, and then I will find it there.
Then I went down at six o'clock, I found Adol. He said Alek, what happened?
You remember what I told you the first day, you didn't listen to me. Now when you saw with your eyes then you quit. I said yes, you are right, now take me home. We didn't take a bus. He took me by taxi, a long way.
We went home, the ladies saw me, Alek what happened to you? My eyes were puffed, crying. I said guys, could you leave me, let me take a rest for two days or three
268 days, and then come asking me for my story. Adol left and I stayed with my cousin and
my friends.
The second day I told them the story. The same thing for three weeks, why didn't
you quit the first day? I said I was thinking it's going to become okay, but every day it
became worse.
After that she didn't bring the money. She called the church and said could you
tell Alek to give me a call? I called, what happened Hanem? She said Alek, I want you to
come back please, I apologize. I said no, do you know I am going back home the day
after tomorrow. I was just lying. Alek please come, work and then after that you go. I
said no, I am going to my parents. Before you told me this is not your father's place, do
you think you are in a palace, this is not your palace that you just relax. If I told you the
way my dad was working in my place, if you saw it, you cannot believe it. Just because
of the war everything just changed, and that let us to do these things. If it is not for the
war, nobody can do these things and keep remaining in Egypt. The next time it's going to
happen for you like it happened in Sudan, and Egyptians will go to our country and the
Sudanese are going to do the same thing to you. But I think that day you are going to be
dead because you are older. If you are going to be alive you can see what's going to
happen to your country too, don't laugh at people. She was crying.
I did not get the money. My friends and my sister were angry, every time you just
quit the job and you leave the money, what's wrong with you? I said God is going to see,
I don't want to bother myself. The old lady brought the money to the church, she gave it to the guy who took me from the church to her. I think the lady knows the guy. That's
260- Alek's, give it to her, and she put more money. I think he took the money, I said if you want take it, I don't want it.
He is here now, with his wife and the kids. He is called Hamad, he is living in
Hamilton, he is from Nuba Mountains. He was working at the church, sometimes he looked for jobs for people in other places, in Cairo and outside too. When you want a job he takes you to the place and says I brought someone. You are working under him, he puts you there and he takes some of the money you make every month.
And then I found one lady, she was Christian. Her name is Maha, she was a nice person. My uncle put me there. He was teaching her English. She was looking for someone and he asked me. But I didn't want to work then. He told me that she was very nice, we discussed this job for a week. Then I said okay. When I met her she welcomed me very nicely. I worked for just three days in a week and she gave me three hundred
Gineh el Masri, that's too much. What I liked with her is she made breakfast and lunch and then made me stop working to go and eat. I said no, I will become lazy, but she didn't like that. Then for supper she prepared the table and we all ate like a family, she didn't push me to the side. We all prayed and then we ate.
The bad thing that I found in her place, she said Alek could you wash our underwear? I said no, we don't have this in our country, no one else can wash your underwear. When I take a shower, I wash it right away, to dry right away. This is bad in our culture. If you find someone like this, who doesn't wash it right away, that's a bad person, you cannot stay everyday with this person, I can dry them but not wash them. She was surprised. I said if you find a Sudanese ask, Northern Sudanese are doing like you,
2a0 Southern, no, we don't have that thing, I am sorry but I cannot do this, let me do something else. Then they just left me.
I was with her until I got married. She came for my wedding too. She gave me a gift, and I still have it.
Santino
Egyptians are all animals, they are not good people, I hate them.
I was working there in a hotel, in a hospital, I was like the last person in terms of position. I was sweeping the floor, washing dishes, the first day, the second day too. The next day the manager who owns the hotel saw that I know how to speak English. Then things got better, he put me in a high position, I was the supervisor for all in the hotel.
There were lots of people, a lot of guys who got kids just like me, twice my age, I was telling them do this, do that. No one could manage me, only the guy who owned this hotel, and he is my friend. He gave me rides to my house, all the time, even nights, and we went to parties, we did whatever.
The guys were working there seven to eight years and I only a month, but some of them got fired because of me, like they swear at you, they called me a nigger. Only one person was left from all the initial people in the hotel because of me. Then it was hard for a white skin person to call me nigger because the manager was going to fire you right away.
JTV 271 When I was almost leaving to the US it was hard to tell the manager I am leaving.
Maybe he was going to kill me, because he liked me a lot. Sometimes I didn't work, we just went somewhere to see new things, watching movies, he paid for me. Afterwards he wanted me to get married to this girl, like my age, different religion. I am Christian and she is Muslim, it didn't matter that we were kids. He wanted me to be a Muslim and then
I was going to get her, but it was hard to change religion if you didn't think about it, to do that, because maybe it's a good idea but maybe it's going to be a bad idea when we are going to God or something.
So, I left from there, and I left my money, a lot of money, I was working hard. I didn't tell him, I moved from Cairo to Alexandria. He was looking for me all over Egypt.
He didn't find me.
After I came here I phoned him, I am in USA but maybe I am going to come. He said don't worry, please if you have got no money there I will send you the money, you are going to come.
But there is a lot of crime there too, in Egypt, I didn't want to go there because that time he was going to kill me, I know. Like here right now if I am a drug dealer and I got a lot of drugs all over, and I call you and then I give you half of the drugs and you sell them, you are a good seller, later on if you came to me and said you want to quit I am going to kill you right away. It is the same thing because this guy likes me.
There were a lot of people there from all over Europe, they speak English, and they would call me. I talked to them, I translated to Arabic because I read, write and speak English and Arabic.
272 There are some from Sudan who don't speak Arabic, like half of them in Southern
Sudan don't know Arabic. Some of them went to Egypt years before, they found me speaking in the language they wanted to talk in, in Dinka. I could talk to them and translate to Arabic for the Egyptian people. If you wanted to talk in English, the same thing.
So it was a hard decision for him to let me go.
Then I left. I still remember the guy's name after how many years, even the place,
I still remember the hotel in the hospital. It's only him that I met there like a nice person, and he could make a lot of people, a lot of bad people, to be nice, to be cool. The guys who were still working there changed, and they were nice. They respected black, white,
Chinese too, even Americans.
Egyptians, they hate Americans a lot, even Canadians, they hate them, they don't care if you are white, you have got knowledge.
Have you ever been to Egypt? No? That's a problem. If you are researching about
Sudanese people here, before you talk with someone, see the Egyptians, the way they are doing things, the way they are, the way that they talk to people, the way they treat people.
You can go there, you have got to do full research. Just open the radio and listen to what they are saying. It doesn't matter if you are white or black, they hate anybody who is not
Egyptian.
But, the people from the North and the Egyptians are Arab people, they have got their own thing because they speak the same language. I believe that they have no problem.
273 Osama
I went back to Egypt in January '96, with my two musician friends in Libya.
This time I started to work differently. For me it was confusion to be outside
Sudan. The feeling first was that we, the open minded leftist people from Sudan in Egypt, were going to go back soon, like there was something inside most of us telling us that this regime is going to end soon because we are doing something different this time, with
NDA, we would work to the end, united. As the years went by and I started to know, I suppose I realized it from the beginning, that its not going to end soon.
So, we started to work again. This time, for the first time in my life, I joined a human rights organization. I knew about these people before, I knew their activities, but they were not that active in Sudan. Before, we didn't really know many of these people, we were working on politics, directly with them. These people were not that big or had open activities, they did mainly intellectual work, not that big work. Me personally I didn't hear of them, maybe because of the general situation, people were like human rights, what's that. But it was mainly leftists who established that, the main idea is an old idea, like with Farook Abu Isa, who was the Secretary General for the Arab Lawyers
Union for many years.
This time it was like things inside me were getting cooler, like I started to calm down. I needed to go back soon, most of it's like emotional and personal matters and my personal experience, and we had to do this, to succeed with this opposition work and go back home.
274 So I started to work with the Sudanese Human Rights Organization, Cairo branch as a cleaner. The main branch was in London, UK. In Egypt they didn't register any foreign organization unless it was a branch, so a couple of organizations were registered in the UK but the main work was in Egypt.
It was a very, very good experience for me. I learnt how to use the computer over there, and then much more, because the organization offered us training about the field itself, about human rights, international human rights charter. I worked very, very hard till I reached to be an assistant manager in this organization.
I was still doing the cleaning and still making the breakfast, which we call futoor, it's at ten or eleven o'clock, and tea for every one, while I was typing or we were all meeting. For me it was really a confusing situation because I had to go and bring tea while I was doing very important and alien things, like sending something, releasing something, about the situation in Sudan, like I had to send them right away to an international organization or national organization or something.
But it was very good and I learnt much, first from the Secretary General of the branch, Hamoda Fatih al Rahman, now he is in the United States. Inside me I was thinking just one idea, I am not going anywhere, I am going to stay here, to help each other, to make the journey end soon and go back home victoriously.
But the situation in Egypt was getting worse. The normal reaction of the government in Egypt, when anything happened, like any failure in the negotiations between them and the government in Sudan, was to collect people, Sudanese people, from the streets and jail them for two, three days and then release them. It was a kind of
275 pressure on the Sudan government, but through us. It was very complicated, why they opened the door wide to the leaders of the opposition and offered them a lot of things, even offered official security guards for them and then why they are doing this other thing every two, three months?
By the way through our relation, and as part of our job in our organization, in the
Cairo branch we used to try to get the Sudanese people released from the prisons. But we were not supposed to talk openly about anything in Egypt, there was a kind of a secret deal for us. To let us work we didn't have to mention anything about the human rights situation in Egypt. This made our situation very critical because how could we do that?
We have to like see with one eye and to see just half of the truth, but there was no other way. We let all the human rights organizations in Egypt and everywhere know our situation, we are supporting them, we just went and we just talked.
Anyways, the relationship between Egypt and Sudan was getting a little bit better.
Egyptian government promised to give Cairo University in Khartoum back to Sudan, they didn't but they promised. So, first they started with us, using an old thing we had released about slavery in Sudan. They made it as the reason to say to Hamoda to stop and go out of Egypt. And I guess in less than a year they asked us to stop the whole organization. I remember it was Friday.
I used to sleep in the office, it was a free place. I used to sleep on the floor for three years, but by the end one of the good guys offered me a small folding bed and I found an old foam mattress about six inches thick. It's very hard in winter time because there is no central heating in Egypt. It means to buy a heater and it's very expensive,
276 actually it's not the heater but the electricity. Sometimes I used to wake up just to put the stove on for a while. And all these days there was no hot water, I used to have my daily two showers with cold water.
Anyways, so I was outside, I was doing some shopping. When I came back I was stopped by a guy who was a Sudanese Workers Union leader. He told me that Mohamed
Hasan Daoud, the new Secretary General, needed me urgently. It was not more than five minutes walk from his place to the office. When I entered his place I found Abdalla, he is now in Canada, and Shokor, he too is in Canada. Mohamed told me high rank intelligence officials asked him to stop, to close the office within twenty four hours.
You know what's the meaning of twenty four hours to move an office, hundreds of documents and books, two computers and furniture, and people and activities? We called here and there. A leader of the Sudanese opposition told us we are not going to fight the Egyptian Government to let you work. For us it was okay, it didn't mean that he didn't believe in human rights activity, no. We used certain ways to say our word, we converted to using the computer which somehow was enough. But for the parties this was not enough, because they started doing military activities in Ethiopia and Eritrea for the first time, or rather the second time after the first time when they came from Libya, for the first time as this kind of a well organized thing. So they said we are going to just help with the documents and money.
277 Athaia
The Eritrean government said we don't want UN office in Eritrea, in twenty four hours. It was March, in 1995. The office was closed, all the UN staff had to move out of Eritrea immediately.
When they threw the UN out the Eritreans were still doing fine with the SPLA, these two worked together. But there was confusion in Asmara about UN doing something with the Khartoum government. They had a problem with any office that worked with the UN, doing strategic things in between the SPLA and the Khartoum government. That's what made them mad.
There was a UN official, someone from Geneva, in 1995, if you heard about that, he went to Eritrea and complicated our case. From Eritrea he went to Sudan, he came back to Eritrea, he went to SPLA barracks, and again he went to Sudan. That time the
Eritrea government got confused, this man is a UN person, why is he doing all this. He sees what they are doing, he goes back to Khartoum, it means he is a spy for the
Khartoum government.
Then, there was no hope in that camp. Everyday there were lights. You could see like everybody wants to kill each other but you don't know for what. That was the end, you don't know why. There was no food, they don't see the food they saw before, they don't see the water they want, they don't see the shelter they lived in before.
Like the Arabs were downtown living in private rented houses in Asmara, the UN funded them to rent their houses. When the UN closed they had to come to the camp,
278 they couldn't afford to rent the house. Now everybody was equal, like all the things were now same for all of us.
We had problems with medication too after the UN left. There was actually nowhere we could go.
I said guys we have to go to the Umma Party, to the people who are there in that office. That is Sudan money, and they are the same people. Oh, why do you want to go there? These are Arab people, they are the same people as in Khartoum. I said these are the same people as there, and we are not going to say that we are going to stay with them, there is no way of saying that. I am just going there to ask for medication for the people who need it. They said go, you see if they can give it to you.
I went. I talked with somebody there, like a gateman, at the door. I said I am
Sudanese, I just want to talk to you. He said okay, and opened a small window. He was looking like what is she coming to do here? Then he went inside and told Abdo, somebody at the door wants to talk to us, she is black, she is from the South. He said let her come in.
The lady who went with me, Fahtima, she's from Nuba tribe, she stood outside. I went inside alone. They were all sitting there, I think I interrupted a meeting. Abdo said welcome, kaeff, how are you? I hope you are doing fine. Where are you from, where do you come from, these two questions at one time. I was calm, and I just answered one question, I said I am Sudanese, I came from the camp. I said we have people sick, they need your help, they need medication. This is the money they want for the medication, we have all these receipts. They felt just very strange. This didn't happen before, now it was happening.
Okay sit down. They brought me water, they brought juice, and then they asked me are you hungry? I said no, I am okay. Ah no, they have this thing, you have to eat. They brought me some food. Then the four of them went to the side, what does this lady want?
And they said is this all?
Abdo asked me for the prescription. He saw one prescription was for kids and the other for adults, for tuberculosis for two people. The place is cold and the tuberculosis was starting to just get worse. He said okay, now you can go, I will tell the gatekeeper to go with you and buy the medication, okay? I said okay.
Then I told him my sister is outside. He said why don't you let her come in and you eat the food together. They called Fahtima, and she came inside. When she came, they looked at me, I am from the South, they looked at her, she's like from Nuba
Mountains. Abdo asked her name and where she was from. Oh, welcome, have a seat.
We are just going to give you the money now. He didn't want the guy to go now. Maybe earlier he figured that I needed the money for myself, but since he saw Fahtima he now felt confident that we really needed the money for the medication. They brought the money while we were eating.
Later Fahtima was like you are tough, nobody came here to this office since we got to Eritrea, she came like two months before me. I said thank God, we now know where to get help. If they are here enjoying the money, we need to enjoy that money with them, let them give the people the medication.
280 After that when people were sick they would say, could you go and see the Umma
Party, if they can help us?
Then there was Ramadan, and we have Muslims, from the South, in the camp.
After we brought the medication people in the camp were wondering that they didn't
have enough sugar for Ramadan. I said you can go to the Umma Party, trust me they
will give it. They said these people helped you, we don't know why they give you all
this money to buy the medication and bring it here. When the guys go there they chase
them away all the time, we think it's your luck. Then I told one boy, from West Sudan,
Mutwakil, let us write nice letters to them about the money we received for the
medication, and then we can ask them for the Ramadan too. He was like this is too
much begging. I said this is not begging, this is our money, this is Sudan money, and
we really need the stuff. Then he said I think you are doing the right thing, let's write
the letter. That day I was so mad, these men left me out, they formed a committee by
themselves, they wrote the letter. See men, what they do? Two days later Mutwakil
came to me, we made a committee that day after I talked to you. I said now you see like
I am a woman, I can't do anything. But I am going to prove you wrong now, you will
see, maybe the stuff will not be brought to you, can you not see that? He thought I was
joking. Me and Fahtima wrote another letter, we need things for kids, like candies, blah,
blah, and that we want to celebrate Ramadan as at home before, when we celebrated
Ramadan with each and every one, there was a lot of stuff in the letter. And thank you
for the medications that you bought, you made these people better. The committee
didn't do this, they just wrote a short letter, with too much give me, give me.
281 Two days later two people from Umma Party came to the camp for the first time.
They asked where is Athaia, where is Fahtima? They called us now with our names, they knew us. We said welcome, and I said come to my house. I made tea and a dumpling thing. They were so happy, they said we received your letter, thank you. We know that you really need help, but we also received another letter from another team, we don't know them. That's why they came back to us, to ask who these people are, maybe they need the things for their own benefit. We pretended we didn't know them. They didn't write their names, they said the letter is from a committee in the camp. It's good you wrote your names, we can identify that you need things for each and all. They told us you should come to the office. That was the first time we met the leader of the Umma Party,
Sadiq al Mahdi, he was waiting for us, pleased to see us. He said sit down, you are doing a good job, you know that we are part of you and you know that we are Sudanese. We are happy to see you do these things, and your letter here. Two boys will go to the camp and bring the things for you, bring the money, take the kids for shopping, and there is money for you to cook food for everybody for Ramadan, Eid Mubarak. Then they brought lots of candies for the kids, they brought four big sheep, they brought onion and oil, and they brought milk. They brought money, almost two hundred dollars, for the kids to be dressed up. We took them as a group to the market and bought everyone what they wanted, so the kids can be happy. They brought like seven hundred Birr, like two hundred dollars something, for the women to cook the food.
That day from the office they dropped us back by car. Mutwakil saw the driver, he knew him, he came running, what did you do with the letter? The driver said I didn't
282 see your letter, I don't know, you didn't talk to me. For a one month the committee didn't see these things, then they saw all the kids stuff and the food coming. They came back to us, what did you and Fahtima do? I said we did nothing, we just wrote an appreciation letter about the money and told them the kids need things for Eid. What did you write in your letter? They said that is not the point.
From that time it was good. The Umma Party came to the camp officials and said if anybody in the camp has a drug prescription they should just bring it and the office would take care of it. It worked for everybody after that. After the UN closed where could people in the camp go, nowhere, but this is the way things opened up.
If at that time I had the same mind like the other people and said I am not going to talk to these people, I hate them, where could they get the help? That's why I said there are good people and there are bad people. That all of them are bad, I don't agree with that. And we have bad people, we Southerners have them too, that is how nature is.
That's why I said you don't judge people by the way other people act, you judge them by the way they each do.
Maybe the Umma Party was looking for some support, you don't know. But they were really so happy to see families, refugees from the South, asking them for help, that opened their heart. They had Arab people in the camp by that time, but it was a pleasure for them to see people from the South look at them like they are the same. That is when they opened doors for everyone there. Now the Arabs said you are eating our money, blab, blab. For me this is Sudanese money, it's not anybody's money, it's all of our money. If there is a chance for us to use it we can all get it.
2£3 Alek
And you apply for resettlement.
You go to the UN office, some people were coming out.
The first time, the UN did something bad for the Sudanese, in Egypt. They didn't
want to give us the resettlement. Every day they said come back tomorrow, you go back
and they say come back again. We just came from morning to stay there until evening,
nothing, the next day the same thing. Sometime you don't have money to pay for the bus, the transport, and we just borrow money from someone to come and wait. And your file,
after you make it, they reject it. They, the Egyptians in the UN, are not good. The
Sudanese don't like that.
One day they were so angry, they said we are going to stay there, sleeping there,
outside the UN office, to see what's going on until the end. People came from far, like
from one hour to five hours away. We just joined together in Cairo because the UN office
is in Cairo. You go there and you sleep there. We all stayed until something happened. It happened after two days, on the third day.
I remember I went from morning until evening, no food, no water, until eleven.
Everyone was sleeping on the ground, some women had little kids. Then in the middle of the night, twelve something, they brought a lot of Egyptian policemen in cars. Some went
inside, to the third floor or the fourth floor, and brought a hose with cold water, like with the fire engine, they put water on everyone sleeping down there. Just think if you are
sleeping and then cold water goes on your body, how will be your reaction? You can run
away, something happened and you don't know what happened, but everything was
284 water. Kids crying, everything was a mess. Some ladies had kids, some were pregnant.
They just held them the pregnant women by one leg and the other and dragged them on the ground. Some with babies, they just grabbed them, with the babies heads banging on the ground, and they don't care what happens to the baby, if it died or gets hurt in the head, just throwing people outside the UN gate. You go out, from the gate, and the police are still catching you, beating you up, they want to leave the whole area. They have a big stick, like a cane with electricity, when it touches you it gives you kahraba, like electricity, they beat us with it.
And we, when we saw this with the babies and the pregnant women, we didn't like it, we went to fight with the police and they started using the water and the stick with electricity. They beat my sister-in-law in the forehead, she's living in Vancouver now, it cut her and it was just blood, blood. She fell, I stayed with her down there, we waited for the ambulance, they took her to the hospital.
Some, they broke their arms, their legs, some were so bad. That day was so bad.
People were crying, the police pushed them. Some, they were just carrying them, one took you by your feet and another one carried you by the shoulder, and they just throw you on the ground. If you saw them, it was so bad, really so bad. I said oh, the journalists are supposed to be here, to take photographs.
Then they brought big police trucks and put us inside. Some, they took them to the jail if they caught them. If you were so lucky you ran away the other way and they couldn't catch you.
285 I had a new watch, Adol's aunt's husband brought it from Riyadh, he gave it to
me when I graduated from university. One policeman just took it out, you can't just take
it. You just look, your watch is going or your gold is going, you cannot talk. I said you just come to rob the people or to handle the situation, to take people out from the UN
compound.
Some people who came from far, we took them to our hostel, they were sleeping
there. In the morning we just collected money to buy food for them, for the kids. They
stayed with us like three, four days and then they went back to their places.
In the morning people, I think Sudanese people told those Egyptian people who
are always looking for these stories, they wrote in the papers. After that, I think, some
Sudanese students took some papers to Geneva, and UN were following that. Then the
UN started to take people for the application, and then they took them for resettlement.
Athaia
Our next visit to the UN office, the Monday after we came to the camp, we came almost
at the weekend, was for the interview, to ask like how did you come to Humera, they
knew how we came from there, do you have a problem with the government, to put your
case on file, like for any refugees. It was done in a short time. Then, they told us there
was some form we have to fill up. We did all that, but we didn't know we were accepted
for resettlement.
286 Our protection officer was so good, a gentleman. He looked at you as a human being. He wasn't just looking at us like refugees, he was looking at us like a brother. He always came, oh sister, what happened today, is there something wrong? Come and tell me. His name is Justin Ukel, he is from Kenya.
He said okay, you filled the forms. I am going to Nairobi now, I have a meeting in the Canadian Consulate. Let me go with your forms, finish this and come back. If your resettlement happens maybe in March you will be going to Canada. But we didn't know about this, we came for our own thing, that Sudan is not safe, we didn't have it in our mind to go to Canada or anywhere, just that we have to leave our country to go Uganda.
So, now we were there in Asmara in November 1995.
When, in '96, Justin came back, he was still holding our papers with him. He said now they don't need UN offices here, we are traveling tomorrow. But I will make sure that these forms with me get processed. It is a promise, I will do everything in Addis
Ababa and make this work. I will be in touch with you, I will send a person to see you and talk to you in particular about this because there is no time. There is not a lot you can do now.
So, we were there. And then it was the second year, 1997. We received a letter in
June from the protection officer, a regular letter from Kenya, it didn't have the UN stuff on it. He wrote to me, I was the one who always talked to him. Hey Athaia, How are you? I hope your group is doing well. I am just going to tell you congratulations, soon you are going to have your medicals. I am not going to tell you when but I promise it will be in this year. I hope you call me at this number.
:• 287 I had to pass this message to the others. I was very excited, I wanted to tell the guys. But I was scared, if I told them the Sudanese people in the camp would beat them up because no one left from that camp. Then I asked the guys, are you going to the church, Anglican Church, tomorrow, are you staying for the practice? Please you have got to stay for the practice. They can't understand the Eritrean language properly and so they normally didn't stay, I did.
In the Church one friend from Nigeria was there. He said I checked my email, you have a letter from Justin, did you pick it up? He said you have your medical on August
17th, Justin mentioned the day to him. He said you have to go to the office and get your letter. I said okay, but I know I took the letter.
After the Church finished I grabbed one boy. I didn't want to tell them about my letter but I said Franco got an email from Justin that on August 17th we have the medicals. They discussed it. Oh, the people will kill us tomorrow, and that they can't believe it. So everybody went individually to Franco to ask him. You are going, on
August 17th you have the medicals, blab, blab, I even know the name of the doctor. You come to my office, I will print this out. Everybody took printouts.
Then I told my husband we got the letter a week ago but Justin didn't tell us the date, of course he was scared. I was scared to tell you because I know that people in the camp were all mad, if I told you guys and you talk about it then we are already done here in the camp. In fact the people already said oh, these are not refugees, these are Kenyans, because my husband speaks Swahili, to complicate our cases before. I said that's why I was quiet. We felt so happy. Then everybody needed a photocopy of my letter. We stayed for two, three months and then they called us for the medicals. I worked with the kids, I helped them with nutrition. The camp manager just came, he was screaming, he thought that maybe I was there in the centre but I wasn't, I was in my house, and he was doing this around the housing. Athaia, where are you? You have your medicals. Congratulations you are going to Canada. I went out, I started talking to him in
Tigrinya language. He said oh, you are doing it secretly? You are going, you have your medical, I received the file. I am the camp manager, I am going to take you to the doctor.
It's only two days from today, so you have to get ready.
That was all. It caused trouble again, after they heard we were going to Canada people fought. They went to the UN, they closed the doors, they did whatever, shouting out there, making noise, saying its not fair that some people go and some people are left behind, like why did these people's medical appear and their cases are accepted for resettlement and ours are not.
But there was a difference. Some of them came from the SPLA, they were soldiers. When they come the UN asked them what happened. The people couldn't put their words together, I think it didn't make sense to the protection officer that these people are really refugees, they really run away, like they stole some way out, they couldn't connect all the things together. That's what makes other people fail in the interview.
One lady slapped my husband, just like that. The point is in Eritrea when two people fight you both get arrested and you remain in the lock up until the judge sees your name and calls you, you can stay there for six months. The good thing was that the camp
2S9 manager saw them from far away. He said why did you slap Henry? She was like he was
looking strangely at me because he is going to Canada. The camp manager said no, this
guy was playing dominoes with his friends, you came and just slapped him. That is not
right. If you do it again I am going to arrest you until these people leave Eritrea, because
you are causing a problem now. She got scared, and she went away.
Then, we stayed. The situation with the food became so difficult. Because the UN
was not there everything became difficult, it was very tough now for the people who were
living there.
Then, we got a call again after Christmas, and we met someone from the
Canadian Consulate, he came to Eritrea to see us. He asked how do you like it here, how
will you like it when you go there, what are you going to do when you get there? It's not
easy there, it is also tough like here but there is a difference between here and there.
There you can still achieve what you want and you can do whatever you want to do. It
depends on you what you get out from that country, the way you put yourself together. Its
not that somebody is going to do things for you, it's you who are going to do it yourself.
You know why you are going, so it's good that you promise yourself, that you are going to work for yourself, you are going to go to school, and for your children, from here and
it is going to be easy for you. Although it's tough there in other ways it is going to be
easy too. After that he went back to Kenya and sent us a letter, you guys are going this time.
We prepared ourselves, they just said September but we didn't know when we were going in 1997. We were there holding up and waiting for this moment to come. It
290 was the five people who went, me, my husband, Yahya Kang in London, Ontario, Jacob
Apara in Winnipeg and Edgar in Saskatoon, who came to Canada from Eritrea.
Eventually, around that time, people started dying in the camp, kids started dying.
You see like the world is coming to an end and you are still there watching that.
Now, there is nobody there. Till two years ago, like from 2000 to 2003, they took them all out, the refugees who were remaining in Asmara. They were all packed up and brought to Holland. I have some friends, they called from Holland, and only two families went to Finland. They dumped them there, this is called dumping. It's a refugee camp again, in Holland, even now. They have a big place, a building, for refugees. My friend there said, the difference here is we have food, and we dress well, and we go to school, but we are not permanent residents here. So it's a refugee camp. Some of them even returned, went back home, by themselves, the single ones. Those who have children stay for them, so that they can have a better future. I was joking with my friend, they have to learn Dutch, and they want to learn English but they can't. I was saying you didn't want to learn Tigrinya in Eritrea and now you have no choice, you have to learn Dutch.
Lubanga
I met three teachers, Canadian, Australian and British at Machakos Secondary School where I was doing my A Level. I talked to them about my limited opportunities for education in Kenya. They couldn't believe that. I said that is exactly it, I am here because
291 a priest helped me to here. They checked it out and they found it was true. They said the three of us will do everything to get you out of Kenya.
As I mentioned earlier, at first the Kenya Government did not want to officially recognize us as refugees. But by about 1966 when our numbers had increased, the
Kenyan government began to accept that we were refugees there, in order to get funding from the international community, to take care of us. Once Kenya recognized us, the UN followed. Now, if one got a chance to go out the UN would give us a UN Traveling
Document because the Sudan government would not give passports to refugees, unless for a one way return to the Sudan, and the Kenyan government would not give one either.
The UN Traveling Document was usually clearly marked, 'stateless', because there was supposedly no country which you could return to. So the country that takes you is where you are. If they have to deport you they have to deport you to a country that accepts you.
That's one good thing about it, I did not give up the UN Traveling Document until I became a landed immigrant in Canada.
The three teachers applied on my behalf to universities in their countries. I ended up getting acceptance to universities in the UK, in Canada and in Australia. I just put these three in front of me and I said well, I will take the one in the middle, Canada is between Australia and the UK. That is how I chose Canada. It was a total lottery, and I was the luckiest because I got all those three.
There was also an opportunity for me to go to America but I had to go through
Fourah Bay, a Sierra Leonean College that has a lot of connection with American universities. Everything was done for me and three other Sudanese to go to Fourah Bay
292 College. But we did not go. We were told by an official in the American Embassy in
Nairobi that our acceptance there had been cancelled. No reason was given. But actually
Kenyan students ended up going, taking those four places. The Sudanese were replaced by Kenyans, somebody in the Ministry of Education or whoever did it. But I did not care then, I had these three opportunities. I took the Canadian one, that is how I ended up here.
Now, for the universities I had to have local sponsors. My Canadian teacher was the son of one of the sponsoring families in Nelson, BC, British Columbia. When he told his father about me, he immediately accepted to bring me to Canada. And a group of big businessmen in Nelson joined him to sponsor me. Then my Canadian sponsors convinced the UN that they had the funds to transport me here and back if need be, and also ensured them that I would get all my expenditures paid for, for the full four years. They would be responsible for everything, for the four years, for medical care, fees, everything. They wrote a letter to the UN office in Nairobi, showed their assets and explaining their willingness to sponsor me. Given their combined financial capability, the UN agreed to give me a UN Traveling Document for traveling to Canada.
My sponsors then wrote a letter to the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi, that there is a Sudanese refugee student in Nairobi who is accepted at Notre Dame
University of Nelson, they are his local sponsors and this is what they are prepared to do.
If the UN gives this fellow a traveling document, would you be willing to issue him a student visa as a stateless person? The Canadian government said yes. That's how I got here.
293 Amani
Jim asked my husband if he wanted to go to Canada. My husband said ya, if I got the chance it's good, why not? Jim said, I am going to give you a form, fill it. He said
Canada is better, than staying in the camp, because there you can get a job or go to school. Kamal said okay. Then he told me that Jim, this white guy from Australia, was going to try for us to go to Canada.
But people were sitting in Nairobi for years, five, six years, they wanted to come to Canada. Every time they filled the form they got rejected, they do it over and over. I told him, we can't get a chance to go, we better go back to Sudan. Look how many years we have just been running from city to city, with the war, we are tired, we better go home. Kamal said no, let's try, if we don't get it then it's okay.
We were really lucky because the guy helped, he took the form with my husband to fill it up or something. In just two weeks they called us to do the medical checkup. We did the medical checkup, everything, and in exactly twenty eight days we came to
Canada.
Alek
The Canadian Embassy took a lot more people than UN, and nobody was going to the
UN.
This started from 1995, a little bit until 1996 when it was not a lot of people, they sent some people but others were waiting like one year, two years, three years. From
294 1997 up, after we left, Canada, and US, took more people. Sometime they took like three trips, in the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the month. During November sometimes they were not bringing people because they said they have a holiday here, nobody is working in the office until January. When January came they started from the beginning, the application, the registration, the interviews, and they selected people and prepared them for Canada. Then they make a new group for resettlement. That's what happened until now.
I heard when they signed the peace they don't let some people come, they just keep them in. UN can take you but they protect you inside Egypt, you do not come out.
They say we are going to protect you inside but I don't think so, that they can protect them there. So people want to come out.
We applied. I made the application by myself. I wrote Adol's name and then I wrote some things that happened to him, a lot of things happened. I looked for someone to help me with English, I spoke to him in Arabic and he wrote it down in English, and then I said put it there that he is engaged. The day when he would be called for an interview we would already be finished with the official wedding ceremony, and then he can put me in as his wife. Then I sent in the letter. Adol didn't know this.
When I came back I talked to him. You know you took some people going to
Canada to the airport, we are soon going to go like that. He thought it was a joke. I said I sent the letter, I think soon, in one month or two months, they are going to take us. All our friends thought that I was just making like fun.
295 It took two months, we got the result back. They said you are okay, you can go with us, but fill out the application first. If you don't bring back the application in sixty days you will not be allowed to apply again. Tariq found the form at the address at Sacred
Heart, we all gave this address for our mail. He waited for us. Adol came first, he saw the papers and he went somewhere saying he will come back. I came later, Tariq was laughing so much, Alek congratulations, you are in now. And Simon, Adol's friend and the best man at our wedding, was laughing, Alek the day when you told us, were you serious? You said that I will keep staying here in Egypt and you will be going to Canada, if I didn't file my papers I cannot go, do it. I couldn't believe you then, now I do.
After that I gave the form to Adol to fill it out, and he left. He was living far away and we just met sometimes in the church. When he came he called me and then we would meet. I said bring the application with you. Okay. When he came back he came with ten fingers. Adol, where is the application? I didn't fill it out the other day.
Then I went with him to his place, I said please could you bring the application?
That day he had a lot of guests, they came to his place, they just kept talking, talking about the government, what is happening, the same as here, he was the same way in
Egypt. I just cooked in the kitchen, made tea, made food, until the time was over. I said I am leaving, I didn't ask for the paper.
After two days I called him, Adol did you finish everything, we just have two days left, could you send that paper before the last two days? Ya, ya. Another week just went like that, everything was a gone case.
296 I went to Adol's house. He had some people there but that day I didn't get scared.
We went in the room, and I asked where's the paper? He said I didn't finish it, I don't want to finish it, I don't want to go. You don't want to finish it, you don't want to go, why didn't you tell me all this time? If you told me I could make my papers by myself, and I would put in my parents names. When Canada took me then I would bring them to
Egypt and then I would go with them, why did you do this to me? And then you say I am not going. He said I want to go to Nairobi, I want to go to the war. I said you are not going to Nairobi, if you are going for the war I will take that ring out, and then send a letter back home to our parents. I will say I don't want you, you don't want me. When you go there then you don't know me, I don't know you, that's it. Earlier you said you wanted to go there, with that application, why didn't you make it then? He was quiet. I said give me the application. He said I am not giving it to you. Then I left, I was angry.
That time we were going to have a Sudanese celebration, of all different cultures,
I went there for practice. My cousin, he is in Edmonton now, he said Alek, what happened? I said Adol did something bad, he didn't send the application. Everyone wanted the application like us, and some people they didn't find the application at all. If you find it like this and you are going to lose it, no. My brother was angry. I said leave it, that's a gone case, I want to do a new one for me.
Then in September Adol said he was going to be finished soon with the
th university, he wanted the wedding on September 5 . My parents said no, it's too close.
They wanted to give a bit of a gap, like one month, to prepare for the service, in October.
I said to Adol, September 5th is so close and we also have a big celebration for the 291 Sudanese, you can't do these things. Then he changed it, the wedding was going to be on
October 24th, is it good? My parent said it is better.
The father in the church went to Rome, he said when he came back he was going to announce the wedding but now he put the notice outside on the wall that the wedding is coming up for Adol and Alek, if someone has something to say about Alek or Adol let them come and tell us before the wedding. We waited for the father, when he came back we did the wedding celebrations.
After the wedding Adol took me to his uncle's place. After three weeks uncle asked, Alek I remember you have an application, did you send it in? I said ask your brother's son. He said Adol, what happened, did you send the application? I said maybe he is keeping it in. Uncle was so angry. He said this country, check this country, you want to stay here? Everybody wants to go out, everybody wants to find his life. You guys took two months, some people wait two years, one year, some people have kids and they couldn't find the application. Now you want to play with the application, you say you just kept it in and everything is gone. What's wrong with you, where is the application? Adol said it was inside the bag. Uncle said could you go now, get it? Then he checked it and said could you fill it out now? Adol filled everything in. Then uncle said take a pen and paper and write an apology, what happened with those paper when you found them. Adol was quiet when his uncle was talking, he cared for his uncle. He said the day when they sent the form you were not here in Cairo and nobody told you that you have a form from the Canadian Embassy, so it took more than the sixty days. Now when you came to visit, to do something in Cairo, you found the person who got the application, he said I didn't
29% know where you are. Just short like that. Adol wrote it. It was ten o'clock at night, uncle said go out, look for a computer now, he gave him the money. Adol was walking in the night looking for a computer, when he didn't find a typist he came home.
In the morning uncle woke us up, he gave us money. Do you know the photographs, four photographs, are eighty Gineh el Masri, that's a lot of money. If you do get them early you don't pay a lot of money for the colour picture.
Then Adol took all the things downtown and went to the Embassy. The lady there, if she doesn't like the applications she can tell you to go away. And when something like this came up, she didn't like it. She can tell you to go, you can't do anything. Then, when you wait for the window, people can't find place where you can put your feet. When
Adol got to the window he told Samah the story, this is the letter of apology. She read the letter and said go, we are going to give you the result soon.
It took one month and then they brought the result, could you come for the interview?
When we went for the interview, the same day they gave us the medicals. Earlier, like for uncle Dau, when they came here, you did the medical checkup on your own, by your own money. If you didn't have money for the medicals you could lose everything when the day for it was gone. It's expensive, for one person it's a little bit, you can work and you can find the money, but for a big family, how are you going to find the money.
They, the Canadian Embassy, say the medical place in Egypt want like a thousand Gineh el Masri, how are you going to get the thousand or eight hundred? It is a lot of money.
299 They changed this practice from us and two other families. We didn't pay anything before coming, you have to pay it all back after you get here.
People said you are so lucky, Alek and Adol filled the application, it took two months and then they brought the application for resettlement, the application expired and then they sent it in, it took one month and they gave them a call for an interview, they passed the interview and then they gave them the medicals, they got married, within two months she got pregnant. How come they are going fast, with everything?
Then when we came home, my uncle was so happy. He said Adol, you wanted to lose everything.
The guy who did the interview, Andrew, that's a nice guy, if you find him you can pass, if you didn't find him they can reject you. He asked what do you want to do when you arrive in Canada? Adol said I am not ready to go now because I am in the last year, fourth year, in university. The exam is going to start in the middle of June till July
20th, something like that. Andrew said okay, do you want me to put it that way, for you to go later? Adol said if you put it that way it's good. Tony said if we have a trip soon and you find your name there, tell me, and I can change your trip for until when you are done.
Then we left. Adol was so happy, people were so happy.
When the trip list came out in June Adol said I want to go now. Adol could you finish? He said no. Sometimes he went to the University, sometimes he didn't, just relaxed at home. Adol you don't have class today? No, I don't have class. But he had it and he said I don't have it. Why are your friends from the same class going, how come they have class and you don't? Then he said Alek, I am not going for class, I am just
300 preparing myself to go to Canada. I know you are going to Canada, but finish and then you can go. He said no, I want to go now. Some people when they went from here to there they said it is different here, you have a lot of money. That's what Adol put in his mind, he said I am going to make money. Want to go to make money, and you don't want to finish your university? I am going to study there. I said could you go to the university and take your papers, and then when you go there you can go to finish it or they will take you down to the third or second year and then you could start from the beginning, it is better for you to finish. Then I thought he took the papers but he didn't. Two days before we left, he said I am going first, and then I am going to send letters for my friend to take my papers, he will send them to me. Adol are you sure about this? He said yes. I said okay.
Adol was happy. He went to the IOM, for the orientation. They were telling us something different from what you find inside here in Canada. They said Canada is a good country, when you go there you can find a job, you can work with us, you can make money and then you can have a good life, you can have a house, a house that you are going to work for and then buy, its not that you just go in and take the house, you work, and then you go back home or you do something. But nothing.
Then, two or three days before you leave IOM brings you a small paper, a temporary travel document, from Red Cross, you carry this. And they give you an envelope with a Geneva address. They say, when you go to Canada put the paper in the envelope and send it to Geneva. But at the airport here they took the paper and the envelope and said they will send it to Geneva. After that when you go to the airport in
301 Egypt the Canadian Embassy people give you some papers, landed papers, and some books, in a blue bag. Your name is inside the bag, hold your bag, don't lose it, if you lose it it's a problem, that's the paper with which you go there, the landed paper, you put them with the Red Cross paper. Then before you go inside the plane, they want a picture for the Red Cross paper. You give them the picture, they put it on the small paper, it has everything, the date of birth, your weight, your thumbprint and your signature.
Then we came, from Egypt to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to here.
Khalid
I never wanted to come to the west, to Canada.
Part of it was because I worked with the foreign embassy for some time, I worked with NGOs sometimes, and I did a lot of reading in the university. We also had a lot of cultural centres and everything. So, I had an understanding of the west, it was abstract.
But I never actually thought it is this bad, because I knew it was bad. What was obvious for me was that there were at least two kinds of west, to put it that crudely, with different dynamics.
I knew there is racism, I knew that people work in McDonald's. So even before applying for the US Visa I sent a letter to a friend of mine. He is a Sudanese researcher, a well-known guy. Before he left the country we spent so much time together, we used to talk about this project of creating these cultural centres. So when they established a
Sudanese cultural centre in Cairo in the 90s I wrote to him, that it seemed like everybody
302 was leaving the country and I can't stay here by myself, I didn't even have anybody to talk to. Based on the budget of your centre if you have a job or something just let me know.
It wasn't really important at that point of time but in my letter I told him I really didn't want to do any of the underclass work. At that point there was a lot of talk about underclass, which is part of the Marxist model, it really worked very well, there are people, beyond that working class classification.
I was really scared that I would end up doing this sort of work in McDonald's. I had seen all these images, the movies, of all these black people suffering so much. So, it was just really terrifying going to United States, and a lot of people were going there at that point of time.
Part of it was that in my family there are a lot of people who have MAs and PhDs, and most of it was done in the west. They would always sort of joke around me, you didn't see anything in the world and we spent all this time in London. My sister and her husband always talked about the six years they spent in London for his PhD. But one of the things that I noticed was that they don't talk about anything that interested me in the west. They don't talk about theatre, they don't talk about movies, they don't talk about books. Every time they just talked about clothes and food, Kentucky Fried Chicken. What the hell is he talking about? Kentucky Chicken all the time. It was just very funny. We are allowed to make jokes in this recording, right? And my cousin came from Holland, and at that point of time she didn't actually talk about their visit.
303 They really loved the west, talking in terms of colonialism. Sudanese
intellectuals' evaluation of an institution to work with, the government or a company, was to a large extent based on if this institution, corporation or unit would actually send you somewhere abroad to do certain courses. Traveling was part of the prestige of the institution that you joined, if it gave you training in London or something, it's really awful. That's how, for example, in the University of Khartoum all our teachers had their
certification from British universities or even some Canadian universities. So there is this high regard for somebody who has spent time abroad. And they used this sometimes as punishment for people like us, by saying you guys didn't really go anywhere.
But for us because we are leftist anyways, we really hated the west. We did not hate the west but we didn't really have that imaginary of spending our life in the west, as part of our political commitment. There is a lot of consumerism in the west. Visiting the west wasn't really an issue, to go to the west was to ask what is really attractive but attractive in a different sense.
So, even when I justified my coming here, it was that I was going to the other west, the other west meaning the west of Chomsky, Derrida, Sartre, James Joyce,
American writers, philosophers, and American and Western Cinema, the west of the leftists, who composed of our imaginary of the west because everything critical seemed to be coming from the west.
It was only after '89 that this political discourse was not dominant anymore among us. Then you started opening up to all kinds of seductions of going to all these countries, without really knowing why you were going there.
3M I went here. I had no idea why I was coming here, I had no objective whatsoever.
It was just one thing, that everybody was leaving and it started to feel unlivable in Sudan.
I had no passion for coming here. The only thing was that this was another chance for a better life, and to try and convince yourself about this. Most of us have been attracted to the idea that maybe we could finish post graduate studies somehow, which became very hard to do in Sudan after all this problem.
Still it was terrifying to go to the United States. I was really hoping that I wouldn't get the visa.
Santino
The US was fun, so nice. And there is a lot of money there.
I was there from '99 until 2003.1 was staying in New Hampshire. It is still the same house right now, my grandma is still there, my other uncle is still there, it's like my grandmother with her son. My uncle was there before. That is why we came to New
Hampshire, we could have gone somewhere else. And her daughter too, my aunt, she's there. She's got a house there, with the kids.
There I was going to school, and work. I was working because there is nothing else to do. I don't play basketball, so in the free time you better do something, make yourself busy. I was working at Loblaw's, same Loblaw like here, wearing the same uniform.
305 The only thing there was about the schools, it's not nice. I didn't have problems in school, only kids problems, I don't know, about girls. I don't think that's important, I had problems with girls, with the guys there and my money too. But you got to pay for school by yourself and you don't go to trips like here in high schools.
Khalid
I took the aeroplane, and I went to the United States.
I met a friend, Amin, and spent 12 days in Washington DC. I could have stayed in the United States like anybody else. Amin asked me if I brought my driving license with me. I said no. He said you have to have a driver's license to be in United States. I said no.
I had no plans to drive, I used to ride a motorcycle in Khartoum. And I had no desire to do all this pizza delivery you guys are doing.
Our first shock in this whole process was when Amin took us to his house. At that point of time you don't really have an idea of how people live. You saw it in the movies but in the movies people usually are living in huge big houses and they don't really have any living problems, at least many movies don't show it.
At that point of time he was busy because his wife's family was living with him in the same apartment. So he took us to one of his friend, and we were introduced. My friend was busy for a couple of days, and we spent five days looking out of the window of his house. And there were all these stupid American shows on Fox TV. This is just a retrospective. What the hell is this? This was my first shock, why the American TV is so.
306 We had nowhere else to go, this guy put us here and said I will come and give you
some tour, show you the city. So we kept looking out of the window and these raccoons, I
hate this animal, were standing all over the place.
It was all white, all snow everywhere, it was the end of December. I remember really talking to myself because this was just so depressing, I really came for this? This whole scene of snow and nobody being there. I kept looking for people and nobody
seemed to be getting out of their apartment, it was all closed. I always remember this.
And it kind of comes to that point that we talked about, about how the fiction
actually mixed with reality because this is exactly what happened to me. I keep saying this story so many times. I always think of the Three Days of the Condor. I like this
Robert Redford movie, I saw it a long time ago. There is always the scene, in some
American spy movies, where people get out of their houses, try to grab a newspaper from
outside. In this movie this person I think goes to put the garbage out for the garbage truck
and then suddenly instead of the guys taking the garbage three people show up with a machine gun and kill the guy. Every time I looked at all those garbage bins I was just watching this scene in my head, like maybe someone will come up and do the same thing.
This was very strange because it was all just mixed up, these ideas, these images of these places, of what I had in my head, and the reality. Living in United States seemed
completely unreal, close to what is real, sort of like a different reality. I am theorizing here but what really got to me was that the US just doesn't have that human touch. It just is not touchable enough. It's so still and so calm and so depressing.
307 Then we started talking about Canada, to start having some other hope, because I said I can't really live in this country. I met some Sudanese, and this was in only just twelve days, and they were not telling you any stories that were inspiring enough. Most of them are working very hard, and the best people I met at that point were not working with Americans. They were working with some Arab embassies. According to people there these guys are doing well. But the rest of the population seems like just engaging in labor work or living on welfare.
Now, for quite a long time I have really hated my own manual labor. So I don't even have a skill. I was like what should I do? I don't have a driving license. I don't really know how to work in these stores, like billing, the money machine, the till, always terrifies me. All my life I always stayed away from all these jobs, doing some work like research or translation. I don't do a lot of manual stuff, some of it because of laziness.
So we had to go to Canada. A friend of mine asked me to come to Minnesota but I didn't go there. I started talking to some people in Canada here. My wife had some friends and I knew some people in Canada. They said Canadians have more respect for refugees.
So I came here.
308 Santino
When I heard that in Canada it's free to study then why was I going to waste money all the time, better go to Canada, work, save the money and go to school for free. I told them this, I told my grandma.
But my dad didn't want me to be here, at least I told him about it. Right now I am free, you can't talk to me no more. He is in London and he wants me to be in US. And how come I will go there, as an order? I hate Europe, they are racist people there,
America and Canada is better than Europe.
Khalid
We had to go to New York because the train goes through it and then you get off at
Buffalo, where there is a bridge, Peace Bridge, to Canada. It's where you apply for refugee status. You have to cross the border but you don't go on toward the Canadian side. You apply there, at the Canadian Consulate.
When I got off the train at the station, the train left us in an almost isolated place.
Our friends brought us some coats based on the understanding of winter in Washington.
The coats were very light, and January 1994 was one of the worst winters in Canada. It was really tough. We had all our bags, three, four bags. I remember we were carrying all these things, and we didn't even know where we were going. We asked someone in the train and he said this is the place, you get off here, and the train was gone. There was nothing. It was too damn cold and dark.
309 From where the train dropped us it felt like at least fifteen minutes to go to the station where there are cars. I don't know why the train stopped there, so far. We kept on going, asking where we could get a taxi because the whole plan was to get here, take a taxi to this Canadian Consulate and then apply for refugee status. We had this scenario as told to us, to do.
Then we saw some place that was open, we went there. It was like a store or some kind of a garage. Suddenly some guy came, stopped us and asked us to get the hell out of here, we shouldn't get into the place. We didn't know where to go, it was too cold and we had been carrying these bags for almost fifteen minutes. We felt so tired and exhausted.
We just sat, took some rest. We were supposed to see some kind of cars or some lights, we couldn't see it. It was so terrifying, I was so terrified. Imagine somebody, newly married, and we left the country with all these huge, big celebrations, and then it seemed like our end was so close. It was really, really bad. I will never forget that day. It was so harsh.
Then we went to find a taxi. The cab guy looked at us like we seemed like refugees. Racism actually worked for us right then because he identified us right away. I don't know how, but we looked like refugees. He came to us and said you guys are going to the refugee place. We said yes. The guy asked, where are you from? I told him that we are from Sudan. Oh ya, we know Sudan, the country where they cut their hands.
At the Canadian Consulate we were told to wait for a few days. So we went outside. We found the same cab guy there. He said don't worry guys, there is a refugee centre, a safe house, where they have rooms, some food.
310 It's some kind of an NGO. They ask certain things, like migration papers, you register your names and they give you a small room. You guys can stay here. There were so many people there. We met people who had been there for years, like a man from
South America, the Canadian Consulate sent him back every time, giving him a hard time.
I lost a lot of money in that place, it got stolen. It was hard earned money, one thousand five hundred US dollars. It's not a lot of money, but in term of Sudan that money required you to work for a long time. I think I know who stole the money but I had no proof, I couldn't even ask him. And my wife got really sick. The whole place was just terrible, a lot of worries.
We spent seven days there. It was too cold in Buffalo, I only went out a couple of times to bring some food from the store because the kind of food that they give the people there is just uneatable, at that point it was all different to us anyway. We had some money, so we bought our food from outside.
After seven days we took a cab back again to the Canadian Consulate.
311 And another story ends/begins. A justification.
But hey, before, you asked me why Sudanese.
Like I said I knew my friends in India.
Didn't see any victims among them at all.
But even among the Tamils from Sri Lanka who I did my research with before, there were no victims.
So I don't really have a good answer.
But I really liked doing this, meeting people from Sudan, knowing them, you.
Maybe also that it allowed me to be in your communities without having to belong in the same way as people from the communities, from Sudan, have to or do, even when I did follow certain rules as such.
Not to say that these rules are only rigid, even for you.
With people from Sri Lanka it was still too close. I could be and was questioned, by some of them at least, about my Tamilness or rather the lack of it.
I was asked even by some people from Sudan about my Indianness but it was easier to explain it, away.
Still the time when I knew I was going to do research with people from Sudan for sure, was after listening to Professor Ambrose Beny accidentally at the Anti-War
Conference in Montreal in 2002. Listening to him was like listening to many of my friends from Sudan in India. His sense of self-respect, understanding, politics and dignity was enough for me to make this decision.
312 Nothing more, and nothing less, finally, or as justification.
But then as you also ask, could I not do this, this research, with anybody, any
'people'? Also with not just one community, but with people from all, many, communities who came as refugees to Canada.
Yes, but no. I wanted to do this, learned so much doing this, even enjoyed it. And though my project is really about contesting the dominant refugee discourse(s), I can't even begin to start doing this without knowing some people and knowing them well.
If my conversations with you for anywhere between thirty minutes to even ten hours in terms of formal recordings were enough to make this knowing possible, no. And
I did interact with people outside this setting, in intense and fleeting ways as well. Still is that knowing a people, I don't think so even though it is definitely a part of it. And should
I not have stuck to the stories of a few people, going back to them again and again to know people better? Maybe. And of course, whatever I do, knowing of a people is an impossibility. So maybe knowing is a wrong word, to start with.
But I really wanted to tell about people from Sudan, men, women and children, so many people, who do so many things, who did so many things, who want to and will do so many things.
I wanted to show multiplicity and fragmentedness, that nothing is given about a people, as Sudanese as well, and really for me that is the way to contest the dominant refugee discourse(s), or any dominant discourse(s) for that matter, that creates, establishes and functions based (up)on invented boundaries. It doesn't really exist, in reality, except when we keep repeating it in one way or another.
313 So I can't say 'refugees', as the starting point or the concluding point of my research.
I can't even say Sudanese, or even Canadian. But I do.
Because of what I think is the larger project, the politics behind this research. And then I hope I don't say it in a way that makes it seem as though all people even from a particular people, place, are the same.
And even now there are so many unsaid stories.
And I have no straight answers.
But a conviction, a political conviction.
314 How is conviction enough? Readers' conversations.
Ya. It is not.
You need to prove your point. What the problem is, as well as what you think is going
on, maybe your argument about the problem, and even the solution.
No, I think politics matter. I don't know if I would call it conviction, but politics yes.
And that can take the form of a conviction.
That can be dangerous.
Yes, but I don't really see conviction here as a problem. Since the conviction is not about
the solution but about fighting, and wanting to fight.
Ya, I see that.
No.
Yes...
But what I also don't see, is much of Deepa, in the writing.
How do you mean?
She isn't intervening in the stories. Not telling us what she thinks of them.
Ya.
Oh, I see her everywhere, all through the writing.
Hmm, maybe she should make that clear.
I think she does.
And I don't care if I don't see her, what I care for are the stories.
315 I like them.
I don't.
They make me think.
Ya, I didn't know much of this before.
Me, I am from there, but I too didn't know some of this.
It makes me look at things a little different.
It's what I already knew.
You know I travelled in many places, in Sudan too.
Oh, I was just in one place, and then outside Sudan I have travelled a bit.
I care if I see Deepa in the stories.
But I think the fact that she isn't there is what makes the stories even more interesting.
If I didn't know her I would see even less of her in the writing.
Which is a good thing, for the kind of disruption of the author, authoritative voice, it creates.
And then one can become part of the stories too.
It's strange I feel myself in them.
I don't.
To me this sometimes seem almost evasive, that she can pretend not to be there.
I don't think it's a pretence, but an intent. Her presence, like I said, is in the form of the writing.
316 Convictions.
One way or another.
About what ought to be.
What suffices.
What else can be done.
317 In Canada
All immigrants here are refugees.
Did you apply as refugee?
No, as a skilled worker.
Is a different process, points based, not humanitarian, purely economic.
Still bad, long, too many questions and procedures.
Khalid
First, at the Canadian Consulate at the US border they asked us a couple of strange questions. I don't remember the questions exactly, but something about where are you from, how did you come to the United States and things like that.
And then they asked us to come back on Thursday. That was not really our understanding. We thought we could go just then to Canada, that something will be told to us. Not that they will ask you to go back again. So where should we go?
The guy said I don't know.
After seven days, when we got back the guys interrogated us. The whole process is interrogation. It always sounds like interrogation. Even the first time it was. It is kind of interesting because you are going to have to tell them a story of why you apply for refugee status. They keep asking you certain questions, exactly where are you coming from, what kind of organization you are a part of, what countries did you go through, why did you choose Canada, why didn't you stay in the United States, where are you going. It's like they just write down all these kind of questions. You just keep answering. And become imprisoned in this country.
There are two kinds of questioning. The first time, at the border, they ask you these general questions, and then they will question you in detail, at the
Immigration and Refugee Board, IRB, hearing, in relation to your process.
I was lucky because I got an expedited hearing. The format of the expedited hearing is that there is no real judge but some immigration officer. So I didn't really have to answer all the questions all over again. We were lucky because they brought most of the information from the Consulate into the court.
They do this sometimes. And that's why later on people started telling people, you guys have to be careful saying certain thing at the border, so that you do not get into trouble later.
Anyway, at the Consulate, they keep asking you these questions, and you have to give them all these answers. There's just a table with an immigration officer, asking you questions for like thirty five or forty five minutes. It wasn't very long.
But this is all questioning from an immigration officer's point of view, which coming here sometimes you can't understand. It takes the form of interrogation. And there is always the sense that you come here for a free ride. It's very interesting. They just talk and think like we are sort of like most other people. But we came from the Northern part of the country and we have been living a kind of life that's not that terrible.
Also, you don't really get to be interrogated like that. The only people who can interrogate you like that is for criminal interrogation, which you try to avoid, or when you get into the interrogation of the security police in Sudan. In these cases you exactly know the format. You know what to expect, because most of our friends, since most of our life was around politicians, were in prisons.
There is a lot of literature, lots of experiences, and people tell stories, people you know in prison, friends, hundreds of them. So you have an idea. You have skills to deal with it. You have been educated about what to expect if you get caught.
You know the security officer will ask you certain questions, and you know they even beat you. So you get prepared.
But there was nothing preparing us for this exercise. The Sudanese will never tell you this exactly, they just ask you a couple of questions and you sign.
What actually happens is very strange.
Then, after they take our pictures and fingerprints, after all these questions, you don't really have that sense of being welcome at all. That gets you confused because you have all these images about Canada and refugees, about all sorts of people, all refugees, coming from different parts of the world. But Canada is just cold and they don't really treat you well. After they took the pictures they took us to another officer. Then a strange thing happened to us. Suddenly the immigration officer started opening our bags, throwing every piece of cloth on the ground. She had these gloves and was spraying the clothes and all. It was terribly humiliating because of the way she did it. It wasn't really a search. It was somebody disgusted with all these clothes and everything. And she was asking us about certain things, for example, my wife's medicines. She didn't believe my wife. She spent one and a half hours trying to identify what exactly this drug was or if something was wrong.
This image actually never left us, spraying and this feeling of disgust, and everything else in the whole process.
Then we left. We took a cab to Toronto, to a friend. We spent a couple of days with him.
When I first came we went to the reception house.
Me I didn't go there. For some reason we were put up in a hotel. Maybe because that time there were so many people coming from Kosovo, the reception house was full.
Ya, and then from Afghanistan.
I think these people didn't have to pay for their airfare, medicals, the landing fee.
We had to pay for everything.
They even select who has to pay them back and who doesn't. Oh, I thought all those who are accepted as Government Assisted Refugee, GAR, have to pay them back after they get here.
No, I know people who didn't have to pay back.
And especially with people from Kosovo, you know they treated them better than us, its racism.
Then, at the reception house they have orientation sessions.
Maybe some people need it, others don't.
I became a translator, between the settlement worker and the people who came here with me.
My kids were laughing when they were telling us how to use roll-on deodorant. I was an UN official in Malawi, we were used to more modern things than we got here.
And, from the reception house they start sending you to all these programs, especially for LINC and ESL, English as Second Language, classes, and to search for a place to stay.
LINC is for orienting newcomers to Canadian culture, to deal with everyday situations. You don't automatically go from LINC to ESL.
And in the first year the government supports you, but it's not enough what they give you. Oh, all didn't go to the reception house, especially many of us from the North.
We came from the US and applied for asylum here in Canada, at the border.
And inside here.
We stayed with friends and relatives.
Then we wait for our hearing, and hope they accept us as refugees here. That we can become permanent residents, that our case will not be denied. That we are not sent back, deported to Sudan.
Or to the US.
And yes, they sent us to the same programs.
These are the only ones available and mostly for free.
Nobody, even your friends here, know where else to send you. So these are the programs.
In Ottawa before, whenever any people from the South came I would go meet them, take them around and see that they were doing okay. Now I don't have that energy. I am so busy, tired. When I look at my life, what I have achieved in the last six years, as life, I feel sad, I haven't done anything good in these years that I can be proud of.
When I came here, nobody had time for me. If you came from the same place you should at least find some time to help, not just leave us alone. Khalid
I don't know if anybody will tell you this but I will tell you. This is a process applicable to Sudanese refugees, not to those guys who come as immigrants, who come with some money. The immigrants are better off, the majority of them came to Canada from Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries.
It happens always like this. There is a problem, with the history of it. You get some Sudanese people coming from outside, from United States or somewhere. They don't have any place to stay, and they have friends who have gone through the immigration process. They have to stay with somebody, usually they stay with some of their closest friends or sometimes with relatives.
What I noticed all the time, which happened to me too, that most of the time, I don't want to make big generalizations but according to my observation of immigration stories, your friend will end up not being your friend anymore. For some strange reason the relation falls out at a certain point.
Maybe part of a friend's expectation based on you coming from a culture that always prided itself on its hospitality. Sudanese, if somebody asks you or your relatives or friends to do certain things you will do this to the letter, this is just an obligation. We are usually into that mood that your friend is a friend in need. When you come here you don't really know how people have been living.
You don't really know how much money they have and that the places, their apartments and houses, are too tight. They do their best to accommodate you but somehow, somewhere, you know not really, there are certain issues or something.
324 And after a few days or weeks tension starts to grow up between you the visitor and the family. They are hiding it but somehow it shows up. It could be just something, anything, a sequence of imagination.
But this is not a single story. These are a couple of stories shared by a lot of people. Relations get tested. You have got to pass through this.
That's one of the problems, when you start feeling that you want to end this experience as much as possible, to go and have your own house. Then you have to go through a special process, you go to social welfare or wherever, to get this. You get that, it takes time but you want to end this experience, and you know you are giving people some hard time. Then, you are not depending on any people, you are now living in your own apartment and trying to change or accommodate with this new thing.
And the Sudanese, maybe like anybody else, we don't have an organization or some kind of setup that would actually help people to go through this process. So, it all depends on who you know. If you are lucky you find someone who could actually give you some hint, to some information, that's about it. The only help he would give you is to take you to some immigration, settlement, offices, that's it. Nobody is going to give you money, nobody is going to give you information about where to get work. They just give you general stories, and you realize very quickly that they are helpless. They are just really fighting and don't really have any power whatsoever to actually help you in any way. So you start from scratch.
325 Osama
I first came to Windsor.
From there I moved to Toronto, after just ten or fifteen days, I don't remember now. I stayed with my brother, he told me about love, care and brotherhood.
But after a while I found out that the situation in his place was not good for another person. If you add another thing, my sister-in-law, his wife, is not
Sudanese, is from a different place, of a different culture. It's not easy for her to accept someone to stay with them for a long time. She didn't complain, but it's me.
And it was my plan from the beginning, before the end of a year of full government support, to work. I went back to Windsor as a solution. I called the guys with whom I came from Egypt, and the Secretary of the human rights organization in Egypt who came to Windsor after us. I stayed together with them.
I started picking mushroom. It's really a normal hard job, to work as a worker, and there are a lot of Sudanese working there. It makes the situation easier, to just work. We used to wake up at three because there was a guy who came at three fifty to pick us up, he was supposed to start work at four thirty.
Where we worked is out of the way from centre of Windsor, in the countryside.
Some people picked and dropped us back, two, four, seven people, in their vans.
This takes time, and so we leave very early in the morning and come back home late in the night. Sometimes if we came home at five it's a big celebration, it's a
326 day to make a big meal and we would try to call here and there, our community members.
I started to get used to Windsor and work, and I started to plan my things again, to go back to school, to add some knowledge to myself.
Then I started to receive calls, weird and strange calls, from my brother and his wife urging me to come back. By the end, after five times, it really made me worried, what's going on? By the end they told me and I packed my things, I decided to go back to them.
It was a normal situation. The youngest daughter of my brother was pregnant from a Jamaican guy. She left home or he kicked her out, it's the same.
The guy's not a Muslim. It is a very big thing, for him and for me.
When I came back it was very tense. I found my brother not working, his wife too, and using a lot of pills just to calm down and to go to bed. I used my all experience in life, in politics, everywhere, just to put things back again. I found out what's happening. I tried to reach my niece to talk to her.
Those days I would talk, talk for hours and hours everyday, and I used everything just to let them first calm down and to listen. I put everything back again, for some acceptance or some understanding about what happened from both sides. I really succeeded. I was happy too because they are part of me and I did something for my brother.
After that I couldn't make it back to Windsor because all this raised the question again, am I in the right place, right country, right culture, what's
327 happening? It shocked me. It hit me deep, deep inside because that's the way we
are raised. They raised us to take care of each other, that it's a good thing to have
people around, this extended family ideal, which I really believe in and I really
appreciate very highly.
So I tried again for days to stay with my brother. But I found myself like a
stranger even in my brother's place. I needed to just go away, not back to
Windsor, to a new place.
One day I met one of my friends. He told me why don't you come to
Ottawa? It's a good place, and he started to talk. He told me, it's not with proof,
of emotional things, friendship and Sudan. For me I just needed someone to turn to. He said lets go there. I did, I moved here.
I found this was not a good decision, but what was I going to do? I was already here. I even had no money to go back to Windsor or to Toronto again.
Alek
We went to Winnipeg first. In Winnipeg we took like eighteen days. Then we
came from the reception house to here. It was not a problem.
We wanted to stay there in Winnipeg, but the problem that brought us here to Toronto was just for a friend.
Akuol was in Vancouver. They came here, three of them, Akuol, her cousin and her brother. Akuol had taken them to Vancouver. She and her cousin moved from Vancouver to here, Vancouver is so expensive. Later her brother
moved too, and all three stayed together in an apartment.
Akuol has asthma. When the weather changed, everyday she was sick.
Once she fell on the road, and some people called the ambulance. The other thing
was that she was engaged with another person. Choi wanted to marry her. He paid
some money, and was supposed to finish paying the rest and then do a big
wedding. When she came here and saw Choi things were not going well, they
kept fighting. Once he found her in the store, he wanted to beat her up. Later, he
called the police, Akuol harassed me, blab, blab. She was in the hospital, how
could she harass him?
The day we came to Winnipeg Akuol was in the hospital, she was there
like two months. She called us from hospital to the reception house, her brother
and her cousin talked to us. They said your friend is now in the hospital, her mood
is not good, everyday she is crying because of the situation she was in with her
fiance. We want to bring you and your husband here, to be here with us. You can
talk with her a little bit, a little bit, and her mood can change. I said but we don't
want to move from Winnipeg. When you take us there we will try it. If it's going to be okay we are going to stay there, if it's not okay then later on we can move to
our own place. They said okay.
Akuol told us don't take the money from the government, just say you
want to move. If you take the money and come here, the immigration here will
not give you money. We are going to prepare the ticket for you and your husband
329 to come here. Then they talked to Adol. He said I don't want to move but because
Akuol is sick we are going to move.
Adol asked me what did you think? I said what are we going to do? I too don't want to move, but the problem is she's sick. You know already, she's my best friend, if something happened like this I want to help her. Now we have to move, let us go.
Then they took the tickets, one way, to bring us here. We left a lot of things there. When we came here and found a place, some people we know were going to bring some of the stuff we left in Winnipeg.
We stayed with Akuol until she came out from the hospital. Then they rented another three bedroom house in Black Creek, her brother in one room,
Dominic in one room. He gave his room to Akuol and he was sleeping in the living room, and they gave us Akuol's room. I was like three months with them, then we found our one bedroom place in Dufferin.
Athaia
First I was not here in Toronto, I was in Saskatoon. From Eritrea we all went to
Saskatoon and then after that everybody chose where they wanted to go. I was there on September 19th 1997.
It really is good to come here. But before you come here you don't realize that there is a lot of suffering here. All of us, we know the west. I didn't see abroad before, but my sisters all did, so they know. My half-sister stayed in Egypt, she knows what is Egypt, and another half-sister stayed in Libya, she knows what is Libya, and another one stayed in Iraq, and a brother here. This is the first time to go abroad for me. I was in Eritrea but I saw Eritrea like I was still home. When I came here I know this is different.
But, I can see homeless people here too. I was wondering how they say
Africa has bad things, and there are people who are really suffering even in the west. They bring only bad things about Africa, on TV, in the media, not the nice things, and the things they have here is like the one we have there. I got surprised, when you have your own things which are not good you don't bring this out. You have to go bring your own out too, it is not different.
Then, I started to think that it's time to go to school, to learn and achieve what I want. I went to school, ESL for one month. I graduated three levels in that month, and my husband finished all levels. It was so funny. It's okay when they send those who never went to school to ESL, not those who finished everything, high school before. After that one month, the teachers said, you should just go for upgrading and proceed from there.
Then I asked Marvel School for a hair styling course, this is what I like to do all the time. They said you can come for an interview and a test, from there we will see if you are doing good, then you can go ahead with your program. I joined the school two months later. I finished from level one to level ten in hairdressing. I was almost graduating by the end of the month when my brother got sick here in Toronto, it was cancer. The same month, in November end, I came to
Toronto. I was here for one week and then I went back to Saskatoon. I promised my brother I was going to come back again to be close to him, that time he needed me.
So I was here. I had to cut my school off. They told me if you want to still finish, we have Marvel School in Toronto, we can send your records and you can go from there. I was doing good at hairstyling, and I worked in a salon, I never saw that this is so hard because I put my mind in the one thing that I have to do.
But when I came here I changed my career again. Now I have to go for
English classes for one more year, because they said I have to do this, because I am changing career again, to upgrade to practical nurse from personal support worker. So when I finish I am going to take nursing. That is what I want to do.
Elizabeth
I never went to school before, I started it here. I think there are three stages. In the first year that the government gives you its LINC, Language Instruction for
Newcomers to Canada, then the year after that you do ESL, and when you finish from ESL you go to upgrading. I landed in Toronto in 1993,1 stayed there for a year. It was the city that the government selected for us. After you finish the first year when the government pays you, you are free to decide which city you want to be in.
That time I did not know the city, I did not know English, there were no people to talk to. I found life so boring. There were families from my place who had come to Kitchener, so I moved to Kitchener. Later, me and my husband we separated. My uncle was here in Calgary, and I moved here.
There is a big community of Sudanese in Toronto, even before there was, and I can speak Arabic. But I don't know, sometimes you really feel close to people who speak your language, are in the same group, the same culture, the same tribe. For some reason, maybe because Toronto was big and people were like busy, it was really hard to make friends with other people from different tribes. My husband had to introduce me to the people because I didn't know them and they didn't know me. From my tribe there was only one lady and two guys.
At that time I only knew people who were close to my husband, and I think there were only two families from my husband's tribe that we became close to.
Life was so very boring. In my culture people are like really, really close.
Life is social life. You can socialize, there are people, you can talk a lot and do many things together. When you come here things are so different.
I think if you come here and you know the language it's easy. You can make friends or you can go to so many places. But when you don't know how to express yourself all you have to do is stay home. So, the first year I found it very frustrating, like you have to wait for somebody to come and take you somewhere, you have to wait for the weekend for somebody to visit you or to visit them.
The good thing, at that time, in Toronto you could stay in social services as long as you wanted, if you were going to school, until you finish your high school, you go to college or something. If you were really going to school then they didn't bother you.
But, in Toronto I was not studying or working, I was just at home. I think I went to school only for two months. There was no way for me to go to school. It was cold, and my son was still very young. My husband always went out to look for a job, and I needed somebody to take me to school, to guide me to where I was going. I did not read English, I didn't know the directions and I couldn't ask anybody. I didn't really know a lot.
Kitchener was very different for me because at that time I started to do things by myself, like I went to school, I did LINC. There are a lot of people from my tribe over there, and even from different tribes who I could speak with, in
English. It was very good.
In Kitchener I was not working. That time there were not many jobs.
That's the reason why so many people moved here to Calgary, because here there's a lot of opportunity for people. Over there, there are no people who work, only these agencies that hire you and send you to the companies to work. Besides my kids were really very small, and there was no good job that you could do for putting the kids in a daycare. Maybe you work for just seven dollar per hour, then
334 you would just give it all to child care. Also, the government was really good in
Ontario generally, if you didn't know English they don't require you to go to work right away.
Here I don't think they do that. Here you go to school but I think there's a condition that you go to school, if you just came. There's one year that the government gives you to learn English, then the next year if your English is good you go to student finance. But you have to really do well and you have to have a clear goal to achieve that. If you don't have that then you have to go to work. And if you go to social services, if you don't have any condition that they see they can help you with you have to go to work.
It's totally different here, according to what I see from Toronto. I don't know, maybe at that time they did a favour for my husband, but I didn't find it very threatening like here. Like the first month here you go and look for a job, then bring to the welfare the places where you looked for jobs in order for them to help you. It's really stressful for somebody who doesn't know, maybe you don't have the job experience and maybe your language skill is really low. So, so many people do cleaning jobs. Then there's really no way you go back to school. I don't know how people do it. If you work, if you get a job in the day time, then maybe you just have to go to school part-time.
When I came here it was different for me, maybe because I was a single mom, my kids were really small and I did not know English. They told me as long as you are going to school we can provide your rent and living costs. So, even if there are a lot of single mothers who are not interested in going to school they go to school because then they get support. They know that there are not many opportunities to get jobs. Also if you get a job with minimum wage it doesn't do any good for you and your requirements. Even if the government ends up paying money for the child care, you have to pay half the child care.
When I moved to Calgary I did one year ESL, I don't think I finished it in
Kitchener, or maybe the system is different here in Calgary, I don't know. Then I did three years of upgrading at the Bow Valley College. I didn't finish it. I actually paid them, but I went to work.
I started in grade one here. They give you three years to finish five grades, five months is like one grade. But for people like me who start from the beginning it's not enough. For people who come like they can start from grade five, grade four, they can finish their high school in three years. Actually for people like us they never tell you the time the government gives for that, they just pay for the school tuition.
Then it was my fault, anyway not their fault. I quit school, because I was tired of it. I said oh, I have to go to work. I think my friends stopped school and so did 1.1 worked from there onwards.
336 Amani
If I didn't go to the refugee camps I don't think I would survive in Canada. In the beginning I was sad to live in a refugee camp. But after I came here I thought, wow, I got a good experience. I learnt a lot, from living there, from struggling, and running all over. Maybe if I came from home direct to Canada, I don't think I would be able to live here because like right now it's harder for me here than before when I was living in refugee camps.
I came here in 1994.1 wanted to go back, immediately after we came, after two weeks. I didn't want to stay. Even to come here was hard.
Here there is so much more stress. That's what I experienced, even though
Canada is completely different from Ethiopia, you have complete freedom here.
In the refugee camp if you have something to do you just go get it. You come into it and then it's done. But here no, you have to do this looking for a job. It is a big problem here.
There's like so much stress, especially when you have kids. It gets so scary. I don't know for everybody but for me it is so stressful because of all you hear, like you can't discipline the kids, when they reach a certain age there will be teenage problems, you can't control them, most kids don't live with parents when they reach a certain age.
When you live in refugee camps we were not scared of anything. Maybe you were scared like how can I live like this, under the tree. But after sometime it is very secure. You are not scared about anything and you just live a normal life.
That is how I see it.
Since I came here it is really a struggle. I myself went to school here. I graduated, I got a job. But when comparing, just to life itself, even though there maybe you eat only certain things, still it's not stressful.
I found that you are more stressed here, maybe because I am scared for my kids when they go outside, oh what's going to happen? My girls are okay. But here kids react, when they become teenagers they leave the house and there are all these problems.
So, it's a little bit stressful. But it is okay too.
Lubanga
My story may not be typical of Sudanese refugees in Canada because I was sponsored by Canadians and I was on my own. The experiences of Sudanese refugees, now as I know it, is quite different. For them they know that they came here in large groups and most of them officially with the sanction of the Canadian government. I am an Anya Nya I product, I am from that time. Most of the people who are here now came during SPLA/SPLM time.
I was the first refugee from Sudan in Canada.
My status was that of a stateless, a refugee, somebody who has no country to go to. And I did not apply for landed immigrant status until I was studying for
338 my Masters at the University of Toronto, UofT. I could have applied the moment
I set foot in Canada, as a refugee student in 1968. The UN provisions allowed me to do that, but I did not do it. I just concentrated on my studies, on my B A. Once I got that finished I did the Masters. Then I applied for the landed immigration, which I got. So, for the first four, five years in Canada I was just a stateless person.
As soon as I arrived, three days after I got here, I was working. I was paying my way. My sponsors were willing to pay but I told them that I could take care of that. When I arrived here, first of all, in Nelson there was the idea that somebody would give me a job because of what they had been hearing about the war and suffering of people in the Sudan and other countries in Africa. They were willing to do it. So I said why would I not utilize those opportunities, that goodwill, and make the best out of it. I did everything that came my way, working in the forest, in the shed, logging, and road construction.
Because there was no Sudanese community in which I just went and lived a Sudanese life in Canada I was able to explore what this society is all about, to find sixteen year old kids being independent, doing their own things. You begin to see things quickly, lot faster than I could have ever imagined.
Another part of it is also from my family. When I was working in Juba, where I got the government of Sudan papers I mentioned earlier, my father said, here is the situation, you are working, you are on your own, you better learn to be
339 responsible. When I came here I began to look back and said oh, that man had a message for me, so I better utilize it.
At the time, in 1968 and thereabouts, Canada did not recognize Sudanese refugees. There was no assistantship from the federal government or the provincial government. So there was just me as a refugee. I depended on myself or the people who sponsored me. Even those who followed me had similar experiences.
During my time there were not many Sudanese refugees in Canada. For four years in BC I didn't see a single Sudanese, until I came to Toronto. In fact
African refugees, if any, may have been very, very few in the '60s. I remember for the Christmas of 1968 all the Africans students in BC got together, there were about seven or eight in Vancouver.
So, I was alone. Not that I enjoyed it, I had no choice. Living in BC, where I was in the interior, I was the only black person from Africa. In some cases for one or two years you didn't see any other black person from Africa there. In the town of Nelson, there were only a few Chinese families, a few
Japanese families and there was a Goan from Kenya, and two blacks from the
Caribbeans. You could count us, non-whites in the interior. We were less than a hundred.
The large number of Africans you see here now is new. Though, even before 1963 the immigration policy in Canada changed. Prime Minister John
George Diefenbaker the Immigration Act, he removed the words race and place of
340 origin. That made the difference. When Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson and
Pierre Elliot Trudeau came in this was already changed. So, although people always give the credit to the Liberals for the liberal Canadian Immigration policy, the PC, Progressive Conservatives, actually brought it about.
When I came to Canada in 1968, perhaps, African immigrants had not been here more than fifteen years. And the total Sudanese group, from all of
Sudan, from '72 to '75, was no more than ten to fifteen. It was only in the late
1980s that I began to notice that more Africans in general and Sudanese in particular were increasingly coming to Canada. But it was in the 1990s that a lot of Sudanese started entering Canada. Then Canada began to take Sudanese refugees from Kenya, Egypt and other countries for resettlement.
Resettlement is very new. The United States got into it in the '90s when it almost literally went to the camps, interviewed refugees and flew them to the
United States. That is brand new and regardless of educational level.
And there is an irony here. The Southerner Sudanese are dispersed now, and because of that a lot of us have gotten education that perhaps we wouldn't have had in
Sudan. Maybe because the way the government was controlling education in the South that possibility was not there. A lot of Southerners have gained the benefit of education by being outside, in Kenya, in Uganda, all over Africa and here.
341 I came here through WUSC, World University Service of Canada.
From Kakuma.
I was living in Nairobi, and only sometimes went to Kakuma to visit relatives. To come here through WUSC I had to be accepted as a refugee by UNHCR, I went to live in the camp for this.
I came from Dadaab.
From Elsewhere.
Me I was in Nairobi, studying in the university there. When I finished I applied to Canada directly under the skilled category, but as a refugee.
I never heard of that.
They have that, but most people don't know about it. I researched.
WUSC has a Student Refugee Program. There are other organizations like that too, this one is from Canada. If they accept you, then they apply to Canadian universities for you.
If a university accepts you then you come here as a permanent resident, like other people who are resettled from the camps, but to study here. They support you for the first year, with everything. After that you are on your own.
It's good.
But tough.
It took me five years to finish my degree because after the first year I had to work, to support myself and study.
342 I sent money back home too.
And now I have huge student loans to pay back.
After the degree I am still looking for a good job.
Ya, and I want to do my Masters as well.
Ajak
I went to the University of Regina and did my degree in Social Work.
When I was doing my degree, of course I had my practicum, my placements. And then summer jobs like working in hotels, doing housekeeping, working with the aged and with immigrant women, the summer jobs that sometimes are offered for students.
When I came to Canada it was hard because the culture here is different.
Because I lived on campus it was easier to know people, but it was still hard. I come from a culture where friendship is offered, you come new and everybody is all over you, come and do this and that. But here it's more like you have to make the first move or you make the move and then somebody will make the move, it wasn't easy. Somebody would say let's go for lunch and you think they are paying and they are not paying, so why did you call me for lunch? You know things, small things like that, you had to figure it out.
I was depressed the first few months. My first semester was hell. I hated it because it was different. It was so quiet here, again you come from a place where it is so noisy. It was very hard. I went to Regina, I knew no one. I didn't even know anyone from the Sudanese community. I lived on campus and unfortunately
I had very bad, very mean roommates too.
But again, I made good friends. I met a few Africans, like this one African girl from Ghana. She was the one who introduced me to a lot of things, because I wasn't even sure whether I was doing something wrong, what I was expected to do. I had my sponsoring group, the student union paid for my tuition and accommodation, to help and support me, WUSC facilitated the sponsorship, but it was nice to have my Ghanaian friend. I felt like I had somebody I could connect with, who could understand where I am coming from, even though she has a father here, she came with her father. Sometimes you just feel at home with somebody who is maybe like you. I don't know, coming from Africa it was nice to see someone from there too. Still it was difficult, the first semester especially.
And, even though I went to school in English most of my life, the systems are very different and even the English is very different. You sit in class and the professor make jokes. You see everybody is laughing and you are not getting it.
You are wondering what are they laughing about, you are thinking and thinking, and it's passed and something else has come up. It's tough.
A friend of mine, he's doing great now, he has just finished his Masters in library or information studies. He was in the UofT. I was talking to him on the phone, and he was telling me that everything there is computerized and he was very shy to ask people to show him how to use the computer. So he would go to the lab and wait for people's books, when people were finished with their books he would borrow it from them. And he failed that course or failed something because even for checking out the books you have to use the computer.
Probably it is more a cultural thing, as men, asking people to show you and help you, is not very manly, it's not a man thing to do. I think it is easier for women. I think even though it was hard for me to ask but I still did ask or made one or two friends whom I could ask all the time, with whom I became comfortable enough to ask.
Santino
When I came to Canada I went to school. It was nice. At first I went to Notre
Dame High School and then I moved to Rideau High School, in Ottawa.
I came from United States. There is no ESL there, maybe there are some but I don't know. I came there to the US with my own English, there's only a little bit of difference between North American English and British English. Here too, it's only a little bit of difference between Canada and America. When I came there, right away I had a test and I passed.
Then when I came from there to Canada I came with a certificate and they just put me in regular school, even though there I didn't always attend school regularly. Here I stayed in school all the time. Sometimes, I couldn't go with homework to school in the morning because I was working part-time. It was hard for me, I stopped for a month and I went back again. But I was still studying at home, even at work, at library, getting books to take home. I never stopped reading.
Now after my high school I was supposed to get Economics but I am taking a social worker course in Algonquin College to make it short. It's only for a year, only to make some money on it. I am going to be done on April 30th. Then
I can work with Ottawa Housing or I can work in the Reception House, this place with immigrants, that new people need. That's what the counselor at the school supported me with, to do what I wanted to do.
Then, I want to go back to Africa. I want to be a rapper, only in Africa.
When I came here, until right now, I didn't learn something new. Maths, science, about Canada, America, Australia, whatever, we had it at school that time in
Sudan. I got nothing new, only some new words and how to write rhyme. Another thing I learnt was to change British English to North American English, and afterwards I changed North American English to Black English. It's the way we talk, when you are rocking, when you are talking, when you are listening to music. That's what I learnt, that's it.
I am part of the black community, I am African-American, and African-
American music is a culture. In America if you got a citizenship, that's mean you are African-American. Here, right now, we are African-Canadians. If you have a Canadian citizenship they are not going to say you are a Canadian, they are going to say you are an African-Canadian if you are from Africa, you are Asian-
Canadian if from Asia.
And, some Black Americans are African, if they had a chance to go to
Africa they would. We know that they are from Africa but which country in
Africa they don't know. So no one is going to accept it when Black Americans go there and say I am African. Where is he going to go? Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, we don't know.
I am black, African Black, African Sudanese. I am Southern Sudanese. It doesn't matter where I was born because where I was born is in Khartoum. I don't care about it. When we came here I opened the IOM bag in the plane.
Ya, they told me not to till I reach Canada.
I was a 'New Worker', brought here to work, do the jobs they don't want to do.
Me, I was 'stateless', I don't even know why, when I even had my Sudanese passport at the time.
And, if you are below eighteen you are a 'Student'.
We all go to ESL.
And also adult high school.
Santino
There we got like everybody, Sudanese guys who are doctors, teachers, whatever.
Then, when you come here they, at the Ministry of Education, are going to say go back to school again.
It's hard if you came here like over eighteen, and they are going to put you down there. If you came here in an early age you are going to be in high places more than the guy who was in a school there before. So, he is going to say I was in college, and right now they are going to put me in English as Second Language or they are going to put me wherever, I don't want that. Then he finds a job to get cash. Only my cash is going to finish here. That's a problem.
Like, there is a guy, he is a doctor and right now he doesn't work as a doctor. They had a chance to go to school here but they don't want to go. They
248 are like I am done. I was a lawyer there in my country, right now why am I going to be a student all over again, better work to get money.
For kids below eighteen they have got nice teaching here. There is no problem, because kids learn fast and it's not like you didn't go to school before. If you are twenty years old and you try to start playing soccer you can't learn even if you spend ten years on it. So if you came to this country with your kids and you both don't speak English, after two months, three months, you are going to find your kids, they are playing around there with white people or English speaking people, talking English and they are going to translate what you need, what the white guy is saying outside there with the bills in his hand. They learn fast.
It's going to be hard the first time when you have stayed out of school for a while. But after a week you are going to find a guy who speaks English and you are going to go out together with him. Then you are going to understand what he's saying. He doesn't need to write it down, just be with him and after two, three months you are going to be in line, I think better than the person who came here when they were twenty or thirty years old.
And for kids who came from another country, who are under eighteen, and in ESL, it's not ESL like for older people. There is math in it, there is science there, everything. But it's a little bit lower than for the kids who were here before. Alek
Everyone, when you come from there, you come happy. Everyone came here thinking he will find something, a good thing. We came here, thinking it was like you told us there. And a lot of people came here.
When you come in here and see the climate, it is different. It is not the same. It just became different, not like what you told us. What they are telling you, the story there, during the orientation is different.
I think that makes every Sudanese get shocked, about the situation they find in here. It's totally different. Everyone says if we knew it's going to be like this when we come here then we were supposed to stay back home, to look for a job, to find some little thing to find your life. Here you make everything from the scratch. That's what happened.
When Adol came here he didn't send the letters back to his friend to bring the papers to start school. Adol go to school. No, I don't want to go to school. He was so sad that he stayed like that. Now he decided to go back to Sudan.
That is the situation in this country. That's my story. Do you have something to ask?
I don't like Canada. I hate the winter time. Like now, I hate it. It makes me feel like I am sick.
Nobody is happy here. Where is that money that you said you are going to work for in the office? Where is that office? You just brought us to work in the company. And them, they are relaxing in their office. They are sitting in the chair,
350 and the immigrants are just working. Some people, doctors, professors, some people are what, they are working in the company. Do you think their mood is going to be good? Nobody's. Some of them finished university. They, when they did the orientation, say they can find a job, they couldn't find it.
That's when I say sometimes United States is good. In America if you finish university you can find a job that you want. It's not like Canada, it is different. You can get a job right away there. I know. We have a lot of people there. They finished their studies, they are working in offices, not in the company, where you go to pull something or you take the plastic. No. If you ask you are going to find that some of them in the United States are working good. If you didn't get a good, good job you can still find some job, you don't go to the company. No. You can relax, writing or with the computer. It's good when you relax.
Here if you finish school or you do what you cannot find a job in the office. I don't think so. A lot of people they work in the company. For the people who are working here, in the future it's not good. If you just do it for a little while it's okay but not if you work like this for your life. The bad thing is that when they go home, back home or even here, they are going to get a big trouble with their body in the future. Elizabeth
Many people are not happy staying here. Of course people are safe here, people have food here, but we are not happy, especially for our children, the young generation. We want to hold on to some of our culture and we want our kid to know it too.
Also, people who are professionals back home are not happy here because they are getting the jobs that they are not supposed to do. Like last year, there was a guy who is a lawyer, he was working here in a gas station just to survive. That's very sad, when they tell you that you are not qualified. And maybe the people, like the people who are coming in mid forties or fifties, they cannot go back to school again and take that seven years for them to study and to practice the professions here in Canada. They just have to go with whatever they find. It's now affecting us, a lot of people.
And, lots of very young girls who could have a better bright future, because of this war, have ended up getting married very young and having kids very young. When they come here they end up raising children and having a cleaning job, and no good education.
When you really go out and see somebody from a different country, a country that didn't have a war, or here in Canada, you see they have their education, they are doing good jobs, their life is stable. The war disturbs people mentally, and because of it innocent people are the ones who are suffering. The people who have their hands in the war, the government or whoever, are not the people who are dying. They are not the people who are suffering, their kids are getting good education. They get money from different governments, they put them in their pockets. Like let's say John Garang and his wife, in many countries they have a house and their kids are in a good shape, they can send them to school. Who's suffering now, the innocent people.
Lubanga
If you look at the refugees who came here after World War II, they were mainly from Eastern Europe. They went through the ESL, English as Second Language, not knowing the system. The stories are identical. People who were professors, medical doctors, classic cases of people who were specialists, when they came here they were not recognized. People almost go through some of these difficulties generation after generation regardless of where they come from, if we look historically. That's the problem.
Look at the migrations of people who came to Canada, look at the
Doukhobors in the West or the Ukrainians. Some of them were directed to the prairies, to develop those areas. Some of the people were directed to mining, to logging. It was not because they chose this, certain pressures sort of steered them there. These were difficult jobs, and these sorts of jobs were reserved for certain people. You can see this until almost 80s. These policies still work. But with these things it took one to break it and everything just started to go down.
So, these were not officially government policies but they have evolved in the society, such that the government accepted these almost without challenging it. To recall back, I taught Government at the Transition Program in UofT, for some time, when you talk about policies these are what governments do or don't do. If they don't do it may or may not be a policy, if they do it it's a policy.
Whether it is private industry that ends up recycling people that way or the dominant groups and the way they organize themselves, forcing these people to accept certain jobs or certain positions, including in the schools, may not be written but because people in authority accept it, don't react to it, this becomes almost a policy. Some of this can be challenged, and have been successfully challenged.
One definite thing is that it's not only refugees but regular immigrants who are in this position. These are social norms, not policies, that define who you are. You cannot find it in a government record, this is sanctioned by values, how people differentiate each other. A dominant group can establish that, and once it's established it becomes self-preserving.
And you are almost internalizing your own victimization, you accept it and go along with it. Some segregation, racism, policy have stayed long, not because the people who are racist enforce it but because people who are discriminated now comply with it, until such time somebody wakes up and says no, that's wrong. And then even those who were advocating it before say, but who is enforcing it? They will be quick to react that this thing is wrong but they know that it was there.
They didn't know what to do with me.
I was in New Brunswick. They gave me the English test, Canadian Language
Benchmarks Assessment, and because I did well, they didn't have anything for me. They couldn't just send me to ESL. They seemed lost.
In Windsor, they are sending everyone to ESL. Like the Liberians who came recently, they all know good English and they are all in ESL. They don't know what else to do with newcomers.
Me, I went to Winnipeg. Because I knew English well they couldn't send me to
ESL classes. I was too old to be in high school, and they didn't know which university or college to direct me to. I came to Calgary on my own, after figuring out the schools here. I am doing Engineering now.
Ya, they tried to send me to ESL too. I went for a little while, but it was useless. I had finished high school, and my English wasn't good even though I studied it before. I looked around and then joined academic English in the university. Later
I graduated from Carleton University, here in Ottawa. Osama
I decided to stay in Ottawa, just to go to school again, without any strong or good plans, just that I have to do something. And already in my mind I had to go to school.
So, I started to go to school, exploring the city, to weigh everything, every experience, the same way I did when I left Sudan. But I didn't feel secure and stable.
Then there was some misunderstanding between me and my social worker. We had Eid al Adhaa, and I have a right not to attend classes that day.
The main teacher, ESL teacher, marked me present but the computer teacher didn't. The social worker, he said no, can you give me one, or three reasons, I don't exactly remember, why you don't attend classes. I was just shocked. At this age you are treated like a kid who skips classes and doesn't do his homework. I decided immediately to quit school and start working. I told him I don't like these kinds of things, to beg you for your money, I will go somewhere else. And I picked hospitality training. He was shocked, he asked are you sure. I said yes, it's better than begging you for money.
The training lasted for a couple of weeks, I don't remember. I don't need to remember, it was just wasting of time. It's even kind of a waste of government money. I complained to the welfare officer, I had already applied for welfare. I was like depressed, not working. The officer agreed with what I said, but probably they didn't do anything about it. I told her we just go there, drink tea, eat cookies,
356 that it. We have five-six subjects like food handling, first aid administering, with
big books, we finished all this in few weeks. We can't do this. And then we
started job search. This was a joke.
Then I went to school again, I went to a friend's school.
I quit, I worked and I quit again.
Now I am planning to go these days, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, to
Toronto. A very important part of it is to see my family again, my brother and his family,
to fit that part of myself, this brotherly love and this family thing, and to find a room for
me over there. This time I am going to do it myself. I am not going following my
emotion, I am not going to get scared again.
Amani
When I came to Toronto I didn't go to ESL or LINC.
When you go to immigration and do the test, it depends how you do. Then they put you in the English classes or they put you in those intermediate classes, I
don't know why they call it intermediate.
I started intermediate classes. I had finished high school in my country, I knew English but not that much, and I did training with Red Cross in Dima. I have all these certificates. That's why they just made me do intermediate for a couple of months.
357 Then I did the test again and I started high school, grade nine. I don't know the rules, they put you in grade nine. I was doing English, Math and
Science. You have to do this if you want the Ontario High School Diploma.
I knew most of the stuff, so it was okay.
Khalid
I went for CALL, I don't remember what it stands for, maybe its dismantled now.
It was basically a job skills training program for newcomers. It had all these things, like job placement, English course and all that. The place was physically close to where I lived. They had some English courses, close to LINC, part of
ESL, you can register for four months or something and then you graduate.
Sometimes you need a sense of humour to go through this insanity. What else can you do, to at least just hold on?
My English was better earlier, and this is kind of a controversial thesis.
One day I read an article I wrote in Sudan and I felt that I was writing better
English before I came here, than after these years here, because you get a lot of tension here to speak right English. You don't want the attention, and so you got a lot of tension. Suddenly language becomes not just a simple language of communication. You don't want to make mistakes, and that's why you make mistakes. You have got to compensate for your accent. So you are going to try to
358 write well and suddenly you just feel it's very hard to do, particularly in the first, second year.
So, this idea to really prove that you can be employable is really devastating. It's very hard to collect all these skill sets. Some people say we will not really get used to all this because we Sudanese are lazy, we are not really used to hard work, all these kinds of things. But who likes this kind of hard work. This is not really hard work.
359 They tell you Canada is a good place and it's up to you, if you work hard, you can make it.
Only, you need Canadian qualifications, Canadian experience and Canadian
English.
Amani
When you come here they say you have to get a job, you need experience, you need to have a diploma.
That's why I didn't get a job immediately. I could study, it's better than working evenings or staying home, and I like school. Then my son was young, two years old, I put him in daycare and I went to school. I finished and after that I was working, from '98.
I stopped two years back, in 2002, and went back to college. I studied
Early Childhood Education, and now I work in a daycare, it's close by. I am thinking of going to school again, I want to do Child Management, but first I want to work a little bit.
My husband did a computer technician course, and he was working as a technician. Then he studied Child Psychology, and now he works as a counselor for children in Detroit.
360 He was looking here for a job for sometime but he didn't get it. He did so many volunteer jobs here. Every time volunteer, volunteer, and he was like how come it is like this, I am tired of being a volunteer.
He then applied in the US, he got the job as soon as he applied. And now after three years he's again trying for a job here. He said now I have experience, maybe I will get a job.
There is a big problem, you have to always have experience, even if you have your certificate or diploma they still need that, experience.
Khalid
I remember when I went to this job placement centre, CALL.
It is very funny because it's kind of generic, it doesn't really reflect anything because they all assume that you really know nothing. They treat people like children, which is I am helping you go through the whole process, and they assume that you don't know anything, you don't have any experience.
The whole process is to tell you how to get a Canadian experience. The workers there try to tell us what is available here, which is not bad. But the whole approach is very strange because you have people from different backgrounds but they tell you all the same things, about the typical English course, ESL, the resume writing, the employment market. At a certain point people start feeling belittled as people. The whole job placement program was designed around the 1994, when the NDP, New Democratic Party, was in place in Ontario. It was designed to get people into work, but you got the feeling that this whole thing was designed to get you into certain kinds of jobs, low level kind of jobs. The best jobs you can think of are lower end administrative jobs, typing, filing, that's the best that you can hope for. You are not really going anywhere because even the person who is actually talking to you is not getting paid well and he doesn't feel very happy in his position. The whole thing was to suggest that the best way to get Canadian experience is through volunteer work, which is to work for free, meaning if you get money from the government, since you are on welfare, you have to do something.
But it was not that bad. When I look at it now, after these few years, I think it helps you. The whole program, at least, reflects what kind of immigrants we are talking about. Immigrant is somebody, irrespective of where this guy is coming from, irrespective of his background or experience, who we try to model into Canadian society. If he worked in a factory or is a doctor you don't really care. He just has to pull himself up, otherwise he is going to die. So the job placement centre is valuable.
You look at all these available things because you don't know what else to do any more. You feel that violence from the beginning. I have always worked in this violence. Then I was lucky, I got a job with a settlement agency, close to what I
used to do in Sudan. There I worked in an international NGO for a year and a half
as a project coordinator, and then with the foreign embassy, my last job, doing
translation and research.
This was the kind of job that the NDP would support, through its
Newcomer Job Search Program, which is not bad. This program was for you to
bypass the Canadian experience thing, with on the job training for people on
welfare. It was designed for refugees, not open for everyone. It was competitive
but within certain population you get a job, at least those people who are with
welfare and who can provide proof for themselves. It's at least like a quota
system, like jobs for special people. You don't have to compete with the white
guy, because you have no chance in hell to compete with those guys unless you
really, really fit into certain professions. So, I had a job with the settlement
agency and we were fine. It was a one-year contract.
Before that I worked as a volunteer in a residential senior centre. This is
all during the NDP initiative. There I did a small research on how the senior
centre could be culturally sensitive to non-white people, how to make the centre
help this target group. I started collecting all this information from Etobicoke,
Islington, if there were people, sixty five or older, that fit into the category of the target group. All bullshit, because actually there is no non-white thing. You could
sense the whole thing was part of the imperative of the government, that they had
to have a culture sensitive component somewhere. But that's okay. This was my first experience with this kind of distinction in Canada because I never really understood that distinction before. I had to read all this population census, like what exactly Etobikoke was composed of, how many visible minority people were there in the area, so that I could talk to them in their community centres like the Ethiopian or Somali cultural centres, whether people they died of certain diseases. So I came across what composed the population of
Etobikoke.
I suddenly came to the realization that earlier most of the people there were those who came from England, of English origin, and then the population changed because blacks moved into the area. The whites went out.
And I noticed when I asked questions in the street, a lot of people didn't talk to me. How can you prepare your skill set for this? This is where I decided that I will ask black guys the research questions because these white guys won't talk to me.
And then, when I finished my one year contract I was literally unemployed. I had spent sometime off welfare, which is fine, it gives you to a degree a sense of relief. Then I was with Unemployment Insurance, UI, and I came back to university, York University, to do computer science.
I was looking for work with some NGOs but I couldn't really find anything. I don't know how I got connected to this computer science because I never was a computer science person, I hate mathematics. I am a theory guy, I love social work, social theory and cultural stuff. The thing that got me into
364 computer is the communication part of it, the internet part of it, which is this power of communication.
I will tell the story, very strange, very interesting. These are the people that I related to, the people I thought I would find in the West, Edward Said and
Chomsky, the other West. When I was working with the settlement agency there was this guy working there. He was a York University student and he used to bring all these printouts.
That was the first time I saw Chomsky here, with this guy. In Sudan we read about Chomsky, the Herman book on propaganda, this huge big boring book, really boring, we read the whole book. We really liked that guy. Now I don't like
Chomsky any more, that's a whole story too.
Anyway, so I asked this guy, how do you get all this stuff, Edward Said and Chomsky? He said internet. Holy Jesus, I got interested in the internet, this is how I actually bought my first computer, around '95, to get hooked to the internet. At that point of time there was so much sharing of data, a lot of free stuff.
Then suddenly it occurred to me that if I know how this thing works, maybe I could get myself into the publishing business, at least, in the internet itself. So I went to York and computer science.
It was just crazy. I didn't really like computer science very much. So I left
York and took a seven month course on publishing and internet. But this is a funny part, because it is like you are in a war with time, with everything, with yourself, with self-esteem, and there are a lot of people waiting for us, people
asking what are you guys doing, like we are getting used to being unemployed or
something. Then you have to send money home too, and I had my daughter back
home. They really very much needed me to get a job. And my wife was still
working at that time.
When I went to that course, I slept everyday around five o'clock in the
morning in order to make this transition from social theory to mathematics. I had
graduated from the Faculty of Economics, my mindset, my work experience or
whatever had nothing to do with this computer modeling or programming. In
order to be able to understand this whole new paradigm, this new kind of
requirement, the computer, you have got to read a lot of stuff. You have to go
back, at least read the basics. A lot of my work was just self training. In June I
enrolled myself into a couple of online courses and read all this kind of UNIX and
X and T program, a huge amount to be absorbed and learnt, and you have to do it
in real life in order to have the skill set. You have to learn the tricks, which is
okay.
They ask you to read one book, you just go and read five for that. You
have this understanding that in order to get a job you have to be more than the
white guy, by a huge margin, otherwise you are never going to get a job. That's just a simple understanding, it came to me very easily. In order to get a job you
got to be more than those guys because when you go to the interview a white guy
will start like he's achieved over fifty percent already, and you don't have that
366 fifty percent. You have got to fight to get the fifty percent and then fight again to
surpass what that guy gets.
So, that was the model, which is you have to learn everything. You have
to do a lot of programming for so many months, and sleep very little. It was very
hard. And when you reflect on it, you wonder how could you do that. It was
really, really tough.
I will tell you the truth. I could have really got psychologically sick in '96
if I wasn't doing a lot of work on myself. I resisted so many depressive moments,
being unemployed and having my daughter home. There was no end, there was no
horizon. And this is supposed to be a transition. This is when, I talked about that
period, you start feeling confused, you start feeling challenged, and you start
feeling that you will be taken for granted. You don't really have trust in yourself
anymore, when you go to interviews and nobody calls you back.
At a certain point, when I went back to the university, York, there was a job interview for a security, closed-circuit television, CCTV, position. I went to
the interview and there was this Chinese guy. This interview totally collapsed. It's just funny. I couldn't really understand the way he spoke and he was going to fail
you because the way he spoke and the way I spoke are a little bit different. I know
I have a strong accent but I couldn't understand any of the questions, so I said can
you say it again like a couple of times. He was a student I think, he was talking as
if he doesn't have an accent and that he wasn't really expecting anybody to tell
him that I can't really understand you. He didn't like me at all. And then he kept asking me all these trick questions, if you have a thousand two hundred dollars
and there is some other guy who comes, who doesn't have that money. What is
this? I totally miserably failed this interview because they kept asking me what
should you do if you are carrying the money, and such questions.
I never imagined that it was going to be that hard because I felt I would just watch the CCTV, if there is somebody stealing a car or something you just
press something. And this is a university, this is supposed to be a little different.
It's just students looking for some money. The interview process shouldn't be the
same format as an interview for the corporate sector. That was really kind of a bad
experience because I really got a feeling that I am never getting employed again,
because I went to so many interviews and it was just not working.
For one of the previous interviews I went to, one of the problems was with
cultural sensitivity or not cultural sensitivity. There was a job in a library near us,
and you want to get off this welfare system. They gave me an exam. They have
this huge big book, like a dictionary with all social work terms, they asked to
search for a halfway house. I had no idea what a halfway house means, and I
couldn't find it in the book, the way they organized the terms. So they asked me
what halfway house is, I said I really don't know. It was tough, knowing terms of
social work, but I can learn. You have to search certain guides for this kind of
questions. I didn't know why they kept asking me about this halfway house. Later
on I finally understood that the halfway house is where they set up somebody who
368 gets out of prison, to later on release them. I remembered this when I watched
Redemption, a very interesting movie, it's all about halfway house.
Then you learn all these tricks of how to write a resume. I still have this trick, I invent some company and just put my skill set for that company because the whole idea is that they are going to ask you to do it anyway. For example, I worked for one year with the settlement agency, it has got nothing to do with computers. Look at my resume, it's all computers now. My first job, I worked with the senior centre, did research. Here, they tell us you have to adjust your resume to the job. And I said oh ya, I turned my administrative office experience into a computer one. This is how I got a job. Otherwise I would never get a job because every time you go they ask you, where did you work before? I say I worked with the settlement agency. What did you do? I was doing some IT things with them. They ask you all these questions, so you answer them accordingly.
This gets you the job, you can do it. So, I actually turned my house into a workshop.
That was fine, and my first job was with a very small internet service provider on Front Street. They sold their information technology, IT, business to my current company, and in between I worked with a big IT company.
So these are the things. It just forecloses your vision. But you just have to work hard. Again, when I look back, I now become really proud of all this, what I think is totally unnecessary. You go to fight, you win certain things, but I don't even know if tomorrow I am going to have a job or not because layoffs are going on all the time. And when you have been employed for almost seven, eight years
and you get laid off you can't really have that energy and enthusiasm of going to
interviews again. This could happen any time. So there is a sense of uncertainty, it
is always there. Nobody is going to bail you out, you are going to have to find the job again. So this whole danger of going through the war again is always there.
My wife had a friend who used to be working in a hotel. I didn't really
know the guy but his family came to our house many times, I didn't really mingle
with them a lot. He was from Lebanon. He got laid off from a hotel. It took him
so long to get there. This suddenly started certain cycles, it's paranoia, and he
finally killed himself. One of his daughters, when they moved into a new house,
after he got released from hospital, suddenly noticed that he disappeared. I think
his wife asked the girl to check the subway nearby. That's where she found that
he killed himself in front of the train. Sometimes you start wondering if you can
actually do the same thing. I keep wondering every time I meet her how she's
actually coping with these images. This is really devastating. What is the
difference in having a civil war in Lebanon and coming here? It is the same thing.
This whole experience, this is what I feel, of trying to accommodate
myself into this Canadian society will never have this achievement of being a part
of this society without huge costs. It was really, really hard when I look back, on how much it cost in how to accommodate, how to get yourself qualified to live in this country and with the whole experience of racism.
370 I mean give me the chance to be a better person, because I have to go work on madness all the time and understand exactly what does that mean.
Most of the people won't get a job similar to what they had and they have to adjust themselves to that. I am lucky to actually get a job, at least a white-collar job, but most of the people have a hard time to adjust to the transition from their previous jobs because either they are not willing to make a new radical change in career or are settling for an easier option or they are not lucky or some reason, just that they couldn't make that change.
People can talk about society for ever, like its good here, but this here is
almost like a real war zone, it's really, really tough. Imagine how many times
you wake up in the morning and then when you go to the office you almost put
on a different persona just to survive for five days. We do that for the last 12
years. And you don't really share a lot with these people here, the people you
work with. It's the same persona, different faces, it's white people, but you can
find these people everywhere. It's like you are under surveillance, you have to
prove yourself all the time. And it doesn't really seem like there is any way that
the pool of shared objects will actually increase sometime in the future because
it's just not increasing at all.
This here is totally isolated, all people are in isolated areas. You go to a bar, you sit with some black people, and there are some white people around, but it's sometimes, you go home. You are just lucky because Toronto has this strange shade of colour, it doesn't remind you that much of the existing racism. It gives you the illusion, that al least outside the office you feel a little different, there are
all kinds of people, in the office its all white people.
But when it comes to identity, you'll never survive, if you can't really play this multiple role you can get into psychosis. I am talking about repercussion, not really an analysis, because by the end of the day you have to sit by yourself and ask yourself who you are. In terms of what racism can really do to you, to ask yourself if you are better than them. But you have to do something different, ask different yourself of yourself.
372 When they came to the camps, especially the Canadians, they were asking for those who finished high school.
They gave the forms to them first and then to the others.
I think Australia was asking for single mothers.
Maybe because the women's leader of the camp was a single mother, she pushed for that.
Each country was asking for different people.
And ya, Canada wanted single young men.
I didn't hear this. I know that they were asking for single people for WUSC. They didn't want to sponsor people with families, not even single parents, unless someone got pregnant after they were selected.
We were in a teacher's training college in Addis Ababa. They gave us the forms first, before going to the camp.
And here they sent us for ESL.
They said I don't speak Canadian English, I say cinema and not movie.
What?
I left it.
I had to work and look after my family.
It's so tiring, my work. I go to High River to the meat factory, Cargill.
You know how fast the meat comes at you?
And we get only like 45 minute break.
373 Meet me on Monday or Tuesday, from Wednesday when I get home I sleep
immediately.
We work on Saturdays too.
Some people work at the chicken factory here in Calgary, at Lilydale. It's a little
better, and they don't have to travel so much.
I work at the kill zone.
In Sudan we have cattle, but we never kill them like here, thousands in a day.
We kill them only for special occasion, to honor someone.
Someone was telling me that John Garang was saying, how he could become thin
when they killed a cow for him everywhere he went.
Hehe.
And then it goes to the process zone.
People have to be so fast. They can get hurt cutting the cows, with the big sharp
knives.
And it's so cold, our hands all get locked.
But you know this is the only place where they don't ask you for English or
Canadian experience or qualification.
And the pay is good, fifteen dollars per hour.
Actually in Brooks, even at McDonald's, they pay you more than in other places.
But everything here is expensive too, you don't know where the money goes. And you drink every Sunday.
What else to do, how else to get through the week.
Hey, thanks for visiting me in Brooks.
Thank you for having me over.
Let me take you around. But first you eat, I cooked for you.
Thank you.
You see that place there, it's the beef plant. Then, we have so many millionaires here, there are so many oil fields around. And we have motorcycle gangs here, they don't bother with us.
Someone told me that when he comes to Brooks he doesn't breathe, it stinks so bad.
Yes, especially in the winter, though I don't smell anything anymore. They just leave all the liquid wastes, everything out there in the open. The smell is unbearable, and it's so unhygienic too.
I am a veterinarian, but our degrees are not really recognized. And then they have a long expensive procedure, to write exams to get qualified again to practice our original professions.
And I need some money right now, if I work elsewhere I will get very less money.
Then I am planning to go work in Africa.
375 I work in the cleaning shift, the last one, C. It's not cold there luckily, but we have to clean properly as per the regulations and very fast.
And they don't really follow any other regulations. We didn't even have a union before, here in Lakeside Packers, with Tyson Foods.
They are an American company, it's like a special economic zone in Canada.
And now the plant is with XL Foods, a Canadian company.
Then, the Sudanese fought, went on strike, against the really bad working conditions.
We got a union but with very less power.
We fought again, and it's somewhat better now.
Still it's tough.
They call it a Sudanese union, but it's not. It's for all, we all got it.
Most Sudanese and non-whites work in B shift. Shift A works in the morning and after they finish the B shift has to finish the quota for the day, even if they work overtime.
Ya, we get paid overtime but we don't have a choice. We have to do overtime.
And then we have very less time to clean before the next shift starts.
I got fired, because they started targeting people who were in the strike, they laid us off.
I am still struggling to get Employment Insurance, EI. Oh me, I am okay now, I know how to work underground. I will not work a fulltime job again.
I hate this place. Why am I wearing a Canada t-shirt then? It's cheap.
Let's go for lunch. No, you will not pay. And say hi to Simon in Toronto for me.
I was in Medicine Hat before. I am a graduate of Khartoum University, and they sent me to ESL. They don't teach you anything there. When I kept asking them why they don't teach anything they finally said yes, we teach you only enough for you to go to supermarket and to get a survival job.
Then they get you forms from Tyson Foods to work there at Brooks. They say if you want to work, go there.
It's all business.
And you should meet my roommate, only I am from Umma Party, not him. He was in India too.
Oh, what's his name? But I don't think I know him, I knew only some people from outside Madras and then mainly people from the South.
If you stay longer you can meet him.
I would like to, I hope he comes back before I leave. I have to meet someone else soon, to hear his story too.
I can drop you there. And I will tell him to call you.
Thank you. I have a copy of an ongoing dissertation by this woman who is looking at how
Dinkas, those who came from Cuba, moved from cattle camps to cattle slaughter houses in Brooks. I used to be there, now I work at the chicken factory here, in
Calgary.
But why only Dinkas? There are people from other places who are in Brooks too, no? Even those who were in Cuba were not only Dinka, no?
Ya, but most in Cuba were Dinka.
There were others too before, but most Nuers were sent back to Ethiopia.
Nuers, like some of us, remained. And there were others too, not many, but they were there.
We who came from Cuba don't think of people as Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Anyuak,
Equatorian or anything.
This happened mostly after '89-'90, when we realized these divisions are not going to get us anywhere.
Same with those who are in Egypt now, even people from the North and the South stay together.
Not when we were there, we had problems with each other, from the South, especially after the split in the SPLA. What's funny is that it wasn't along the lines in Sudan.
In Cuba we were very close, we all were together in everything. We grew up together, even from before we were in Cuba. We became close when we realized that all this divisions didn't make sense as well.
And ya we even have some guys from the North who came there, sent by the
Communist Party to study in the university.
I think it was similar with the people I met in India, but yes many of them didn't mix with Northerners. Some did.
I am from Darfur, and we were all together in India with the guys from the South, and only with some guys from the North.
You know many Northerners in India were these same guys, the fundamentalists.
They sent back reports about us to the Sudanese government.
Same like in Egypt.
Maybe in other places too.
You know one guy went back to Khartoum from New Delhi, he was doing research about the conflict in Sudan, he disappeared. Even now we don't know what happened to him.
You have to be careful.
Anyway, the thing is, here in Canada we work very hard.
The 'Cubans' work harder than anyone else.
We didn't see our parents, our relatives, for so long. Now they need us.
I met my mother in Ethiopia after twenty years.
379 And, the rest of the Sudanese think we are different, that we are not good.
Because we have Spanish culture.
When we came we drank in front of elder people.
No, we didn't forget Sudan because we were already older when we got to Cuba.
I know all the stories that my father, my mother and my grandmother told us.
Me, I left Brooks, you make money and then it all goes.
My hands started getting locked.
I was there only for the summer to make money to pay for school in Ottawa, I am doing Engineering.
I want to be a doctor but the counselor in Vancouver keeps telling me that I should become a nurse.
I don't sleep the day I meet my counselor.
I came from Kenya and I knew everything in my grade, English too. But they put me in ESL here, and in a grade according to my age, grade nine. Now I finished high school but I didn't graduate. I still have to finish my credits because I was in
ESL and doing things for lower grades in other subjects. So, for finishing high school, to pay for adult high school, I need to make money first. That's why I am here. I am going to my cousin's place in Brooks. I will work there the whole summer and then go back to finish school.
But why do they make you do this, go to ESL?
380 I don't know. That's how it is when you come here young, from other countries.
Mostly, you go to ESL, then adult high school to finish up. If you don't want that then you start working.
Ya, most people don't go to adult high school. Or they drop out before. They don't think it helps anyway.
When you go there to Brooks don't use all your force when they give you the test to grip things. Then they give you the hardest jobs, to cut the toughest part of the cow. I came here for school.
Me, to do PhD.
Oh, you are good.
I wish I could study too.
I did my PhD as well.
I did my Masters.
I did my Bachelors.
I was in the university but I had to leave.
I finished high school.
I did some schooling.
I didn't at all.
I came here for education.
Lubanga
I put my effort on my studies and education, a lot more than some of the Sudanese
or African people I now see here.
A lot of them, even those without families, the moment they get here they
are thinking about driving these cars, they want to very quickly accumulate
material, materialism. The kind of televisions, music equipments, they buy would
be enough to pay for their one year school fees but they don't think in those terms. I was not worried about those things. I could be hungry but maybe spend that last twenty five cents to buy the newspaper, if there was some story there that
I needed to read. There is that difference, for me education overshadowed everything.
Yes, I was totally on my own, I wasn't sending money home. I did that later on, but there were no people who were depending on me. But even today there are a lot of them with no people who depend on them. Still they don't think about bettering themselves educationally or training wise as much as they should.
The other thing is that from a sociological point of view when you get a lot of people from one area and they live together it's difficult to do certain things.
If you want to study, if you want to go to the university, then it's going to be very difficult to be in that circle, unless you get out, because you'll be spending time in the library, wanting to discuss things in a certain way. All these things affect your relationship, and this social conformity loses its meaning. It is what drives some of the people to stay in groups like that, because of social acceptability and conformity.
For me, the difficulties were in Africa, in getting here. The journey has not been an easy one but once I got to Canada everything completely changed.
I decided that the only way for me was to work very hard, I was determined to do the best that I could with my academics. I worked during the summer, during the winter I was studying and also doing a part-time job. That's how I paid my way. Even in summer when I went to work, road construction or any other job, I took my books along and spent a lot of my time reading. Then I think I had two or three opportunities where I skipped certain courses because of my summer reading and preparations, coming back to give presentations in those subjects that people were studying for. For instance if it was level one then I said I don't need it, I better go to level two because this is what I had done in the summer. Can you prove it? I said I could write an essay or make a presentation.
That helped me.
So, I did a BA, came to UofT to do an MA in History. Then I worked for a while, as Education Program Coordinator for Miles for Millions, in Toronto, and then decided that history was not for me. I went back to the university and I did another Masters in Education and I proceeded to do my PhD.
I had scholarships that I won because of academic records. In fact for my
Masters degree I was accepted at McGill, University of Toronto and Waterloo.
Waterloo gave me scholarships, UofT gave me a position as a tutor which was better than being a teaching assistant, and when I compared the amount UofT had more than McGill where it was going to be negotiated. They said there would be some opportunity, definitely some financial support, but they were not sure how much. The one that I know I better take it because I had no one but myself to rely on, although the family that brought me here was there and prepared to help me.
Now, here I really see that some of the refugees could honestly do more for themselves. I have been encouraging those who are here to stick to education.
Some of them listened, others don't. If they want to go back to Sudan there is no better thing that they can carry back than education and training. Education in this country will make them more valuable in the Sudan.
It can be done but it's not easy. It involves a change of lifestyle. The kind of group that you associate with, if they are that partying type you can't do it because those hours that you spend in that party would be the hours that you could have to spend in the library.
Let me take an example of my own case, my son. He's not a refugee. He was born in Kenya. He didn't come here as a refugee, but as an immigrant. He had more opportunities than I could ever imagine, with a father already working here. He had all the choices but he was rather reluctant to take up these opportunities.
What I am saying is that he does not have the determination that I could see in myself. I said here's an opportunity; I will make the best of it. In his case, he just writes the applications without keen interest in following up, if they don't respond who cares. I did not have that luxury. I had to succeed. Either swim or sink was my situation.
And, the type of work that you sometimes do, you work very hard but the gain is very little. The only way of beating that system is through further education and training, you can then get out of this. If not you'll be working harder and harder and yet getting less and less. My son realized this. He was working in a parking lot. He realized he was working lot of hours for minimum wage.
385 So, people like him work very hard but for what. At least for those with family, they have to set the ground for easier life later. It is tough for them now to make it, but they should be aware that they are doing it for the benefit of their family later on.
Khalid
A lot of Sudanese, when they come here, sometimes when they look back to
Sudan, they actually think they are really smart because they managed to actually flee that country while the rest of the Sudanese couldn't. That sometimes is one of the justifications to actually adapt themselves to one of the most tragic option that they have created.
But we came here as nobodies. If you read Season of Migration to the
North, by Tayeb Salih, he is from a different generation. They come here to the
West and then, even in their personal vocabularies, they succeeded, they managed to know more about the western culture, western philosophy and western literature than even the western guys, and to turn it around. They used it to create their own things, they took what they wanted from it.
But those guys came here having their salary being paid by somebody.
The government or some companies sent them to do certain researches. They didn't come as refugees. Most of them came for their PhDs or Master education.
386 We don't really have any jobs, and you find yourself on welfare. In the
welfare office they interrogate you, keep asking you all kinds of questions like
why you didn't get a job. The only thing that obsesses you is how you can get out
of this.
It really, really works, the way they make people get off the welfare. They are not
really insulting you in racial terms, but it's very simple, just telling you that you are not
really doing enough to get out of this thing. And you watch TV, you find all the blacks or
people of colour are always on welfare. You start thinking oh shit, this is really, really
hard. It becomes like you have to get a job at any cost, and you have to get off this
welfare system. Then you don't speak English very well and you have an accent, and you
look different, where you come from. It just is too much on the self.
Lubanga
There are certain communities, let me take our own community, the Southern
Sudanese community, there are times when I made an effort, in fact we did come
together, they are totally unwilling to use the experiences of people, of their own
members within the community, people like myself, who came here a long time
ago, who went through the school system, studied it and are working in it. You tell them how the school functions, they don't want to hear it from me.
I remember very well, eight students came from Kenya more than ten years ago. They were taken to Kitchener. At that time I was very enthusiastic, I
387 said either I am going to come to Kitchener or you guys come to Toronto. What we do is we sit down and I will give you a little bit of orientation about how to go about things. You are still young people, I will talk to you about education, about training, about ways of going about getting jobs. These fellows just could not believe what I was telling them, they thought that I was telling them that I was better than them, that it was an insult. This is how they took it.
All the efforts that some of us made, including people like Mona, who also studied the school system here, are not well received. People don't want to be told that they don't know that's the problem. Our people, the moment you get up and tell them this is the way, especially when you are talking about their children, and it may not be their mistake, they immediately begin to think that it reflects on them, that you are going to blame them. You are trying to help them to see what's happening, they don't want to hear it. Even people that I know very well, I do not sit down with their children.
Only with one family that I know, the daughter is now doing PhD in
Calgary. She keeps phoning me, writing me sometimes, and her brothers. I went and confronted their mother. I said the way you are doing is pressuring the kids to get jobs, buy cars and houses, this is not going to work for the kids in this society.
Try to encourage the kids to go for higher education and I will be there to assist you. Not only that, when it comes to the parent's day I will go as the uncle of the kids because I know what questions to ask, for instance, how the kids are at the school. The teachers will be interested in talking about the kids' class participation, attentiveness, home work, grade achievement etc.
Alek
The good thing here is for the kids. Sometimes the school is good.
But when kids are growing here they adopt the culture from here. It's a bad too, with the parents. Kids here are doing their own things. They think parents cannot say no, don't do this.
It's not like back home. There when you want to make them to be a good person, everyone can teach them good things, not only your dad and your mom but others too. Here nobody can do it. If you are from our country I can trust you, you are not from our culture but you are the same Sudanese. If you say something for my kids I can trust that. I can know that you will do something good for my child, you cannot do something bad. If you tell them something I can appreciate that. But here, no. You can't trust anyone. It is not everyone in this country but you cannot trust a lot of people.
You are just on your own, and your husband, with your kids, that's it, to tell them the way that they can grow up, tell them the way that they can do things.
But you can't handle that because in the school they have a lot of friends. If you didn't make it, like Canadian food, the kids say why you didn't. If you didn't do it you get into big trouble with your friends too. They can put a lot of things in your mind, and that makes you confused between your parents and your friends. That's the problem.
In Sudan, now this can happen. But it cannot happen that kids run away, no. In Sudan, now a few of them are running away but most of them not because parents still have control. Only some kids don't want to listen to the parents. The thing is if you go out, and say I want to do something, you think if I do it a lot of eyes are looking, a lot of eyes that know your parent. If they didn't talk to you they are going to talk to your parents. Then when you come home they are going to ask you. If you lie you are going to get into big trouble. Sometimes if they are nice you are going to be grounded, you are going to stay at home all the day and then the second day. They just keep you busy, busy, no friends. Some people don't like that, but you have to be honest to your parents. Here nobody cares, that's the problem here. That makes me scared.
Like our people when they came here with big kids, like fourteen years old to eighteen. You are supposed to get good things from here, you are not supposed to take the bad things, adopt culture like that, do something bad or run away from the house, not want the parents. If you see or hear something like that what do you think? For me for those big kids, like fifteen, fourteen, you are not supposed to adopt culture like that. Our kids, when they are born here, the culture is going to be adopted from the beginning until when they grow up. You can be fighting with these kids, don't do this, don't do this, you are not supposed to fight with the big
390 kids. But the big kids are just doing bad things. Then the small kids are going to adopt this too, they are going to follow them.
And here, the kids take a lot of time, a lot of hours, in school. They teach them something bad, like when they tell kids to call 911, when they want to know everything in the house, if your parents treat you well or to check the food for the child. Some kids, they don't know this is the worse thing, it can put the parents in trouble, the teacher can tell the social worker or something like that. The problem is when the kids come home they have a little time with the parents. So you fix it here, but tomorrow when they go back they again adopt something from there, from friends, and they just keep it. When they come home, some kids are good, they will say, in the school they say that, say that. Some parents, they don't want to show the school as bad, they say if the schools says that, you, on your own, do like this, like this, don't do it like that, because in your place, in Sudan, when you go back they want you to do this and this. If the school shows them good things, to make the kid smart or good, they can keep it, and then they can make that balance from the bad.
That's what the parents say if they see something is not good, you just keep a little bit, come out a little bit from that group, and you can become a nice person. But a lot kids don't want to come out of the group. They say what you say is your things, it's traditional, I don't want it, I don't like that. We have Saturday program in our school. Two weeks or three weeks ago,
the parents had a program. They were talking about kids at home, like how many
and their age, in different ways, how you handle those kids at home.
A Somali lady, she is a teacher, she has five kids. The older one is twenty,
twenty one, and the second is nineteen, and then eighteen, and the other one is
sixteen and the younger one is thirteen. Another lady, a white lady, said five kids,
and they all stay with you at home? Yes, they are living with me. How do you
handle them at home, why you don't let them go out to stay by themselves? I
asked why should they go out? She said they are older, you are supposed to go out
when you are twenty, eighteen, you are supposed to live by yourself. The Somali
lady said no, we don't have this in our culture. The problem is different people
came to this country, they have different cultures. If you have kids, they listen to you and they stay with you at home, why would you let them go out, why not let them stay with you until they are married? Then they can go to their place, or if
the son wanted he can stay back. In our culture the sons marry and bring the wife to the mother's, to be together. After that if the mother says I don't want you to
stay with me, then you make your house, to stay with your wife. You can see,
with your wife, what you are going to do, and your wife can know you and you
can know more about your wife. It's good when you all stay in the same place.
But some wives don't like that, some like it. So why do you want me to let my
kids to go? And my husband is back home. I raised the kids by myself. You are
not supposed to go in the family and look, and put something which is not good, if they like to stay at home with their mother. If they go out and stay by themselves,
sometime when they get big problems outside, like they cannot handle to rent the
place, they cannot handle to bring the food, what are you going to do? I think they
will deal drags or do anything, and kill themselves. If they stay with you a little
bit, it is good. You can talk to them slowly, you can encourage them about their
mood, until they find a job. Then when good things happen, they can go. Then
they know everything. If they are still little how can I let them go? She said I
think it's easy for you, but for us it's not easy. For immigrants in this country,
they get a lot of trouble here. Some people who are not immigrants here, they
don't have problems when their kids go out to stay. And when kids run away from
your house it makes a lot of parents get crazy. That's a big problem in this
country.
Then another parent said my son is eighteen, he went out, I said okay go,
you have to pay for the rent, you have to pay for the food. I said we don't have
that thing, if your money is low, keep it with your kids and eat together. If you
want to help, you can go see what's happening inside the house, if you see your
mother is tired, she cannot do everything. If you have a good heart you can go
find a job and bring the money to your home, to give to your mother. Some kids
are doing that here in this country, they help the parents, and some kids don't help the parents. When they see their friends are wearing like expensive clothes,
everything expensive, to show off, they want to wear like this too. They want it
for hundred dollars or something, for one or two days, and then they are going to throw it out. They like new things that they see with their friends. What are you
going to do, where are you going to get that money?
That day some parents were crying. One guy, from Ghana, he said my son
is fourteen years old, I keep fighting with him. He said I tried many different
ways, it doesn't work. After that sometimes when I get angry I put him in the
room and beat him. One lady said don't do that. If you do it gets worse, cool
down. And what are you going to do if he wanted to go out? Tell him I will go
with you, if he wants to go to his friend go with him, everything he wants to do,
even inside in the house, do it with him, to be close to him, to be like a friend, to
share things. And then he can see, to trust you, but don't fight. He said I am
angry, I pay him for everything, I do this, I do that, and he doesn't listen to me, he
wants to fight with me, then I said if you want to do your own things then go out,
find your place and do your own thing, this house is not yours. He was talking,
and his eyes, when you see them, it makes you feel sad, you feel sorry. Then you
put yourself in that position, what is going to happen to you, you have kids who
are still growing.
One lady was saying you are supposed to go back. If the kids want to go
it's okay, if they don't want to go leave them and then forget about it, like you
don't have any kids in the world. I asked her do you have kids? She said no. I said just wait, when you have kids then you will talk different from now. You don't
have kids, you are just thinking like they write in the books. When you have your
own you are going to see what is going to happen, then you can put yourself the
394 same like those people. If you are so lucky it's going to be good with you, if you
are not lucky it's going to be worse. I said I have my kids, I want them to grow
good. But I can't say anything because I don't know the way they are going to grow. I can do my own things, I can teach them, I can show them everything that I want, and then I just stay to see if they are going to keep it. But I can't exactly say that they are going to become like what I want.
Amani
I am happy that my kids, my girls, came here. Both of them are now in university, they got an education.
When we came here they put my first daughter in grade two, but she was okay because she knew English. The second one started grade one here. They were okay, they were young, seven and five.
My children didn't have ESL because when we stayed in Kenya we put them in the school there. They were in kindergarten in Nairobi, and we had a
Kenyan teacher coming home to teach them English and Swahili.
But, like even yesterday this lady told me, her two kids were born here and they are in ESL. The way she was telling me I think that's her fault, maybe they just let the kids watch too much TV, they don't study. She told me oh my God, your kids are good, how are they going to university? She said, my son was supposed to be in grade two now but they put him back in grade one, and he has to take ESL classes, I don't know what's wrong with him, and my second one too.
Young kids like those learn very fast, they don't need ESL. You are not supposed to put them there, like those who are born here too. Us, in the beginning when we come here, we have to start ESL. English classes were useful for me.
Elizabeth
I believe for me or for grown up people it's okay, they need ESL. When you are older you have different responsibilities and your mind is not like a kid's.
Like most of us, from my generation, we have been in the war for so long.
The war started in '72, that's the year I was born. All these years we were moving and a lot of people didn't get an education. So when they come with that background it's difficult. People who are coming here to Canada right now came from refugee camps, some of them went to school but some of them didn't have the opportunity to go.
And for some kids, like those who come from Africa or from different parts of the world when they are ten years or older and they already speak another language, when they come here they cannot be like Canadian kids, they need extra help. But it depends on the background of the child. Mostly for the kids, as you say, for one year they can struggle but the next year, kids are kids, they pick up things quickly, they learn quickly.
Now, with the after school programs, there are a lot of reasons that kids don't go for these. Mainly that the school they are going to does not provide that program, or maybe their parent don't know the program is existing or they see that their kids are capable of doing the work that they require at school.
And, when they came from different backgrounds or different languages then automatically in the school they assume that the kids have to go to ESL. I think the kids don't really like ESL much. The kids do not benefit because they see themselves as different. And also according to the kids, the way you said it, they are kind of frustrated.
My kids had English support in school. My two boys grew up here. When we came to Toronto my son was just two years old. He didn't speak my language, his first language is English. My other son was a six month old baby when I brought him here. Because I speak different languages and when they were kids I was outside a lot, I was going to school, and they were going to daycare, they just picked up English. Even now I speak my language at home but they don't speak it. But because they are from a different background they have to get it done,
English support, it's not like ESL for adults. My son had this in kindergarten in
Kitchener, I don't know how that works. And then, here in Calgary too both my
397 sons used to have this support, but now it's closed down. My older son is in grade
eight now going to nine.
So, it can be frustrating sometimes but many kids they have to take it,
ESL. They can get out of it when the child does not need it anymore or if I say
that my kid does not need it any more. But still you have to go through this process unless they see that the child is capable of doing more. It really depends
on the teachers and the standards of the teachers. Finally the teacher is the one who can say I have been teaching the child and that the child does not need ESL
any more. The teacher can say she will not allow my sons to leave ESL, the
school can say you have to continue.
I am not going to say politics but I think these things started when they know that, like me as a parent, you don't know the politics that much. But if you know, like for me now, I worked and I learnt a lot, then I know how to try to
question people, and it's easy for them to understand me. Others, you are still
new, with the language and the understanding, you still don't know a lot of things.
And they tell you this ESL will help your child, and of course you want the best
for your child, then you say okay. If it's something that will benefit my child you have to sign it.
You have to sign to say my child will be placed in ESL, ESL teachers tell you to sign. The regular teachers or the principal will call and tell you that your
child is behind in this or that, and that he or she needs to have extra help so that he
can catch up with the rest of the class, and then of course you say okay. For the meeting, if you don't know the language, if you want, sometimes the school can bring a translator or you can take somebody with you to translate.
Usually people take the translator along. Four years back people took translators, they asked you to bring somebody. But now because there are a lot of workers speaking different languages the school can ask if you have somebody or they can try to get someone for you. They can call the agencies that provide translators for the language.
Actually, I don't know that much about politics. What I am saying is about the regulations, the way they manipulate people, like when you are new and you do not know. For example, for me when they say that they are going to help my child with ESL then I would say okay. But now I know it's something they can use against my child, the education. They will say your child is not capable because they have a language problem, that's why they are in ESL. From there, behind it there are some other things, you do not understand them.
Lubanga
A lot of it is for us to do it.
I studied the education system, I have taught in the education system and I am still working in the education system. If we look at our Ontario Education Act that was passed a couple of years ago, the responsibility for education of your
399 children is not the government's, not that of the school, it's the parents'. That's what most parents don't realize.
The thing is that the parents don't know the system here, and they don't know what is going on in the high school. It's not about trusting the teacher, the school. It's fear because back where they were, in Africa, there is fear of the government, one does not question the police, the army, the teachers. Teachers are government employees. You fear all those people, and there is nobody who can go and challenge them.
And, even those whose children are born here, and some of them working in the school here, are not aware that they can go to the school and ask the teachers about the performance of their children.
Mathew, from Guyana, one day I called him up, how are things going and how is my son, his little son? He is doing very well; the teacher is telling me he is doing music. When I heard this I said there it goes again. I just dropped what I was doing, I went straight to his house. I asked the kid for his school report card, looked at the records. I said give this to me. The next day I called the principal. I said my name is Dr. Lubanga and I am calling from the Ministry of Education and
Training. I am an uncle to Paul Mathew, effective today I want that kid out of the music program, that kid doesn't belong there. They were shocked. I said you want me to come over tomorrow, what time? You and I can sit down and discuss why I don't accept this. Immediately this kid was taken out of those classes. He was able to prove himself. Now he is finishing in Carlton University, because his father saw my advice as positive rather than think that I was blaming him. I told him that you are very easy, to listen to what some teachers are saying. They do not have the best interest of your child in their hearts. It your responsibility to make sure that your child, your only child, gets an excellent education.
If parents know what is going on in high school, what education is about here, channelling or directing of some kids into dead end programs, this thing will not happen. And this thing is affecting not only the immigrants but all parents and all families.
So, it is true, these things do happen. But how many people are willing to know what is going on? They don't want to know, they rather not know it. Are they doing the right thing to educate the children? No.
About ESL, if the kids speak only English at home you don't need a test of
English for them. And, that one, a four or five year old in ESL, is unusual, that one's a bizarre case. That should not happen, they should not be assessed. There is a misunderstanding. ESL is not meant for people who are born here or people who are brought here when they are little and then grew up here. No. That's not the policy. No one that I know here in this government will support that. No one should be doing it to somebody.
If somebody tells me who the person who is doing this is I can give them a call and say you are wrong. He or she has no ground to stand on. It's because I know the system, I implement it, I know they are wrong. They cannot question me, the law, I will tell them the sections of the Education Act. There is no way they can get away with that. In fact if I write an official letter it will put them into trouble, I would cc it to the School Board Chair or whoever and that makes a big difference. Such cases can be questioned by anybody, you or anybody. There are principals who perhaps are ignorant or racist. But if we know the system they cannot do this. Ajak: I don't know how long you were in Calgary, if you have seen that a lot of kids are on the streets, a lot of kids are not going to school, a lot of kids are not doing that great.
You wonder what is really going on.
There is a lot of struggle within families, like the families want to keep things the way it used to be back home, come home this time, don't go to clubs, don't do this. And these kids go to school and their friends are going out with their other friends, having boyfriends, their friends are doing this, all this pressure, and kids rebel.
Deepa: I think that's a part of what is happening. But for me, it is this whole system, including the school system and what it is doing to kids. That's what is making me more and more angry.
Ajak: The school system in Canada?
Deepa: How frustrated the kids are through that, especially immigrant kids, and definitely the Sudanese kids. It's like they feel they are doing nothing in school, that's their point of frustration.
Of course different things happen at home as well, there is always this cultural conflict or generational conflict, which happens everywhere. But beyond that there is something else which is very alienating.
Kids really don't know what to do. Teachers are categorizing them, parents don't always understand, they really don't know where to go. They look to themselves for support and usually that's not helping much either. They do support each other but that's not enough or that is not always productive, in the sense that the system knows it or even the way we and they know it.
Ajak: Somebody from my community may not know how to help their kids. How well are we supporting each other, how well are we supporting the kids to do well in school?
What do you think is going on with the system, with the school system?
Deepa: To put it very simply, it's racialized, but that's the simplest way of putting it. Now, what is happening is that most of these kids are almost systematically put into ESL.
So, you could be coming here with less education, from wherever, or with no education, no literacy maybe, and you are put in a grade in school according to your age and you are put in ESL. You could come from wherever with less
English knowledge but you could have studied till your particular grade according to your age, and you are put in the right grade for the right age, but in ESL. You may be coming having learnt English, maybe like not perfect English and you are still put in ESL. You could be knowing good English and you could be put in
ESL. You may not be. That's one thing. You come here very young, three, four, you are put in ESL, you are born here you are put in ESL. This doesn't happen to everyone but it happens to a lot of people.
Now what happens in ESL? The understanding is almost that if you do not know English you cannot know anything. So most often you are given subjects which are below the level for that grade. You could be taught the subjects in ESL,
404 like ESL Geography, ESL Math etc., and/or you could be taken out of regular classes and to ESL classes either for specific times or for the whole day.
You don't know what you are doing in this grade if you have never been to that grade before, you don't know why you are doing something lower otherwise, you don't even many a times know how ESL is helping you. You are categorized, and categorically put in ESL, other kids make fun of you. This is happening to so many kids, especially in Calgary.
Ajak: Why in Calgary, how is it in Ontario?
Deepa: Ontario I guess doesn't have that large a population of Sudanese in one place but here also its happening. It's very systematic, all over Canada.
It's about kids who are in grade twelve, who will finish high school but will not graduate because they are doing grade ten stuff in grade twelve, and because the counselor at school decides that this is your level. It's very condescending.
People who have kind of overcome this mostly have had to fight this. This fight is many a times thought of as completely useless. I was talking to a seventeen year old, and I keep talking about him again and again, he was like I am going to grade twelve and I am trying to tell my counselor to let me do grade twelve stuff, but she's saying no, you do Math 10, Science 10, English 10. He knows that he can make it. He was like why am I doing this, a year is going to be wasted, for no reason. This is a young person, he looks at it as a year wasted. He knows that at the end of it he is still going to be doing manual labor, to graduate he has to go back to adult high school, for which he has to pay. And maybe even after graduating he will still go back to the same kinds of jobs.
Most of these kids, of course, want their independence, and you are given independence lawfully in this country, almost from the time you are fourteen or fifteen, because you can start working then, in most provinces. Then the kind of impressions, messages, that come to you usually are work, hard work, money, success, that's it, your life becomes very simplified in those ways, all of this meaning, very specific things.
It's not like these kids are unaware. There was a ten year old talking to me about racism. He knows, he's smart, and he was saying he was in ESL by choice because he doesn't want to say that he was put in there.
Ajak: But nobody has ever articulated this to me like this, and I have never lived in a city where this happens.
Deepa: But it is happening in Ottawa.
Ajak: Ya, what I mean is that the number of Sudanese children here is not as big as the number of Sudanese kids in Calgary.
Deepa: But the number of Sudanese kids dropping out is still rising.
Ajak: It is high, very high. Usually when you see Sudanese kids, even in Ottawa, I always wondered that they never aim for higher. No kid that I have met has ever told me that he wants to go to university, never, and I wondered why. You find a kid and all they think about is finishing high school and going to Algonquin
College.
406 Deepa: You have three streams from grade nine or ten, in High School, you do the academic or university stream, vocational stream or a combination of the two. The university stream means that you are trained for university, vocational stream means that you are trained for the work force, and those in between are trained to go to a vocational program or to community colleges. Now when you are not given the university stream in the very first place you are automatically pushed into one of the other two streams.
Ajak: You are not trained to aim higher.
Deepa: And of course you are not going to tell people this, you know this is where
I am because of all this. You are just going to say this is what I want to do, which is not necessarily true at all.
Ajak: Ya, and the other thing too, I always see, and again it is my bias probably, I don't know, I have met parents, I have met a few people, who always still talk, what's the point of going to school when you are not going to get a job. And they would have examples of people who went to university and didn't get a job.
Deepa: But that's something else happening there.
Ajak: So what I am thinking is how can my kid aim higher if the parents have this attitude? I don't know.
Deepa: Your kids can but that again depends on how much they contest all this.
What I felt about a lot of parents was also that they trust the system to some extent even in spite of being distrustful of it. They think the school is what is going to help their kids. They really think that, and the school should. But there are different things happening in the school which are not always coming back to
the parents.
When the kid comes and says something at home she or he doesn't tell them everything, and again the kid also doesn't know if they can trust the parents
completely, or the parents sometimes don't have time. The parents are like you
are given homework, you finish it, enough. But what homework, of grade three
for someone in grade seven? Or there is no homework. And while the parents just wonder why, they are like okay, school is going on.
Like I was talking to this young guy and asking him have you tried to
contact anybody in the Sudanese community for these things, he was like all they talk about is politics in Sudan, but they have to live here, do things for here.
But this is not the whole thing. Parents are here with the hope, they are
even thinking of not going back sometimes for their kids. Its not that they are not bothered.
Ajak: Are parents lost?
Deepa: No, they are not but they are not always aware of how systematic this problem is.
Ajak: And why are they not aware? I am asking because I have no idea.
Deepa: Because you go to a person who is an expert. So you go to a counselor and the counselor tells you this. Now the same parents, who when they came here, were sent to ESL classes. They went through different levels, beginners,
intermediate, and/or advanced levels broadly, in a few years, and they are told this
408 is the way to do it. They find that this is the only system here, even if it usually doesn't work for them. So they are not very surprised, and they think it is maybe useful for their kids, especially since they know that the kids are young and faster learners than adults, even when this system doesn't usually work for them.
So if a counselor says I gave your child a test and I put him or her over here, you accept. Or like with the people I knew in Calgary who went and said hey listen my kid shouldn't be here, they are saying, no, this is the test result, this is it. Parents think to fight and do, but often the system or the people who are the system or the people in the system are just like no, this is it.
Then, I know a kid, she is not a kid anyway, she herself went in grade ten and said to her ESL Director listen, if you don't get me out of ESL I am dropping out. The Director contacted her mother, who said my daughter knows what she's doing, I stand by her. Somehow she got out of ESL and she is in university now.
But some other kids are not able to do that, like the other kid who was constantly trying to say this to his counselor who just wouldn't listen to him.
Ajak: What I am thinking now when you say this is to educate the parents to at least distrust the system too.
Deepa: They don't trust it.
Yet they trust the schools to some extent maybe even simply because they don't have time enough to go through all the details of this. Here nobody has time. So you are just getting angry, but you don't have time to reflect on how systematically all this is being done, about anything actually. That's why people are going to colleges. And like David was saying, it's in the textbooks. In the adult high school especially, they are told, not just that the teacher says it, that college is good, why do you need to go somewhere else?
Almost like that.
Ajak: And here you have to repeat all your high school, and everything else, doesn't matter what you came here with. It is very degrading.
Deepa: Imagine if that child is feeling one year as a waste of life, how would the parent feel? It's like four years, just to get my high school diploma, especially when you have already finished your high school and in some instances university degree before. I am not trying to say that there is no way out of it. I am just trying to say there is such a huge problem.
Ajak: There are a lot of barriers. Now I can never compare myself to anyone or most of these kids. After hearing you talk about all these things I am thinking I had a lot of advantages, where I came from and how I came. But for these kids, from a young age they know what racism is all about. They know there is racism, that alone is a hindrance.
Deepa: With that kid that was not the main thing he was talking about. But it came up through a ten year old and in very sophisticated ways, and he used the word racism. Interestingly I have talked to other kids older than him, like thirteen or so, but it hardly ever came up, so maybe it's just this guy's capacity to think, to evaluate. He didn't say all teachers were racist. He was talking in specific ways about his experiences, on the street, in the school, about how he cannot go and
410 complain against this teacher who holds him really hard, so hard that it hurts, and how that's not done to some other kids, how if he and a white kid are fighting they believe the other kid and not him. This is in Calgary, and I am sure it happens here as well. So imagine this attitude of racism in your teacher from kindergarten till whatever grade. You are like forget it, I will do my own thing.
Ajak: If I have a kid now, with the knowledge I have now, I would be able to give the proper support that my kids needs, and say to them no matter what, no matter who tells you what, you are better than that, you can do anything, like contest that what you are talking about, that can help.
But most of us are dealing with a lot of our own battles. Families are dealing with a lot of things, families are alone dealing with immigration, moving to a new country, with supporting their kids, with providing for their kids, with all their own self-esteem issues.
Deepa: Still I think people are instilling a lot of pride in their kids, to the extent that they can and that they do, the way they themselves were brought up, with pride and respect, for themselves and others. I feel a lot of people don't necessarily have a low self-esteem, except externally, in the sense of how people view them as having low self-esteem and when judged by the standards of here, in the face of which they themselves may also feel inadequate sometimes but not necessarily then thinking less of themselves. People are like I know where I am coming from and that's what keeps them going sometimes as well, and that is often brushed off by the person who is ignorant in some ways, and then of course that person looks at you as ignorant.
Ajak: But that person is the person with the power, so it does affect you.
Deepa: It completely affects, but it's not complete power.
It's also why some kids still feel Sudanese and some kids don't feel
Sudanese, like now they feel Canadian or something else. So it's just how differently power, and identity, has reached them through all these layers that it has to come through.
Ajak: It's very complicated, this is very big and it's sad. It's sad to see, it's like you are seeing a house collapse and there is nothing you can do about it.
Deepa: You can.
But it's also like when you are just interacting with the kids or the young people or their parents that this comes up, and I didn't even interact with many kids, just a handful, and you see their pain in some ways or their obliviousness to these kinds of things. They are going through this and they are telling me stuff, and you are like what are they doing to you and you can't say that because then you will maybe disturb them, you will disturb their parents. And if I was in the same situation as them or their parents I don't know how much different I would have been.
Ajak: And some kids want to be, I don't know, whether you said Canadians or
Sudanese or more Canadians than Sudanese. Sometimes it's a thing of fitting in too, like we have to really change and adjust to fit in. I can say this about myself,
412 I had to change and had to polish some of my attitudes. Sometimes you don't even know you are changing but you try to change so that you can fit in, so that I get a job that I want.
So, even though they talk about multiculturalism, that's again a national thing, in real terms it doesn't work. It's like the employment equity thing, when you have two people from visible minority or whatever you are going to take somebody who is more close to this mainstream culture, probably the way they express themselves, the way their attitude is, than somebody who is much further away from this culture, has different views. So we have to, some people feel they have to, change to fit in, to be able to get the things they want.
Deepa: And changing or not changing is not the problem as such. I think change is always happening. And parents also accept it. In spite of what people say, that parents are not accepting all this here, in some ways they are accepting even in spite of themselves. Still, I think they have an idea that this is Canadian and this is
Sudanese. And it's not like Sudanese kids and even adults were in isolated worlds before, like people were listening to say hip hop music much before coming here.
Ajak: Even in Khartoum they hear it.
So, I was always wondering, because even in Toronto, in Kitchener when
I meet these young kids and they say I dropped out of school, I want to take a year off, what are you taking a year off for? It doesn't make any sense, you are here with your family, you are staying with your mum and your dad. You are working, what have you done with the money anyway? What are you going to do with the money? I never, never understood why kids are not interested in school, I just
didn't get it.
Again, I don't think we should talk about putting people in one box and in
one bracket, say Sudanese are like this, Sudanese are like that because we all have
different experiences. I may be a Sudanese but I may not have the same
experiences the other Sudanese have, even though we come from the same
country and everything. We all have different experiences, different backgrounds,
and we shouldn't be treated the same.
That's the thing I think in this culture, where they research on Sudanese,
you read up on Sudanese, what kind of people they are, what kind of food they
eat, and you think every Sudanese is like that, or every Somali is like that for that
matter, when we are all very different and we should be treated like individuals,
we should be treated individually, not like a group of people put on the same
level. That is what they are doing by putting everybody into ESL, it's just this
assumption.
When I was in the university I was taking English 100, it was a
compulsory class. I was among the average students and there were Canadian
students below me. They didn't do well in grammar, didn't do well in English.
They speak the language and the language makes a lot of sense to them but they
still made mistakes. There are people in university, I don't know how they wrote their essays because their grammar was so bad, the punctuation was so bad. You
wonder what they have been doing all these years in school.
• 4i4 Deepa: That's the other thing, school hasn't served them either. But somehow they are still going to be thought of as normal, and the others are going to be thought of as needing English as Second Language. I don't know I hate that term itself, there is something so discriminating about it.
And I remember, I had this presentation on ESL. There was this guy, I think he is in Ottawa. He is also doing his research among people from Sudan, and he was himself an ESL high school teacher. After the presentation he was like you know it hurts to hear what you are saying because we try so much. I was like ya, you try, the kids also try, everybody tries but nothing's happening.
Ajak: And some people are trying to argue that it's a business, but I don't know.
And again it's a lack of exposure. I have clients who say I don't like black people because black people are stupid, they are lazy, they do lots of drugs, all they do is music and things like that. Honestly this is racist. But this is what they know. This is what they have been told or that is what they have seen on TV, that this is what black people are all about. And then I say, you know I don't know about that because I am a black woman and I am working, I am not white in any way, I don't do drugs and all that. But that's all that they have learnt, that black is this.
Ignorance is not an excuse either.
That's the bad thing, that those kids are given the message that they are stupid, that they cannot do it, and they really become 'stupid' because the message is out there and all the barriers are there. And when they don't achieve the things they aspire to do, it kind of reaffirms the message out there. Deepa: Or even if the kids don't become 'stupid'. Maybe the kid is not stupid but you are thought of as stupid because you didn't even finish high school.
Ajak: Ya, because you don't follow the standards. And the standards are very high, depending on where you are going it's really high and it goes up. In this culture the standard is higher depending what social group you meet. In your climbing through again there is no uniform standard, it's changing all the time, and you have to overcome these barriers. I am not sure whether everybody feels this, maybe it's just somebody like me who is always conscious.
Deepa: And I was talking with David yesterday, and Jok was saying that as well, about how in ESL for adults they are only making you to be able to communicate in your work, that kind of a thing, and that work is usually manual labor. They are not looking to teach, and they tell you you won't get a job if you do university, why don't you go and take up a trade.
Its different things. They are also helping schools, colleges, get their students, numbers, to keep them running. Another thing is, the welfare wants you to be in school as well, otherwise you will not get any benefits from them. EI is difficult too. This is everywhere, in Alberta as well.
Ajak: Here you can access welfare.
Deepa: You do access welfare, everywhere. But welfare wants to know what you are doing, if you are not working then you better be in school.
Then you see families who come with four, five kids, who really care for their kids, but both parents are working to pay off debts and bills, then what happens to these kids. You have got the TV, no child care, because it's really tough to get it, it's too costly etc.
And it was through this whole process of meeting people that Beny and me started calling people the last time in Ottawa. I was getting angry about what was happening with the kids in Calgary. And at that point I spoke to Beny, and he said some of this was happening in Ottawa as well. Then we started thinking if we could do something. I was also talking to some kids in Calgary if we can start something though I didn't stay in Calgary, and those guys were like ya, we want to do something, but what. And I didn't have any real answers.
Ajak: Ya that, but again even to make the parents understand what's happening, to just try and teach them to question the system even.
Deepa: I think they do question it.
And, a lot of people are still looking for homework clubs, for extra classes, weekend classes, for reforms in ESL system. I am not saying these are bad efforts or these are not efforts or these shouldn't be done but that these efforts are not enough because there is something much deeper happening.
Like I was talking with someone and he was also saying how the whole syllabus here is only Canadian, nothing speaks to you. Or maybe sometimes it does but for most people they don't feel included. It's about school systems themselves which are very alienating sometimes.
417 So that when you have the homework clubs or when you give extra classes you are again going to privilege some kids and not others. But these are great efforts too because these kids don't even have this.
And this is why I keep going back to this whole thing about alternative schools, where the kids really decide what they will learn. Like with this young kid I was talking with, I was like if I start something after school, will that not be boring, he was like ya, it will be boring, and of course he was bored with me too after a point when I was talking to him about his story. Do you talk about racism and stuff in school, he was like no. So what if we talk about stuff like what we are talking now, about these things, will you be interested, he was like ya.
The kids also have to deal with these things, to go somewhere with it, to not only hold it as a point of frustration itself but to explore. It can make the kids creative, and they are.
Ajak: The Somali community went through the same things. I don't know whether they are doing well now but they are trying and they are doing better than they have been in the past years. They are saying look, our kids are in the streets, so what is going on, let's sit down and talk about it.
I went to this thing that they organized, called the Somali Fathers. I was so impressed. They said, they as fathers too, they need to change and sometimes they need the support amongst themselves. They need to understand what is going on, to be able to help their kids because a lot of things are happening. They have decided to sit, view it, talk about it and support each other in this. The Somalis really are trying, and they are making their cases known now to the government.
Deepa: The other thing is that you have to always talk to the government, and the government has this particular understanding of multiculturalism or whatever that's very nationally defined. So that for them you are Somali or Sudanese or whatever else and many a times they forget that people are coming here from that very contested nationality, so that to assume that all Sudanese have to come together and form one organization and that only through that they try to express something to the government and get benefit out of it, because the system is already set out like this, is foolishness.
Ajak: Because you are very different, you have different views.
Deepa: I don't think conflict is natural but there are reasons, whatever the reasons, that people are distrustful of each other, and there are people who transcend that as well, but you need to be able to recognize the people asking for things wherever they come from. And you even got people to Canada on these very grounds, that there was a conflict among people. So that's again very systematic, how immigrant organizations are set up here, and it's about keeping people actually apart rather than together when you define them through national units, when you are automatically expected to one fine day get along with everyone say in Sudan, and you and the Somalis cannot really go together and ask to form an organization of this kind to ask for funding for common issues, anyway.
Ajak: Ya.
41? So, I used to wonder, but I never thought about it this way. I was talking to some people coming from the adult high school here and they were all going to
Algonquin College, not Ottawa or Carlton University. One guy said that he doesn't have this in his mind and he was advised to go to college. You go to
Algonquin first if you don't have enough patience, you don't get a job right away otherwise, and then you can think about going back to university anyway.
Deepa: But I think then also why you are doing eight hours or ten hours or whatever of hard labor, there's the pressure to pay all your bills. And this happened to a lot of people who finish university as well, at the end you have an
Ontario Students Assistance Program, OSAP, loan to pay back as well and you have to find a job for that.
Ajak: The other thing is that we are around each other so much, sometimes we don't know what other people outside us are doing. I also know we cannot, we can never, compare ourselves to Canadians. When I was in school I used to send money home to help my family, so I could never compare myself to the Canadian kids because finding a job and making money was a priority to me for so many reasons. What I want to say is, getting a job it is across the board for everybody, even Canadians too. But, of course, it's their country and things may change for them. For us we don't know that because we are in a hurry, to be able to help our families back there.
What I was coming to is that I still paid loans, so many Canadians are paying loans, they probably have a debt for the rest of their lives. Of course, for the Canadian kid it is not the same because I am sending money home, having student loans and things like that, and so I would never buy a house, because how can I afford to do that, I cannot do that.
I am not saying this is a good thing, but that's the fact. It's not a thing to stress yourself too much about, you know you will pay the loans when you will pay it, nobody is going to take you to jail for that and it will settle.
421 I have to pay the government for my medicals there, my airfare to Canada, for landing fee.
Now they don't have that fee anymore.
No, you have it but it's less.
It's not there for people who are accepted as refugees.
Then I have to send money home, so many people there, friends too.
They supported us, even to get here.
And here, if I don't work who will feed me, my kids.
Pay the bills.
And, it may seem like luxury like the new TV here but we need to make the house like something we want to live in.
We are like that, we always take pride in our house.
I am very simple, I don't need much.
Why did you come by British Airways, or was it Lufthansa or KLM? I came by
Kuwait Air, actually Cathay Pacific, so much cheaper too than my Sudanese friends who had to come by British Airways from India. The Canadian Embassy told them to, gave them a loan for this and this only.
Actually it's the IOM that does all the process. The Canadian government pays them, and you pay back the government after you get here.
They tell you it's a loan.
422, No they don't.
They don't even tell you how much.
You sign papers.
But they don't really tell you that you have to read it first.
Plus you think it's all good, and that it shouldn't be difficult to pay back any amount after you get here.
Here, they keep calling you, harassing you.
They shouldn't be this way.
And, me like I had so much financial problems last year I couldn't pay at all and they, without my consent or even knowledge, took money from the tax money that the government was giving me back when I filed returns. You know they give you back some money when your income is less. So this year I didn't file my taxes.
Hmm, so then you have to keep working, to keep paying back while you have other things to pay for too.
You will maybe never leave the country.
Like slavery? Bondage?
Very humanitarian!
I can leave though, if I want, they can't stop me.
When you call me leave me a message, otherwise I don't pick up the phone.
We paid back, only now, thank God. Alek
After you come here you have to pay the loan back.
Adol paid it back, we just finished it in 2003 or 2002. The government needed five thousand something dollars from us, for me and Malual. The landing fee I think is nine hundred for one person, the ticket, I don't know, one thousand something or two thousand, and the medicals, everything is included in this, they put it together.
Now, they changed the landing fee, people who come now don't pay it.
They just pay for the ticket and medicals. I say these people are so lucky.
Some had to pay ten thousand, fifteen thousand, if they have a big family they pay more. How are you going to pay this? Some people couldn't pay for years.
They give you like a couple of years. If you didn't pay it then they send a note to you, and then when you file for income tax they take it right away from there, you cannot get your income tax returns. When you keep asking, then they say ya, we took it for your loan, to pay back here.
If you came and you start to pay fifty or twenty dollars from your income, then they don't have any problem. You just keep paying when you get your salary, they can know what's happening until when you are done.
If you just stay, like you can't pay for more than a year when they want you to pay back, then the interest keeps going up.
It's bad. Money, Canada. Hey, what do you think about the G8 meeting going on now?
I like to talk about international politics, like what's happening in the world. And
I want to study it, in university. But that will be tough, I finished only grade nine in Kenya. I started ESL here.
But your English is good.
I learnt by myself, I also read a lot. In the adult school I had a problem. The teacher asked about religion, and I argued with one Muslim woman about Islam.
The teacher said I was being offensive. I told him that it was he who brought the topic for discussion, he should control it or he shouldn't bring it up at all. He took me to the principal. They said I was causing trouble and they threw me out of the school. They treat you like kids.
You think I can go to school? My wife is studying, she is doing upgrading now, after ESL, she is doing grade nine. I am happy for her. But if I also have to study then it will be tough, how to pay the bills. And if I go to welfare then I have to show them that I searched for jobs, give them a list of places that I searched.
Me I can show them a list. I just look up places in the Yellow Pages.
They say if you don't work, if you can't get work, you can go to the welfare.
But the welfare is too bad too. Ajak
With the welfare system, letting people be on welfare without any other motivation is also not a good thing, not even necessarily only for the immigrants,
I am talking about Canadians and everybody else.
Sometimes people have this stereotype that most people who are on welfare are immigrants, but majority of people who are on welfare are whites. It's more like a system level thing, for the poor to stay poor and the rich to stay richer.
That's how it is, it's a cycle, like the people I work with have been poor for generations, even those who are living in Ottawa Housing or any other government housing. I don't like that.
For example, Ottawa Housing, it's a community by itself, like a project, with people who don't have any self-worth. For example, they don't believe that there is anything good they can do, you don't have somebody to look up to in your neighbourhood, drugs are rampant, prostitution is so high, there is nothing, it's like a different culture.
So even with the subsidized housing, you wonder why they have this subsidized housing. Again, I never worked with the Sudanese community or a big
Sudanese community, I work with the mainstream. You find that people are given subsidized housing but when you make more money your rent goes up, so some people probably don't have a lot of drive. Or for some people the jobs are so hard for them to be working full-time, they decide not to work that much. What for, when your housing is going to go up, you are not making any money anyway, you are not going to have a better life anyway? So the system is made to keep the poor poor.
You know when I was with welfare they gave me so less money.
I started working part time and then I told them that, most people they don't tell them. They cut that money from my check, and gave me the rest. So it was the
same money that I got, even if I worked.
Why should I work some useless job then? Now I am working, as a personal
support worker for old people. I am not with welfare anymore, thank God. And I want to go back to school.
I was a teacher in Sudan. But its too bad there, they don't even pay you much.
And there in Khartoum I stayed in the displaced areas, and I had to look after my family, my father, my siblings. People, especially from the South, couldn't find
good jobs, only everyday work. Then I went to Egypt to get a better life. Then here. But here I don't think I can be a teacher again. I really loved that, I was
good too.
They sent me to ESL, for my accent.
Someone was asking me how my English was so good. I said I learnt it from the
airport.
Haha. And oh, my friend said I should let it be known that you are a woman. It shows how strong you are, as a woman, it changes the sense that the reader gets.
Then there was this guy I met walking through the park. He asked me where I was from. Sudan. Oh, the place where you don't have food, clothes. Yes, we have nothing. How do you eat then? Leaves in the bush. Ya, it was in the news. Yes, it's in the news. There are real problems, that's why I am here. Do you have TV there? No, because we have older people who tell us stories about the weather, about harvest, everything. Foolishly he believed me.
Hehe.
But without this imagination, of themselves as a unique people, as separate from the others, as better than others, whatever the criteria, if only knowledge of
English, and in Sudan of Arabic, without which you are thought to be stupid, they can't even be a country, a nation, a state, have borders, be a citizen.
Ya.
But I don't think we can let everyone into any country too.
Of course, you can, especially if you can think, know, that countries don't really exist.
No, and they do exist.
No.
Yes... Someone wrote to me in response to my paper posted on the New Sudan Vision website, on the experiences of Sudanese young people with ESL and schooling in
Canada. He was talking of a proposed EOL policy in Australia. They acknowledge that many immigrants especially those from Africa speak many languages. But by some strange but deliberate twist of logic, completely illogical, they then claim that this hinders their ability to learn more languages, especially
English, and so they are promoting English As an-Other Language for immigrants.
What?
And the level of English taught is even lower than that in ESL.
Horrible, marginalizing and violent, ESL is bad enough.
429 You know I read about this guy in Australia.
The previous, John Howard, government there targeted the Sudanese based on what they call anecdotal stories about their experiences, stories of gangs etc, and issued statements that they will be stopping or reducing immigration of all
Africans because Sudanese had real problems integrating in the society, they were causing problems in the society. This guy painted his face white. He said I am trying hard to integrate, it doesn't seem to work so far, am I white enough now?
Osama
It's been a long, long time being here, and there are a lot of good things and very bad things to experience.
Discrimination is not easy for me. It not easy from being a very, very active guy in Sudan and Egypt, involved in political activities, to come here and do nothing, nothing, no job, no work. Even my bathroom here is not a human's place, it's not for humans, even for me, whether in Sudan I am poor or not.
It's like something broke inside me, I don't know.
But after I moved to this room which is just not a human place, in the middle of last December, something new inside me is happening, to adjust myself to living as a Canadian, which is the idea that I always tried to avoid, it's just not me. Like the other day I was chatting with some Consul from some country in
Africa, she told me that she feels sorry about what's happening to the Sudanese
here because she had been in Sudan for years, she grew up in Sudan actually. She
told me, always, Sudanese always, all, they came back home. Not this time, they
are now avoiding that, they are not Sudanese anymore like before. They are
Saudis or whatever, because they have been like fifteen years or twenty years in
some country. They say I am not a citizen of Sudan or from a black country.
So I try now, it's like they call us, I am a new Canadian.
But whether I have official status, I mean those papers, citizenship, or not
I have to go back. So, at the same time I am planning to go visit my country.
That's all.
Ajak
After I finished my degree I decided to move to Ottawa to stay with my cousin here because jobs are very hard to get in Regina. Just finishing school, not having
money, not having a place to stay, it was hard for me to just wait around for a
while to get a job.
To get a job in Ottawa, bilingualism was a factor. And I was a new
graduate, not having a lot of experience, again not knowing the system.
Interviews for jobs, I think, are very cultural, the way they ask questions, the way they expect you to answer. For some of us when you go to an interview, it's a serious place to go, you want to do the interview, no jokes, no smiling, and finish it. It doesn't mean I am not a friendly person, but that is how I know things are done, interview is a serious thing. But people are evaluated based on this, that you are not friendly, probably not a team person.
So when I was looking for a job I did a lot of workshops. Even though I went to university here and I have the qualifications people talk about I had a hard time getting a job. I went for interviews and I didn't get jobs.
Racism, of course, is the first thing that comes to your head, oh my God these people are racist, this is racism.
But again I always tell myself, yes there is racism, it will always be there, but there is somebody somewhere who will give me a break one day. It shouldn't be like that, I shouldn't hope for someone to give me a break, you know it should be a fair system, but that's how it is. Like the people I talk with, I say racism is always there but we cannot dwell on it, we have to find ways out.
When I went to university, and I had other students too with me, I felt I had to work extra hard to write my papers because I felt I had to do an extra job to get the marks I deserved. I don't think I was feeling that for just no reason.
I have seen people write papers in just one evening. Personally I don't believe this is a good paper, even though some of them are good papers but not some. I have been with some Canadian kids, they are always in a rush, some of them are very shallow. They don't do their job as needed but they get better marks anyway. And somebody like me, I felt like I had to put a lot of effort because I think sometimes my professors probably pays extra attention on my paper.
Even at work I feel that I have to do an extra good job for people to see beyond me being black because I strongly feel if I don't do a good job it's always equated to me being black.
It could be my own insecurities, I don't know. But that's how I feel, I always have to do a good job for people to see beyond this, otherwise I would be judged because I am black.
I have been to many places where when I walk in people think either that I am a student coming from an internship or that I am a client. Even clients don't think I am a professional, they think I am a client. Whether I am told or I am not told I know that I am underestimated. So I have to always put this extra effort to show that I know, I have the knowledge. I am not saying this in a cocky way, but even with my clients I have to sometimes express that.
So, being underestimated is something that some of us are always going to have to deal with, everyday.
I remember I walked into this hospital. I was going to meet a new client who I had never met before, and the client was black. I didn't know, no one told me the client was black. When I asked for that client the nurse told me that relatives are not allowed to visit at this time. Why would you assume I am a relative? Just because I am black? At that moment I was surprised because I was walking in thinking that the client is a white guy, I didn't think anything. Somebody who knew me was there and said no, no, she's a professional, and she took me to where I was going. But why prejudge, why make that assumption, would she have made that assumption if I were a white woman? I don't think so.
And now, to be honest, I even enjoy being underestimated and then I shock people afterwards.
I remember we were sent for a training, three of us. The two girls walked in and when I was walking in this woman asked me what are you doing here, where are you coming from? She never asked anyone, she asked me. Then I told her. Oh, okay. I just sat down for a few minutes, I was really shocked. These are some of the things.
Sometimes I wonder is it racism? Is this thing so ingrained in people that they cannot control it any more, because asking somebody in front of everyone first of all is embarrassing for even you the person who's asking? Sometimes I think it's unconscious, it just happens, these people just do it, probably just assume.
Then, I went to a conference in Toronto, it was a mental health and addiction conference. Most of the workshops that I went to had to do with immigrants or with visible minority and the majority of the people who were in the workshops were immigrants themselves. That's the funny thing, we were immigrants ourselves who were interested in such things. There were a few
Canadians there, not many. So even if you have all these workshops, these great ideas, people are not even accessing them. And immigrants were saying, I was
434 surprised, they hated words like empowerment. They were saying no one empowers anybody, no one gives anybody power, and especially when these words are associated with marginalized people it's not always a good term.
I went to another workshop here, put together by immigrant women, I was so impressed when I got out of there. It was about diversity. A Chilean woman said I wanted to get rid of this notion of people as being different, you have to treat people individually, you cannot say everybody from Chile eats chilly. She said I don't eat chilly, and she is a Jew from South America but nobody could have ever guessed that there are Jews in South America.
Canadians are so much into diversity. The workforce should be diverse and we should cater for diverse community, this is the lingo these days or maybe it has been the lingo for long time. Personally sometimes I think people, just like some social workers that I know, are trying hard. They are trying to understand what is going on, but they overdo it. They overdo it and they miss the point totally. They go and research. Some people, for example, go to the library, research things about these people because social work is a lot about understanding the person you are dealing with, but you go overdoing it.
And, I have clients who don't have anything to talk to me, only about the blacks, my cousin is married to a black person or I have been to Africa. I laugh, you can talk to me about anything too. You don't have to talk to me about the blacks, black food or going to Africa. But sometimes they are so out of touch, they don't know what to talk to me. So, when I go to these workshops, sometimes I find myself saying things like people should be treated like individuals, whether somebody is different or not I think we all have to learn that, and why should we, new immigrants, adapt, why can't the Canadians adapt too, why should we be the ones who are always adapting?
I go to these trainings, I work with a lot of immigrants and a lot of visible minority, new people to Canada, I don't know how to deal with them, and that's why I am here for this training, that's what almost everybody's saying. I was like
I am here because I am a visible minority, I am an immigrant and I am dealing with the mainstream. I want to find a way to deal with it, the mainstream, because it's not only the other way. It's both ways, it's not only one way. Because even as a worker or as a teacher, whoever you are working with, these people are trying to understand who you are, its not only you trying to figure out who they are, they are trying to figure out who you are too, so you should put a lot of effort into that too.
But here, with this culture, everything is taken into the extreme, everything is analyzed to the extreme, which it shouldn't be. So if I say individuals it doesn't mean everything should be individualized, you should live alone, you don't care about other people. Even the fact that people are politically correct is taken to the extreme, so that I am so scared of telling you anything or asking you anything because I am so afraid of saying something offensive or something wrong. How are we even going to learn if we are that scared, and things are still going on. Racism is still going on but people don't want to use that word. And you know this, that these things are going on but you are trying to be conscious and careful, extremely careful. That nothing is addressed, everybody is just afraid to say anything. It is greater than that too, I am talking in just the smaller scale of things.
Sometimes people are really ignorant and they don't know what to do. All of us have our own stereotypes, we can all be judgmental and I think we shouldn't say that we are not. I think every human being is. It's just to be conscious of it. I think when I see a person walking the first thing I do is I make my own judgments in my head about them. But just be conscious of that. Especially when you are in a position of power, knowing that when you make those assumptions it does affect other people. It is complex, it is all so interrelated.
Santino
Sudanese, we don't like white people. I don't mean because of the skin but because of the way they are doing their things.
I really don't talk to these white kids or kids like that. I talk to white people, girls, but not talking to be my girlfriend or to do something with her. Then
I can't ask her where you came from, try to know who she is and where her boyfriend is, about her life. Just something to talk about you can talk. White girls don't stay in one place, like you can have sex with her today and tomorrow maybe
437 you are going to meet her at the bus or somewhere and she can't even say hi to you, it was about last night and done. Now why are you going to lose yourself?
A lot of guys are confused too. The guys always, even if he's got a girlfriend, if he meets a girl outside and the girl asks him if you got a girlfriend he is like no, I don't have a girlfriend, lies too. It's hard.
Sudanese guys are going with white women because it's easy to get in love, easy to have sex, easier than when Sudanese girls and Sudanese boys are together. It's hard with Sudanese girls. If a Sudanese guy is getting a Sudanese girl, they are all the same, it takes like two years or something to have sex, its only talking. But with a white girl, like the same day, you can have sex with her, you can do whatever.
There are nice white girls too but they are hard to find because maybe in the city you can find five only, like a girl who's got a nice heart.
I have got friends like two, four white girls. Some of them are real white
Canadians, some of them are Inuit, and its only talk that we do. They want to talk, like telling me about what they did yesterday, with guys, whatever. But it's not my problem, my problem is friendship. We are friends, forget about what you did with others. They are changing, now they don't talk about other guys any more.
I hate all white men too. Sometimes I say it depends on the person, but how I am going to get along with that person, to be nice to him, no way.
I say about white people. I say it clearly in the street, with the mike in the school, when we have every February, this black month, and there are a lot of
43 & white teachers, I always rap. I say everything, I point at them, these guys, who are white, put them away from my face. I mean it too, that's what I feel. If you are going to accept it, if you are not going to, it's not my problem.
And the white people, some of them are stupid, when I was rapping about them, kick the shit, make the white men leave, they were dancing. I don't know why they were dancing. I was like okay.
There's something I was writing here. I was watching a movie, a white movie, there are no blacks in it. I don't care, sometimes I like white movies, sometimes I watch them. They got a problem with love, like the guy was sleeping with the girl and the girl got pregnant. Then he went somewhere but he was going to come back, and they got married because this guy got money. Afterwards I was sleeping. I woke up and I wrote love is not only waiting to fuck and die together, only westerners confuse it because they are just overgrown teenagers.
Those white people, they don't think. It's only one, two, three people, they are smart. But all of them they don't think about whatever you say, unless you are saying it personally to them.
And, like Eminem right now, the white rapper, he can't say nigger, he can't say fuck nigger but the black rappers are saying fuck white. And the white guy is there and he can laugh, I don't know why.
That's paying back for Martin Luther King's time, because they took our family, they took all from Africa to America. So black people are paying back.
439 Like if I get the power I can't go to India right now and take thousands of people to Sudan and treat them as dogs. When you are going to get the power you are going to do the same, even you too who was left there in India. I know you are going to make a noise, you are going to do whatever, swear, ask money, Santino took my people, you are going to fight to get pay back.
There are a lot of things but they are going to come step by step. Right now the whites got power here, in Africa. Still they are stupid. Blacks are not stupid because they got rights. So it's okay, they can say whatever.
Khalid
When things go in reverse here, you feel totally unarmed, unequipped to really understand what racism means. When it finally hits you, you suddenly start to feel like you have been suspected, you have been excluded and you have been considered as a different person. And that's where the violence is established because now you have a challenge, and the racism is really deep.
The strangething is that Sudanese people, people like us, don't really consider themselves black, up to this moment. If you need some written evidence,
Fluehr-Lobban in a Sudan Studies conference referred a very good article to me that she wrote, about living in a black culture, in a book called Race And Identity
In The Nile Valley. We talked about how the Northern Sudanese here come to the question of how they identify themselves. Here there are certain categories, like
440 black, brown, others, and most of the time the Northerners put themselves as others because they don't see that they are black, they don't see themselves as brown.
I have had a lot of conversation with these guys. Some of them don't think racism exists in Canada. They relate to it differently. There is a lot of resistance to identifying themselves as a black person for a lot of complicated reasons.
A conversation I will never forget, with a guy from computer science at
York University. He said that the negroes, he used a term something like that, the blacks, in United States are responsible for the bad rap that we guys have, we as in the non-black people, because people are sort of throwing us in with those guys. He wants to distinguish himself from the black American.
This is how complex the Northern Sudanese are because for so long, we are talking about a thesis here, they identified themselves as non-Southern people or non-black people and that's one of their core confusion here.
They can always talk to you that they are not racist but one of the main things that people get when they come to the west here, besides the problem getting a job that we talked about, is racism, which kind of works its way in and has its impact in very strange ways. This resistance to acknowledging it is really impacting the way that they look at themselves, maybe in a positive way or negative way, I don't really know.
I have been trying to tell them it really works. And here many of us are starting to rethink, not necessarily in a critical way, in some ways this image of ourselves as Sudanese. Sudanese have this proud image of themselves, for some strange reason. They don't really have anything but they have that sense of dignity. This starts to be jeopardized here. They start to feel fragile, they start to feel that things are not really as they used to think it was. So a certain change is coming in the way they start reliving this new identity that they have. But we seem to not really learn much from the experience of racism in this country, this is a defensive mechanism usually.
There is this common joke. There was a Sudanese guy working in a store in the United States at night. Some skinheads came in looking for some victim to have fun with. They faked up some problem. They hit him and they called him nigger and all that. And he kept saying I am not black, I am Arab, I am not black.
And every time he said that they hit him more, how come you deny that you are black. Later, the store owner came and said are you crazy? What difference does that make, Arabs or black? It's the same thing. I don't know if this is true or not.
But this guy wanted to actually free himself from punishment by trying to convince these guys, you guys are making a mistake, I am not black.
You know I discovered my blackness in this country, in the subway. Till that point I never considered myself racist in any capacity. This is a whole different story.
If I am going to touch on a lot of stories it's because it's a whole story fitted in totally different stories. And I think I am going to talk forever, and then I will stop talking for like a year or so. It seem like I will never stop talking because
442 you put me in a situation that will allows me to talk like everywhere, which is kind of interesting.
When I was working in the settlement agency we, some colleagues, went for lunch in one of the outlets. At that time there was the OJ Simpson trial. We were watching this, and there were some white guys around. Around twelve o'clock they announced the judgment. When they mentioned his acquittal we cheered loudly. We were lucky, the white guys just looked at us, they could have actually killed us or something because they really hated us at that point of time.
We were really enjoying, cheering. O.J. Simpson was nothing to me, I did that out of spite. That's how much you feel racism, and sometimes you need to express yourself in one way or another.
You get lucky when you teach yourself certain attitudes regarding that.
But this is the problem itself, you have to do all these things, somehow to show that you are better than those white guys. When you come here you need to know the modern language of the people itself. I always have that in my mind. The wickedness of the whole idea of the western system is that its designed to push you away from it. You know that you have right to support, to welfare, but you don't really want that, because the price is so high. Then you have to somehow look after yourself, your family. Mora than an identity, you have to maintain yourself, you have to play that language game that is going on. You can't change your accent. And you are not really in a cultural war here, but it is always there.
This is one way to fight back, to insert yourself into the context. It's a dangerous game, like if you still you don't get a job, but at least in fighting back you at least don't just lie back and expect some support out of the blue.
And, the black Americans, African-Americans, love Africa so much. We are actually coming from the real Africa, you guys have to be friend with us. You have been looking for Africa, African people, we are African people. But they like, for example,
Mandela, they don't like us. So it's kind of strange, how the Afro-Americans handle their
African heritage. Sometimes they even get racist on us. I don't know, maybe sometimes we remind them of slavery, but they can hardly relate to you, as an African. Rather they try to think of Africa as this romantic place where they can think of African civilization.
They, even the celebrities of political activism, never did anything for Africa.
444 You know they blame everything on the 'trauma' of war in Sudan.
That it's unfortunate but real, even though it's not people's own fault, and that people need counseling and psychological help and as such are unfit to live in the west. Unfortunate but true?
And here is where we get even more trauma, and no counselling can help that if they don't change conditions in the society here.
Like with our kids.
We had guns back there, we never killed our kids. And here they say, when we try to discipline our kids, that we beat them, we will kill them, psychologically harm them.
Maybe you do.
Maybe.
But if we love them so much and if we didn't already kill them, then why will we do that here and now, after bringing them here. Think.
And then the Children's Aid Society takes away our children and puts them in foster homes and group homes, even jails. That's not helping, this is worse.
They make no real effort to provide them with a caring family or any support.
They spoil their lives. And then the kids have nowhere to go.
If you really want to help my kids you have to first come and talk to me, explain how you think and listen to what I think, and not simply take away my children.
Or even really talk to the kids.
445 And children or young people are not innocent either. When they are angry with us, or get different messages from the schools, they can use Children's Aid too, to be free or feel freer, from their parents.
They don't always know how dangerous it is for them.
I got three kids here with me, my cousin's kids and another relative's kid, to help them, to give them a good future. I said they were my children to bring them to
Canada. Here Children's Aid took them away from me. Now one guy is in and out of prison. Another is doing good, staying by himself, but he could have done even better. And the youngest is in foster home and is not doing good at all.
I was asking them again and again to give the children back to me and to let me handle them. But no. And now they can't do anything for these kids, just put them in prison.
In the courts here, you are guilty before being proven innocent.
What can I answer their parents back home? They were good kids when they came here. In the school they keep asking them stupid questions, sorry for my language, about what we do at home and then they take them away. Santino
I got arrested twelve times, some mistakes, some fate. But for whatever reason I got to see the police more than I wanted to, and all the times I did nothing. I don't even smoke weed, it is only cigarettes that I do.
If I got arrested I just go there, and they are going to let me go whenever they want. But they talk shit, they talk bad words. They act like that when it's you and them, together alone, no one else sees you. They work as devils, not human beings.
They arrested me twelve times, but I don't have a criminal record. They just release me. Still I can get mad because they waste my time. So when I go there, whatever the way I feel, I have to write it in my music.
Like in 2003, at twelve o'clock at night, it was Sunday and I was working in the night. I felt sick that time, so our supervisor gave me permission to go home. It was really cold, I supposed to take a taxi but I walked because it was close to my place. A cop just stopped me, he was like I need your ID. I gave him my ID. It took him like one hour inside the car. I was outside and I was freezing, minus forty. So I knocked on the door, I was like what are you doing man, you are inside and I am outside, I think it's not fair. He called other cops, and then he told me you are under arrest, for no reason. I was like instead of staying outside here it is better staying in jail because it's warm. After six hours they let me go, just let me leave, they didn't even ask anything. I didn't even know why I was there, why
447 they arrested me. You can go to court but it's going to take so long, so I was like just forget it.
One time I was with a lot of people but they just arrested the three of us.
After they check you, you got no criminal record, they are going to say leave, after saying bad words to you, black people.
It's the crooked police, not all of them, if you get one who is real racist.
You can find there are bad people among them, like in every country there are bad people and good people, even in a family.
In the police department they told us don't move but we didn't move.
They were like you are African, you try to break the rules. You, all of you, are drug dealers, you smoke weed, crack, everything. Because they are white they are thinking a lot of black people are smoking weed, they think like all of them do.
And white people do it too. When I said white people are drug dealers too, that was bad. I got beat up. So I reported to the TV, in every police station there are reporters there to see what is going on. They tried to see my case, take a picture or to talk to me like what happened. The cops were like no, don't, they told them to back off. I didn't look right, they didn't want evidence. Then I passed out, I don't even know why. I just felt myself after three or four hours. They did something to me. They got a stick they hit me with, maybe there is electricity in it or something, it makes you pass out or it makes you like you can do nothing. It was so bad but I still survived. I said come to the court, there is nothing on me. When I came back I couldn't sleep unless I wrote something about it.
448- It's hard, I think it's destiny to be in these things. One day a kid, my
cousin, he is sixteen years old, he just came from Egypt, guys tried to beat him up,
big guys with cars, with a lot of tattoos. My cousin got stabbed by these guys,
Arab, white and some Somalis. When I called the cops, me and my little cousin
got arrested. The guys didn't ever get arrested, we were showing them, there they
are the guys who fight us. The cops believed that we were the problem, I don't
really know why, I don't really understand. My cousin was bleeding, so they took
him to hospital. After that they just brought him there to me in the jail and we
stayed there. My cousin was in the court for more than six months, they just told
him come tomorrow, come tomorrow. And after that they told him like he can't
go to school here in Ontario, that he can go outside Ontario, there are a lot of
places he can go to, and he was living here. Then his mom and his dad decided to
move to Edmonton. Right now he is there, that's the reason.
At that time he didn't even know what life looks like here because they just came the same month, and he got problems. They didn't put charges against
us, they told me we are doing violence against people in the hood, in Overbrooke.
But it's all of them, and if you try to fight with two or four of those guys,
wherever they go, they are going to call the others with their cell phone. They are
twelve, they are a gang, they and a cop too, I think they are one family, they are
relatives. We know that because all the time if they got into a problem they don't
call 911, they call that cop, the guy they know. This cop is Arab from Lebanon,
maybe they are brothers or cousins or whatever.
449 After we came back my cousin started getting crazy ideas, he didn't sleep.
He was always trying to find the guys by himself and fight them. He was wearing all red, he didn't care. He was fighting with those guys. He was biking and the guys were driving, and he won. He beat the guys up, he broke their cars. After that I called my homies too, my friends, to help us. Then we put them under control. They had drugs at that time, my friends took all drugs from them, and they had guns, my friends were going to throw them away or bury them.
I don't know about a lot of gangs. The only thing I know is the fighting about red and blue bandana, it's called Bloods and Cripps. Cripps is blue, blue blood, and there is Bloods, red blood. Bloods is from Westside, like every West in a country and every East side is Cripps. They wear their colours whatever they do, even if they are playing a game. If someone is wearing red and he is the only one person going, and he meets like four Cripps, they are wearing blue, then they are going to fight. This is the gang that I know right now, in Ottawa here and in every city, East side and West.
I hear right now in Ottawa there are Westside gangs, Eastside and
Southside gangs, that's all. Southside is fighting, if you saw an East side boy you can beat him up, if you saw a Westside boy you can beat him up. They are fighting with the two of them, and a Sudanese is the leader in Southside. His name is Killa. He used to be my friend. We met at a Sudanese party, but he was like take off your red bandana because he had a white bandana, on his ankle. I was like I am not going to do that. Afterwards I was like okay, I took it off. But
450 right now I see he is wearing red, I don't know what happened to him. Maybe he
changed, I have no idea.
When I came here I wasn't on the gangs. I liked Tupac, and I did my own
thing. I was dreaming I wanted to be an artist writing songs or I wanted to be a
rapper. I remember I was a kid, I was writing a poem. I was thinking about a girl,
who got pregnant, who got a baby when she was sixteen or seventeen, and she is
flashing back about her life, like her dad or her mom, struggling to grow up. Her
life is only once, and now no one is going to respect her. She's just another girl
who got a kid before marriage, someone just put a baby in her and is laughing
somewhere right now. That's too bad, you should think about the way you grow
up, you should think of your sister because if your sister gets pregnant, oh my
God you'll be out, find a gun to pop that guy. That is your sister and this guy is just playing, why didn't he marry her? You are going to get mad.
Anyway, where I started there are red bandana, and white and blue
bandana too. White bandana are Asians, Arabs too, and Mexican gangs. You can't
see a white person going red or wearing blue, it's hard to see that. Only this guy,
my friend, his name is G Ride, he is living in Southside, he's wearing red. We do
all the songs together, he knows how to rap and he knows how to rhyme. We do
everything together.
I got almost shot because of this, the gangs, but I didn't get arrested for
that shit. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, RCMP, was with me at that time
because that was a black on black crime, with only black people. I was at Rideau in 2003, we came at twelve o'clock, me and my other
friends, four of them, we were looking for girls. Later I saw a black girl, she was
like do you have cigarettes? That time I wasn't a smoker, so I was like no. She
came back again with a cigarette, she asked me do you have a lighter? These guys
were like oh my God, this girl wants you or something. So I asked her name, what
she is doing here, whatever. She was like just chilling. I was like let's chill
together. We were walking, and we saw three Jamaican guys. They asked her who
is this. They took a picture of me before, I didn't even know. Then we went
upstairs, we were drinking on top at Rideau Centre, on the roof. I didn't know
those guys were following us. After that I took her down to the bus stop,
Mackenzie King. I got a phone call from my friend, leave Rideau because a guy is
trying to kill you, I don't know why, maybe you took his girl. I asked the girl you
got a boyfriend and you lied to me? She was like no, he is not here. I was like still
I don't know when I am going to meet you. I let her go right away, and I left with
my two friends. Then me and my other friend, he is from Sudan too, took bus 95.
I got off at Westboro. I told the guy go home, I am going to sleep in the hotel
because it was too late. I always slept with my family, my uncle, but I had to that
time, still right now, get some place to be by myself, so I had a room in a hotel in
Wellington Street. The guy left, and I was walking from Westboro going to
Wellington Street. I saw the guys, they were looking at me. I didn't know why, what they wanted. I tried to pass the mall, but they just came, let's get this mother
fucker. I ran. They fired four bullets, only one hit me, it just passed by. Then I broke the doors of the supermarket at Richmond Road, the alarm sounded. The
RCMP, police station, was right there, they came, they were like that black man got hit. But I didn't get hit, the bullet scratched me, it didn't go to the bones. Then they put camera in my hotel room, one at the door and one at a window. I went to work, and I came back in the morning. I saw everything was broken, the camera, the windows, and they left a note that we are going to find you. I didn't call the cops, I didn't even show the note to everyone. I didn't show it to the hotel manager because he was then going to make me pay for the windows, he was going to tell me you know the guys, or take the note to the cops. I just talked to the guy in the hotel, like yo, who broke the windows? He told me I don't know. I told him I don't know too, you are going to fix this because I wasn't here.
Then I moved from there, came here, to take a time for this to cool, to see what is going on, what the guys want, what it really was. I got shot and they tried to tell me we are going to find you. I was like they are playing, it's not real, they believe that shooting people is just cool. No one says take a gun, it's good to shoot people. And I gave them my best shot, like not to be with the cops or not to be hard on them, for them to be with a criminal record or something.
I just found out that the reason for the shooting was the girl. I met those guys in a party, I talked to them. My friend was like let's get rid of them, I was like there is no reason for doing that because I am still alive. Afterwards I don't know what happened with them, my other Somali friends caught these guys and beat them up outside there, then they called me. I was like why are you doing that? They were talking about the girl, you took my girl. I was like we were walking and we just bought drinks, we didn't even eat, it was at the same hours that I was hit, and we didn't go home, we didn't do whatever. She doesn't know my phone number, I don't know her phone number. I was like okay, you can leave, I don't know where the girl is, go get her. The guys were like don't do that man, they were going to beat them up. So, I found the guys who tried to kill me but I didn't do anything, we just put them under our control because I got a lot of people on it.
These people are older than me, like twice my age, but they respect me, I could tell them turn around. But right now a lot of them are in jail. They all smoke weed, they were like you have to learn. But I was like I don't want to learn that.
They respect that, they called me Tupac at the time, like I don't do something bad or when I see there is someone who is waiting to do something bad I don't jump him or rush him because we are not animals. We just show who is the best in the game, in gang violence.
I believe in gang violence, it is positive. It just needs to be organized because in North America they are all of them gangs, government, police department, CIA, Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI. A gang is a group of people who don't want to do or listen to another thing, if they don't like it. That's what they do, like in Iraq right now, and they were already doing to Afghanistan.
Whatever they do we are going to do in the street because of that. We can't go anywhere, get out from here. We can't leave from Ramsey here or the West side
454 and say oh, we are going to China to fight them. We can't say that, but they could because they are on the top. So what we could do is we can control the street. You fight there and get the money, hustle.
I really don't do that, my friends, some of them, do. It's hard to hustle, and
I know you are not going to stay in this world forever. I think it's going to take only a while to leave. This world is going fast, so you better be in peace, with faith in God. But when I see someone who is doing something in gangs or wherever I know he is trying to find the way out.
The Somali gang, all of them are my friends. There are a lot of girls in the gangs too. Gangs doesn't mean like when you beat up or when you have got a gun, it's all about hustling. The girl who got my hundred dollars for one kiss was in a real gang, these are girls who are in the hood, in that city. When she got free time she's always there where the guys are. So there are girls all the time, if you are acting, singing, whatever, girls are in it too.
It's really hard to explain maybe, but I think it's cool and it only needs to be organized because it is just like the cops right now. If you got a problem with the cops they are going to call another person, another cop and another cop, they are all going to come. It's the same thing, they stay together, that's a gang, they recognize it, it is unity. The gangs should have unity, West, East and South side to be one thing, that's going to make them nice, to make the gangs change, the way they do things, from self destruction to self-productive.
455 Right now here I try to be far from the gangs but still I got them, because when I came here it's only blue. They saw me, I used to be wearing red bandana, guys came to visit me to East and there started to be a lot of red bandana here.
They tried to fight outside. They were calling me, we have got to fight. I was like
I don't want to do that, you have got to leave. If someone got hit or if there is a big problem I can call my homies too, from the West. They are going to come and we are going to control you, like with my cousin who left.
One day I was wearing a red jacket and blue pants, they asked who are you, right now you are wearing red with blue? I was like because I am from West and I am living in East side, that is West and that is East side, I am Cripps and I am Bloods. They laughed and they left.
I am still West right now, even after two years. I don't really care. I don't go out, like chilling outside, because I am always busy. And since I left from there in the West it means I am out from them, I don't even know what's going on there because I don't meet them all the time. And some of them, my real friends, left, I don't know where they went. Here I don't go outside to find who is blue, who is
Cripps. I just go to school. And in summer there is a park right here, we just chill there, with my friends who I know.
I am not in gangs, I did never used to be. I was a friend to them.
The park right there, DPG, like Donald Park Gangsters, I am not allowed to go there by law and I am not allowed to go there by the gangs. Like, it was in the summer, I was biking and a guy tried to hit me there with his car. It wasn't
456 random, I know the guy, he was my cousin's enemy, the one who had to leave
Ontario. His enemies told me don't come here no more. But we still go there.
Even yesterday I was walking in the park, it was cold but I was there smoking a cigarette. It doesn't mean like when I see someone who I got a problem with yesterday I will jump or rush him. I don't do that unless they get to me first.
Two month back I applied to RCMP. They accepted me but I am the one who said
I don't want that. I like cops and I hate cops at the same time. I don't like them because of what I saw when I got arrested before. I like them when they are doing their job, when they are chasing someone who did a real thing. I kind of like them when they are with ambulances or fire fighters, or if they are in a show. I like to play cop, to be a cop, because I hate to break the rules, so I could apply. I would be a nice cop, and I would change the rules too, there are a lot of rules that need to be changed.
Like cops can't stop someone with no reason, if he is walking at night or doing whatever, or they can't talk whatever. It's hard for girls too, like for black girls, if the cops are racist. They stop them and not the real girls who are in the street, they know them well. And if you get a cop who is on the computer, if they stop you when they are on the street somewhere with no one seeing them, they can write whatever to get you. Nobody is going to believe you when you go to find another cop.
Like one day at eleven o'clock, the guy who was here before, the short guy, he came here with two girls and another guy who knows the two girls, it was
457 his sister and his sister's friend. When they came here they came to chill, it's not for love, we were like playing games, watching movies. One girl came back after a while by herself, I didn't recognize her. She was like I am Lisa, you remember I came here before. I was like ya, so what's news? She was like I just came from group home, is Karen here? I don't know who Karen is, you came together. She left and then they came together with my friend. They were staying here, and lots of friends came, they were making noise. After five o'clock cops came to take her. Where were you? She was like I was in Santino's house. Then they came to me, what's your name? We were looking for this girl. I was like okay, take her, I don't want her too. Afterwards, in the summer, a few months ago, there were guys fighting, I don't even know them, so I just passed. The cops stopped me and they checked my ID, then they asked me about these girls, where is Lisa, where is
Karen, and where is another girl? I didn't even see her before, only Lisa and
Karen. That's what I saw, the cops took them. Then the cops came here twice, four times, you find them? I don't even know where they are.
Afterwards I heard that they are in a group home. But I didn't ask about them because I really don't talk to these white kids. Lisa is white Canadian, and the other girl is South American, from Guyana or somewhere, she's brown but she is still white, she looks white.
So, they write something in a paper, words, like some cops do or the security writes your name, and then they check it there on the computer, at the police station. What they write, you don't know. I don't like that. Even with my family they did the same thing.
Me and my wife were together for thirty six years. Here they break families.
But some men do treat women bad.
I don't think if women go against their husbands or call 911 it's for no reason.
Yes. But that's not what I am talking about. If she has a problem we have to solve
it, maybe she can go away too.
In our culture it's not common but we have that too.
But here in the school they keep asking her questions and keep telling her that she
is abused. Then they tell her that she can be independent if she leaves her
husband, it will be good for her.
My wife went away, and they kidnapped my kids. They called them at home and told them to take some clothes to their school. From there they took them away, I
didn't even know till it happened. Then they all stayed with welfare. That's it, they broke our family and then just left them. My wife is not independent now.
My children all came back to me, I take care of them. And their mother is all
alone. She came here older, she didn't know English. She calls me for help with things too, especially with the kids.
If they can't really help then they shouldn't not interfere in things.
Hmm, they do think that Africans are fools, and all wife and children beaters.
We are not all good but all are not bad.
And the Canadians are not good either.
459 Even if they mean good they don't even know anything.
Or even how to live in a family.
They have to listen first.
And for that they have to stop thinking that their way is the right way to be or the
only way to be.
They have to stop thinking that they know everything, about everyone.
Ya, I had to learn that too.
I did to some extent I think, talking to and being with you.
Khalid
This is the other issue, which is personal, not that personal.
Like Sudanese can tell you that they are not racist, they can tell you that they are not sexist, but they have real problems. Like we are not getting used to racism in real term, we are not really getting used to the woman working and you not working. That really is troubling us.
In our culture women can work, they can get a lot of money, no problem with that, in our new modern generation. But that doesn't mean that you are not supposed to work. You have to work, and this is a culture shaped by women as well. The money that we get from our job is the basic core thing. It always remained masculine, it is the responsibility of the man. We have to have a real contribution.
46(V Otherwise we have to go through a certain psychological period to readjust our values. Sometimes it creates a lot of problems. This whole manhood thing gets really challenged, in term of the ability to fend for the family. A lot of marriages have completely collapsed because of this. It's not really a secret, it's an observation based on over ten years in this country.
I don't know if you attended this seminar in the Sudan Studies Conference. A white Canadian, I think from Hamilton, did a qualitative research about Sudanese women, about a lot of issues, part of it sexuality, part of it different things like how they come here. She was reading some of their statements, some interesting stories. These issues, or questions, caused a lot of anxiety in the Sudanese community.
Our understanding of sexuality and racism is completely different from the way we find it here. You get challenged in these two domains. I don't know if these are identical but these are the issues that we are grappling with. People, at a certain point, thought these kinds of problems are not really important, based on their understanding of themselves. We never had these kinds of problems before, that are now starting to show up here and there in the whole fabric of Sudanese community.
Elizabeth
Like, even now they blame only the woman when she calls 911, because back home there was nothing called 911. Back home if there is a problem in the family then other family members or close friends intervene and solve the problem.
461 Here of course things are different. When a family has problems in the home it's only the two of you who can solve the problem. If you cannot solve it the police will come. But that can hurt because we didn't have that kind of a thing before, police and calling 911. Then it seems to be threatening to the man. Also, back home the woman does not decide oh, I don't want to be in this situation, I am taking off. Here the woman has the right to say the situation is not good for me and I am leaving. That's why it seems that they are blaming the woman so much.
But I think there are always different reasons for calling 911. It depends how people see it, and this situation is not the same from family to family. There are some women who are really trying to take advantage from the man, and there are some men who are taking advantage of the woman. When the man is treating the woman bad then the woman has the right to say I am not taking that situation. Or the woman will decide I do not want that man, maybe even if the man is really not doing a bad thing, for some reasons they will call 911. And they arrest the men thinking Sudanese men are always like that.
I think that's almost the way they are. The main thing is that it is the way it is, that the men have to be the authority, they need to be on top, they need to be respected, they need to be the decision-maker, and if the woman says no, I need to make some decisions too, then they think you are out of control. That's why I say they are almost like that, like what the police think.
So, even now the situation here in North America or Calgary is that women are blamed all the time, that women are not listening, they are breaking the rules. Of course,
462 some women break the rules but they have a reason to break the rules, to go against the wishes of the culture.
What I find is that where you come from, back home, men don't do anything in the house, and it's okay because there you are never alone in your house without any other person, like your sister, your sister-in-law, your mother-in-law, somebody who's close to you in the house will be in the house. So if the man is not doing something, if he's not helping, then the people will be hurt but the women will not be blamed that much, and anyway she's getting help.
Here it's only you and the man and the kids. You cannot do the whole show of the house yourself, even if you are doing it. Just to go somewhere you need somebody to be with the kids. This will cause misunderstanding in the family and then problems come up.
Women are humans, they cannot do everything. Back home most of the women work around the house, they don't work outside. Here women are working and men are working, so whoever gets home first should do something and not just wait for the woman because the woman comes back tired too. She's been working for eight hours, she comes home, the kids are waiting for her, the husband is waiting for her to do things.
Then things are not going to be really peaceful, one of these days she's going to say I am tired.
But it's different for each family too, if the men are being brought up in the family to work and help. In some families they say you are the king of the house, you should not touch anything in the kitchen.
463 For me now I understand. Before I just used to blame the man oh, you are treating women bad but when I came back and tried to look at it, they don't actually. It's not just that they don't want to work, they just don't have that ability, they have been brought up not to do that kind of thing. I learnt that for some of the men who came, who were single, it's hard to look after themselves. They can work, they can bring things home but the show of the house is so hard for them to do because it used to be done by somebody else and they have been brought up like their mother, their sister was doing it, it's not a man's job but a woman job. Then you get that mentality. In my culture if a man was cooking for a woman it's a shame. Woman would say oh, I do not like to marry that kind of a man, he's cooking like a woman. And it makes the man feel shame, it's like you are being labeled or something.
But the thing is that things are changing and we are in a different kind of world, and in the common sense that human beings can use now it's okay for a man to cook. It's not like at home, something that can be used against me or my wife, if it works for her then I should help. Some men are saying oh well, this is your job and I am not supposed to help, and some women are still saying it's my job, I can do it and I don't need my husband to do that.
It's funny for my children, they always say I am weird because I am not like the rest. I tell my sons you have to work at home and when you get married you have to help your wife. When they go out and play they come back with oh, in your country, in Sudan, women are mostly doing the work at home, why do you tell us to do this and that, that's not how it works. I say that's Sudan, not here.
464 So, for me there are some things in my culture, where you do not speak up for yourself, that's where I go against it. If it's your right you are supposed to stand up for your right and say I do not want this, I like this to happen this way. Let's say for example if a man is bullying a girl, then you are supposed to respect yourself, that it is not really right for him to bully you because you are a girl, you are supposed to stand up and say that and not take that kind of thing. The girl should say I am like you, there should be a reason in saying that. Sometimes when a girl is soft the man takes advantage. For me, you don't let somebody take advantage of you, but you don't do it in a rough way, you do it in a respectful way, it shows that you respect yourself, that you stand up against what is wrong. Let's say if a man swears outside and I swear back then it is looks wrong in my belief. But if I say it's wrong and I do not want it, then if there is a consequence for that I can put up with that and say if you do that to me again I am going to do this, like here in
Canada, there are human rights. If the man says I am a man and you cannot do anything to me, then you can sue that person and do whatever you want. If you just swear back then it doesn't show any respect. That's what I am saying. But, of course, for most of the people when you are taught to be respectful and not to yell and all that it is hard for you to stand up for yourself.
Anyway, now women can contribute a lot, and they are contributing for the last I would say ten years. Now men are starting to believe in women. Even me, before they used to say you are crazy, because you separated from your husband that's why you are like this, and now if things are coming out in the community they look for me oh,
465 Elizabeth can do this and Elizabeth can do that. But years back it was like oh, your idea is good but it cannot be like that, just because I am a woman.
I think men did not take my politics seriously because I am a woman, like its something we didn't get used to, because in Sudan we never had women, we were never around women, who were politicians and talked politics. If you talk you just talk normally, never like you really know, you never question men like how, why these things go like this and that, maybe at least where I come from. I cannot generalize it.
Where I come from there were only two, three ladies in Itang, who I saw, like
SPLA women leaders, but I actually never had any experience of what they were really doing. One day when I have the time maybe I will have to interview one of them, they have to tell me what they were doing.
So, now we are fighting, really to stand up, and now the men are starting to get it that women can contribute, women can be leaders. For example, me when I separated from my husband and when I started to do things it was very stressful. Who are you? You are a woman. You cannot do this, you cannot do that. It was like women also were seeing me like what's wrong with you? There was that kind of look and belief here in Calgary, this is not right, women should not talk like this, women should not stand up in front of people, men, and say this and that, we should not be involved in politics. But it didn't actually prevent me from believing what I believe in, and my biggest thing is equality.
That's what I was fighting for since I was young. It's the mentality that I have for a long period of time, I think that women should be equal to men. It's not that I am against men,
466- I want equality, but because that's not how the culture works then it didn't work. Now there's a lot of change, people are believing that women can do things themselves.
But, I am not a politician. In my assumption or my way of seeing, as a politician you have to have a lot of knowledge about how you run the polity. For me talking to you or somebody else cannot be that, I think that is not enough. It's ordinary talk, it's expressing opinions. You can express your opinion but if you don't take it the way the system allows the polity to run then you will not succeed. That's how I think. That's why
I am not a typical politician. And women don't talk politics that much, I don't think that's their focus. But now they are starting to talk politics.
For me, I think it's personality, when some people want to advance or they have something inside them that's leading them somewhere they always follow it, and there are some people who live for the basic life. As you see I grew up in that society, but if we talk about the same thing today and tomorrow I get bored and I want to find something else, I want to discover new things. You don't drag yourself in one thing that you already know to do and then stay there. This is like the ordinary life for women because they are always talking about whatever they talked yesterday, the things they talked last year.
Sometimes you sense that there are things more than what they are talking about, that you can find out, and that feeling will make you feel different. Like for me what I find now is maybe women always talk about women things, your house, your work, and then in my mind it is like my house is already there, let's go and do something different. And sometimes I see them, and I want it like I should be in that category, like why I am here and the rest of the society is there. But I think it depends on how your personality and
467 your brain is, and how you see things different, all different. There are even some men who can see things in a different way, but we put them in the category of man.
So, it's personality sometimes, this thing inside us that makes us who you are.
You can go along with the belief of the society but inside of you there's something that made you as a person and that's why we feel different, think differently and that's why some people are social, some people conservative, because you really go for what you believe or what you feel inside. I really think I have to find things, I want to see, hear, experience different things, and some people don't feel like that, they feel it's too much for them.
You can be born like a girl but the way you act can be like a man, like you act like yourself. I really don't know how they do it but they will prevent you from doing those things because they see that quality is not the quality of a girl according to the culture. I think in Nuer area and in Dinka area they take women as being soft, that they cannot do very rough things.
Like going to military is for men and not for women, and women are only at home and cooking for people, even playing soccer or something only the boys do that.
But maybe there are girls who can handle that, like when I was a young girl there were some girls who went to the military. I saw them, I know some of them. They were trained and they handled the guns but they didn't go to fight for some reason, maybe because they say that women have one heart, honest. I think they sent girls to fight before and all of them were killed, because they didn't return at all, they do not back off. But men, if
468 they see that things could kill people they will back off. So that's why they don't take the woman to go to fight.
Me, I believe that the man can do the same as the woman and the woman can do the same as the man. I always believed that. I think even in Sudan we have some tribes, I think I met them, some Equatorians, there the men cook, they do a lot of things at home. I came to know them, they have a totally different culture from Nuer and Dinka, even if they have some things similar to you, because they treat their women equal with men.
That's why I say it's different according to the culture. I think it is the training, it is a culture. I think they integrated with different ways of living or cultures, they adapted a lot of cultures outside of their culture, and then they combined these, I don't know how they actually adapted it. Also I do not want say education but most of the women in that tribe went to school. They came to know their rights and they learnt to say this is where my right is, even the men also say this is her right and this is my right.
And, when can an educated woman become a president of Sudan? According to my understanding it goes back to training and to culture because what I see is that men are being trained to be heartless, that is they have to be tough, they don't have to be soft or emotional or caring, they have to carry out whatever it is, it doesn't matter how harmful it is, all those kind of things that we see sometimes, and sometimes we even blame the President for making a bad decision, they do that well. A woman will hesitate oh, tomorrow this is not going to be good. But sometime you need to be heartless to decide to do something the result of which could be really bad in the eyes of the people or
469 it would be really good according to them. Where we come from women are more caring, and if you care a lot then sometime you cannot achieve many things.
Ajak
Guys are always raised different from girls, usually in Sudan and in many other cultures in the world too. And I think Sudanese men are all the same, even though they want to believe they are different. I don't think they are that different, maybe a few in a few aspects. I think their views are almost the same.
The Equatorian men think they are more civilized than the Dinka men, and the Dinkas think, oh the Equatorians are just nothing, they are just cowards like women. I think they are all the same, they are similar in many ways, they just don't know that. I just talk about Dinka men, most of them are more rigid, and again I think most of the others, especially the Dinka and the Nuer, are almost the same, the Equatorians are a bit different.
Again the Equatorians are more, a little bit, influenced by other cultures because they are at the border of Uganda, Kenya, Zaire. The Dinka and the Nuer, we don't have a lot of borders with other countries, the Nuer maybe with Ethiopia but the Dinkas, we, don't have any borders with anyone else, so we are not influenced by anyone really.
But migration has changed this, people have changed definitely because of the moving around. I think the role of women has changed a great deal too. Out here I think women are working, working hard, women are okay with the jobs
470. they do to a larger extent, and they adjust better here in Canada than men. Like me, for example, you wouldn't hear me saying this country is bad, I am not saying
I would never say it but you rarely hear me saying it. I am not saying that I have a perfect life, no, but I am saying I am okay. I don't know how to say it well, not too comfortable but I am fine.
But I hear especially our men say that a lot, I hate this country. The men are not doing well, are frustrated, most of the men, again not all because some men are doing wonderful, and I am sure you have met them. They are having a lot of difficulties with jobs and I am talking about just any job, not necessarily professional jobs. So I can understand when they talk like this because some of them had good jobs back home, and coming here and not being able to get a decent job is hard on their self, on their ego. And for women, I don't know, to be honest, but if their husbands are having a hard time, of course, I don't think it is going to be easy for them. If I have a husband and he was always complaining that life is not good, how can life be good for me? I don't know but I hear this talk a lot from the men than the women.
This does affect the relationship so much, when women are able to work and come home with income and the husbands, the men, are not working, because now you have power too. I think the men, nobody told me anything but that's what I see, have that power of being a man back home because they worked, they were the breadwinners. But when they come here they lose that, the fact that they are the breadwinners, women also become breadwinners, I think when you are capable to do things you are powerful too. Men still want to stay with that power, of control, and it's not happening because women are having power too. So I think there is a lot of struggle there with that.
I think the power that men had is still there but people are struggling with that. In Sudan even when the women were working, men were also working, it didn't really matter whether the woman was working or not because the men still worked and they were still the primary breadwinners in the families, but in the refugee camp, in the other different countries, the women were working and the men were not. That changed the role right away, of women and men, I think.
Men speak their English better and everything, yes, but I don't think only speaking the language is enough. I find that the women, when they catch up they catch up well, even if it's with broken English I think they catch up much better than men. Probably because the men had more expectations than the women or maybe women naturally can adapt, I don't know.
But I think no matter how the situation is, women maybe cover it better than men, not necessarily that they deal with it, because life has to go on and someone has to be there. Maybe women can express themselves more easily than men, maybe that's why. I have been to families, I have seen families, I am not told but I can feel it, sometimes in the air that people are not happy, and in many cases you can see the woman making the home more friendly for people who are coming, and you can read probably more from the men than the women that something is going on, I don't know. So, the role of women and the role of men has definitely changed with the war, not only in Canada but I think from leaving Sudan.
Through all this moving and experiences I know that I have changed a lot,
I have changed as a person, I have changed a lot of my ideas, my views about things, my beliefs, a few things have changed. I know I am very liberal, about many things, even though I don't agree with things it doesn't mean that I necessarily have to go against it, like I would respect other views even though they are not similar to mine, I am that open.
Before I was more affected by other's views, let's say from my culture. I still respect all that, I still have it in me but I think I can pick and choose. I know that with the firm Sudanese men ideas I could resist them. I don't agree with it, like I do argue a lot, about a lot of things.
We are strong, but this freedom for women is just happening. I left Sudan a long time ago, I don't know what is happening inside Sudan, I am totally out of touch, I hear it but I have no idea. But the Sudanese women, in many cases we had no say in a lot of things, and again other people of other nationalities, let's say
Kenyans, Ugandans, are more educated than us. Illiteracy rate is very high in
Sudan, that's the fact. And now especially for the Sudanese women things are changing, many women in Sudan, from what I hear, are going to universities, but it's just happening.
Like for a Sudanese girl I am really old to not be married until now, even though now you find people my age or older than me who are not married. This is
473 a new phenomenon happening now in Sudan. I think all this independence comes with education, and independence come when you have a lot of resource. Like I am here, I pay my own bills, I work hard for myself. I can decide what to do with my life because I am not afraid of anything, no one controls me with hooks or anything even though in some ways I still am controlled because I don't think I am totally free from the pressure, because from young age you know you are supposed to get married, you are supposed to pay dowry. That's all we know, we didn't know anything else, and it's affecting us.
Let's say the Dinka, the way that we get married, a marriage is not done by one person, it's a communal thing. But now that people have moved, men do their marriages on their own. That support is not there any more, you have to work and pay dowry. So things have changed, but people don't see that, at home they still want things to be the same, even if things are harder now.
It is all changing but a little bit, in small little steps I think. Like I know that the Dinka girls, we never got married out of the Dinka communities. But now you find Dinkas are married to white men, it's like wow. Before there was a saying that you would never find a prostitute who is a Dinka, never, because the culture was that strong but now you can find this. So, what I mean is that it's changing, but it's changing slowly, and in different ways, like now you find
Dinka women getting married to men of different tribes. It's hard, it's not easy, but people do it, before it didn't happen a lot. Even with Nuers it was very rare.
474 It was easier for our men, they married from all over. For us it was like a no-no, even for women like me, my mother is not a Dinka, still it's a no-no, my father should be flexible but for the Dinkas it didn't happen like that. Now things are changing slowly, and girls are rebelling, like now you find a Sudanese girl living with a boyfriend. That was unheard of before, if we did it the whole country would know about it. Now people do know about it, even if you try to hide it, people gossip, people know, but it's happening.
The pressures are there, especially from my mum, and again you get it from the community. It is very subtle, like oh, what's happening, when are you getting married, what's going on? They do ask those questions, it can be pressure sometimes. And from my family, especially from my mother, there is a lot of pressure. Some day she would say it, some days she won't, depending on what her mood is and what mood I am in, and again sometimes I receive it, sometimes I kind of get upset.
But as a person, as an individual person, for me it will be nice to have someone to be with, whether it is like a husband or whatever, to stay with. Again it has a lot to do with the culture, I think it affects me more, because doing things with people, like my friends sometimes, you find either they are couples or they have a boyfriend, you always feel like a third wheel, you don't have someone to do things with when you feel like doing things, and now I feel it more than before.
I don't think it's necessarily cultural, I think it's more like a personal need that it would be nice to have a companion to do things with, to pay bills with.
475 Again because marriage is seen as you get married and you have kids, it's not viewed as a companionship and that kids can be a result of marriage, so you have to get married and have kids, kids should follow right away, so it's extra pressure. That is what my mum was saying, you know people who are your age have kids now, if you were back home you would have had kids now. Women can have kids until mid-forties, and you are in this culture, there are other alternatives, if you don't have kids you can adopt, we don't have that.
Personally I don't really care, I like kids, I would love to have one but if it's not there it's not there. I don't think it would frustrate me that much if I didn't have one. Will I adopt? I don't know. I have seen a lot of bad adoptions, or kids turn out really bad for some reason. Not knowing where you are adopting from sometimes can be scary, again with the mental illness I am dealing with and things that I see it's very scary sometime.
For men, again the Sudanese culture, its always said they can have children at any age, even if they are seventy they can have children, and they believe that women age faster than men. And it's very true in Sudan, I am not sure if it has to do with the life there, bearing kids and not having a good life too. But I don't see it here, I am not sure why, I am surprised. I met people, couples here, that the woman is older than the man and it is not such a big difference. So, the
Sudanese men believe they don't age as fast as the women, they are not in a hurry to get married.
476 Elizabeth
I think it is a good experience to know a different way of life from other people instead of just knowing the same thing that you grow up with and then you go on from there forever.
And marriage between people of different tribes, to me I don't think that it is really something wrong. But I came to realize that the way of the culture, the beliefs, how you do things is different, it will take a lot of effort to understand that person, to really come to agreement and to combine the belief or the way of that person. So even with me and my husband, part of it was the culture, that we really pulled apart, the things that he believed we should go with, not the things I believed in and I will be going with, and he began saying no, you cannot do this.
For our marriage he had to give cows as dowry, that's mandatory, even though in their culture they don't do that. He knows for sure that you don't take a Nuer girl without cows.
With the cows, part of it is respect too. But sometimes the man uses it against women. If you get married with cows you don't have much say in anything and you know the man will say I paid a lot for you.
What I believe now is in a man who will take care of my child and respect her for who she is, and not what I would get from her, but I don't know later on. In my country when you get married the decision will not come from your parents but from relatives because the cows you get married with will be distributed to all the relatives, and so if you give yourself for free then there will be other people who will question you. But
- • 477 happiness is the most important thing or the person who will take care of you, and not the thing that you will get from that person, that's why your parent have to choose the person.
And part of it is if the man has a lot of cows then the woman is like a property.
You can end up with a man who you don't like, and if he will not treat you well you have no say in it. You feel like a property, the way they train you you feel like that, everything is training. Sometimes you don't want to go against your parent wishes, you respect them and also you see other girls doing it for their family, so why not you? Then when you go to your husband's house, of course, you feel like a property because you have been brought for some reasons, you have been brought for giving birth to kids and you have been brought for cooking food for people in the house, cleaning for them, doing all those kinds of chores. You actually feel you are being owned by somebody. Only people like me who are crazy don't feel that.
Now it's becoming like most girls go against their parents wishes. Before we had some kind of a system of dating, you talk to a man, you don't go out together, you don't do things together, you just come and talk and then you go back. We talk in a safe place, like in a friend's house, and older people do not know, they cannot know, it would be a house where the family of the guy knows this girl came, it's not okay for the girl's family to know that the guy is around. But nowadays it's okay, everybody can talk to somebody.
Before it was kind of like secret, and you don't go beyond just talking. Even if you get to know that person, like you can share your life and marry him, if your family doesn't want that or if there is something wrong with his family then your family will say they don't
478 like that person because of his family.
479 There are so many new things here, not all bad.
And not all good.
Like this same sex marriage, we don't have that in Sudan.
We do, not marriage but homosexuality.
In the North maybe.
No, in the South too.
No, that person who told you this about the South is lying.
I have my own cousin like this, I talked a lot to him about this, I know.
In the North it's like the person who is fucked, sorry I don't know how else to say it, he is thought to be homosexual, the wife, and not the person who is doing it.
Before you could find people like that more openly in Khartoum but now with this government it difficult for people to do what they want.
People here thought I was homophobic, but I really didn't know anything about this. But now I know better, it took some time.
I think it's okay.
Ya, it's funny, that in weddings, when people give advice to the couple for a happy marriage life, many people talk about not calling 911 and talking to other people in the community first if they have a problem, and then there are a few who warn everyone about same sex marriage.
Yes, they think it's outside influence that can cause homosexuality.
But how can you have punishment for it, even death, if it didn't exist in your society.
480 And people who are like that are not killed there, like my cousin.
Maybe he grew up in the North. I didn't ever see that in the South.
I didn't really see it in the South, but maybe because I didn't know. But I know in
Egypt there was this Sudanese girl, and we all knew about her. She lived with us.
And there was a guy in school, we wondered about him.
We even have a word for it in Dinka and Nuer, so I think it is there in the South.
No, don't talk about it.
Is this part of your research? We are Christians, we don't have it.
Wait, you can't talk for the whole Sudanese community. I don't agree with it, but
I can talk about it. It's okay, lets talk. He can't tell me what to talk and what not to talk.
And it's up to you what you do with what you hear from me. You can use it anyway you want.
Thank you.
Ajak
Ya, it's very interesting, people think same-sex couples are deviant.
It may be right, it may be wrong, I don't know. But I have great friends who are homosexuals. I talked to them and so I have known a lot of things.
I think I was homophobic when I came, I was. I even wrote a paper about homosexuality when I was in university. My professor called me in to his office, because I used the Bible, it was funny. Now I know personally, I have enough information to know it is not a personal choice. I know it's not a choice, and I respect that, I respect those choices.
When I was doing my practicum I remember I was working with this guy, he was disabled. I liked him so much, not as a boyfriend but as a friend. I had no idea he was homosexual, and I was like oh, you need a girlfriend, saying these kinds of jokes. He said stop it, I wouldn't stop it, and afterwards he told me he was homosexual. I almost had a heart attack. Really, that was the first time I was exposed to somebody so close to me saying that, and the same day another woman who was fifty said she was homosexual. I was like oh my God, the whole organization is turning homosexual. It was so dramatic for me, and I knew that I was homophobic.
Again it was because I didn't know a lot, I was ignorant about it. I remember I had a co-worker, I was asking wasn't it hard. First I asked how did you know you were homosexual? She said honestly, I knew I have been homosexual since I was in grade seven or when she was seven. She said I always had a crush on my female teachers, but when I was growing up I tried to have a boyfriend because that's what everybody said should be. I hated myself, I thought something was wrong with me, so I tried by all means to have a boyfriend but it never worked.
And, it is not effecting me whether people are heterosexual or homosexual. It doesn't directly effect my life, yet it effects my life, maybe it does in some ways, I don't know. What I mean is that it's not a barrier to me in any way.
But people who are homophobic, I suspect they think it is contagious. For example, somebody was saying his daughter had a friend over, another girl, and she wanted to spend the night at their place. After thinking about it carefully he said no, she should go back home. Oh, you never know these days. To them it's more like it's a learnt behavior.
Again maybe if I am a parent I would be more careful about what am I saying, but I think kids explore and if it is not for them they would leave it. From a lot of talk that I have had I don't think people just become homosexual. I don't know, I think, it involves a lot of thinking, you think a lot about it, to come out, even to say that I am a homosexual, if you do come out, even to be certain that you are homosexual. From the people that I have talked to I know they tried other means of forgetting about it and they couldn't. We live in an environment where you will be hated for the things you do, people will be disgusted, people want to kill you, why would you expose yourself to that if you could help it?
The great thing in my field is that we are exposed to all these trainings and workshops, this woman was doing this gender, LGBT, Lesbian Gay Bisexual
Transsexual, training. She was saying people think all these ugly things about homosexual people, imagine these people think the same ugly things about themselves, how this feels? They internalize the messages they get from outside and that is what they think about themselves, so it's even worse for them because they hate what they are, they don't like it. I don't know how true it is, maybe true for some people.
And we have homosexuals in Sudan even though we don't want to believe that. I am sure even among the Dinkas we have homosexuals. But again the environment, what the norm says or what everybody requires, is not safe enough to let anybody express what they feel. So should we let them practice whatever they want, is it safe for them to do that, if it is it really worth getting killed for that? I don't know but I know they are there.
484 We are here.
You know I was pregnant when they processed my case, with my brother. I found out when they did the medicals, they told my brothers and not me. My brothers were so angry, I was young, in high school, with a Kenyan boyfriend and unmarried. They left me behind. I went to my boyfriend, I was stupid, you know women sometimes. Then I left him, he wasn't a good man. I went back to
UNHCR, they agreed to take me and my child to Canada. But I had to wait till I had my baby, they said I couldn't travel till then. It was unsafe.
Ya, I heard that too, in Kenya, maybe they said this in other places too.
They told many people, even three months pregnant, that they shouldn't fly, the ride is bumpy and something can happen to the child.
Interesting, and that means that they don't pay for any of the costs in Canada for your childbirth.
And maybe even more than that, the child is then not Canadian but African and will have to go through the whole process of becoming a citizen, can be deported too.
But we will never ever be a real citizen.
Because they don't really want us to be one, even if they say they do, even if you get the citizenship papers.
They want to integrate us, deny us our culture, our ways. Ya, they talk of multiculturalism but they don't really allow us to be as we are or
even to mix.
Even when you try.
Even when you succeed, in their terms.
Khalid
So you get promoted, and everybody else is not doing fine.
Then you go and look at them as if they are not doing enough. We have this culture in the immigrant society, maybe similar to other people, for example,
when people get good jobs, they identify themselves as successful people in
Canada, they think other people are not getting jobs, not because of the society, the economy, the labor shortage but because they are lazy, they only have
themselves to blame, which is exactly what the corporate and the dominant
society says about them. The successful immigrants suddenly change their
attitude. The same guy would talk to you when he was unemployed, this is a
stupid country, what the hell is this talk about Canadian experience, how can you
get a job here? This is all going to change when they get jobs, when they start
saying oh, others are not doing well, wasting all their time, not upgrading their
skills.
But this will only go on for a while. You have got to enjoy this, counting,
for seven or eight years, up to 2005. This is when it starts to hit you, when your
486 whole universe starts to disappear, when my father died and then my sister died.
She died very young, she got cancer. This is where everything started to become really hard.
That's when I really considered myself melancholic, I started reading about melancholy. Every time I feel anything, I get angry, I cannot do the critical things that I want or if I have fallen in a phobia or something, I just go and read.
So that's why finally I got really weird.
Walter Benjamin has got nice things to say about the melancholic. 'Left- wing Melancholy', is about melancholy, have you ever seen it? If you will read that book, I can lend it to you. It's one of the first books I ever read on melancholy. This bright woman, her name is Wendy Brown, she has an article about leftist melancholy based on the Benjamin thesis. Oh, I am not telling the story.
She used to be my close friend, my sister, and we have a lot of things in common. Is this relevant? Maybe I am actually using you. This is what they call counter transference in psychoanalysis, which means I can play all kind of tricks.
The first time I got the news that she was dead, it was kind of strange. It's the first time I am saying this. That's why I said like I feel kind of strange, I feel like I can actually talk forever. But I have to finish this, I have to go home.
This looks like psychoanalysis, you got some problem? You shouldn't tell people that you don't like psychoanalysis. I was sending an email to a friend of mine in Kingston telling him that there was a job in CGI and he should apply, that I will help him out with it. I was working on his resume, I fixed it.
Then I found an email which was a condolence, I think one of my cousins sent it to me. I read the message, I couldn't grasp it. I actually normally sent the email to my friend. Then I stood there totally paralyzed, I just couldn't understand it. It was like a blackout, what happened to me. Then I told my wife, my Sahra is dead.
She was very young. I don't know what happened on that day, it was devastating. I knew she was sick, I actually told my friend that Sahra is going to die because of her personal history with my elder brother, who died just two years before. I think from that moment she was not doing that well, and then I left.
I have that guilt too, I could have spent some time with her if I was there. She sent me a letter, I think when my daughter from my first marriage came here. This is one thing that tied me to my family, they were taking care of her.
This is different story too, a lot of stories for you. I left her at a certain age, and she came here almost different.
My sister wrote, now that you got your daughter you won't even remember us again.
Soon after that she got sick for quite some time, from cancer, then recovered. I went back home, I met her, she was okay. I remember when I said goodbye she cried, and I was emotional. I knew in my heart, she was going to die. So, I almost had like a mental breakdown when I read about her. For days, weeks, I just refused that email. Anyway I recovered from that situation.
The strange thing was that at that time I was changing jobs. I wasn't in the bigger IT company, I left for my older one, doing some web stuff. After one year they asked me to come back because they needed me, that was some kind of a nice sudden interest. I couldn't refuse the offer, I went back. I was in the middle of this at least ten challenging days, it was a new group and everything. I had a meeting with a Minister, and I didn't know what to say because people were waiting for me. So I went to the office. I was in a really bad shape, and this is what happened. It was a long meeting, for the project. I took breaks, to go to the bathroom and cry my heart out, for hours and so many times, and then come back and just pretend to be okay. This is how I spent two weeks. I said why should I tell these guys? I saw them like when you tell them that someone died they don't even care. So I decided to keep this for myself. That was really painful, to actually suppress your emotions and pretend that you are doing things and are in a normal state of mind. It was really very hard.
This is how violent my experience here is, to fit into this society. You always reflect, what is this? It really cost so much. You think of yourself as somebody who understands and reads, is educated, talks philosophy. And there are in the end all these experiences, it leaves a lot of wounds in your psyche. It's a good thing, all these books, it puts you somewhere else. But the experiences will
489- catch up with you. I always make them catch-up with me, in a place of my choice so that they can't disturb me.
And I don't think I am the only one who has that huge big loss.
Particularly among us, those coming from the North, there is the attraction of social status and the really huge loss. The style of living there is totally different, even different from any other country.
My neighbour here is a black guy from Ghana. This guy looks like he used to be like the President of Ghana or something because he doesn't even say hi to me. And the woman on the other side, we might have a relationship with her but I don't know what it means.
In Sudan we used to have houses, and you were always in the door, you go somewhere, visit some guys somewhere there. You can't do that here. So here we are sort of start making our own rules, chart your own movements within this space.
This is one of the things too. Usually, maybe when you are in university you could have the chance to have some friends from different cultures. But to know other people in a corporate culture is very difficult. Almost the only person
I know in the corporate culture is a young white guy, he is different, very interesting. He is gay, but he doesn't want to admit it to me. He knows that I know, that I have got no problem with that and he was one of my best friends.
I am not saying this story to create a yardstick to tell you the problem of having relationships with white people, but here is a guy who is completely
490 different, for a black guy when he gets so close together we have so much in common. We critique a lot of the mainstream society, a lot of the consumer culture. And he was into this new age religion, most of them here are usually starting to get connected with this. All that made up for a lot of things in common.
I am also sort of interested in this concept of new religion, but in a different philosophical dimension, like Derrida's religion beyond religion. We know each other for quite a long time, since '97, but our relationship goes up and down. He sometimes disappears and sometimes he shows up.
I met a lot of people, also in different setups in these companies, but at the end of the day their concept of friendship is different from mine because they have no problem in disconnecting the relationship without warning. I come from a different culture, that really, really values friendship. So you get this series of disappointment, with all the people you meet, in the way you do friendship in this country. It's really different. It doesn't really have that sense of valuing the bond or at least respecting it. There are all kinds of friends, and at a certain point you become friends because of what is the relationship. But these guys, from the start, they always tell you that they are not really going to join in any kind of deep friendship, and you will always have that apprehension about how far you can actually make the friendship go. So you don't really know what to do. I get confused because sometimes there are certain signs, but this could completely turn this thing, friendship, into a disaster or something. I don't know, I don't have the example here, but you stop trying to make even the way you do emotional things, to fit into certain hurdle. And that's really very hard. How can you become a friend?
I will give you an example, this is very traditional, which is in terms of money.
Sudanese usually, when they buy stuff and you want to pay, they say no, don't pay. You saw those people, right? They will pay for you. The next time when I meet you probably
I won't let you pay because it is kind of running in the blood or something. It always seems odd when we go to a coffee shop and everybody pays for himself because it will always even out anyway, if I pay today I am sure the person who I paid for will always try to pay the next time. Here, of course, everybody's doing his own thing.
And they try to make us Canadian.
They take us to ESL, to learn Canadian English, to speak with Canadian accent, they teach us how to cook Canadian food, they teach us how to bring up our children.
Yes, look at all the settlement services available in Canada, where they send you.
Or where you go because you want to do the right things to live here.
And because these services are free and you don't have money.
Even because you have to have something to do, only like this you can go out and meet some people.
492 They have only these kinds of programs, only for newcomers, at all the settlement organizations.
Also about how to get jobs, improve your skills, how to get recognition of your skills from before or how to update them.
But they never really recognize your previous qualifications or experience. You have to have Canadian qualifications or experience.
Why? When it's all the same.
They even asked me Canadian experience for cleaning. Hehe. Now, we have our own community centre, in Toronto.
We are among the few recent immigrants to get our own centre.
We had to fight to get this.
Even among ourselves.
Lubanga
Now, the Sudanese refugees are not only from the South, the Sudanese refugees are from the North as well from East and West.
We used to get together as Sudanese, something that I really wish could still be there. In that group you got all Sudan reflected, even the Armenian
Sudanese, Greek Sudanese, Indian Sudanese. When we had a meeting it was a true representation of Sudan. Even when there was the civil war going on in
Sudan, still those of us from the South, who came primarily because of government policies that in South is defined as Northern, we were together with those from the North.
It is the latest group that came from the 1980s, the SPLA refugee group that doesn't get together, which is very ironic because the leader of SPLA, John Garang, was not for this division. People became politicized in an ethnocentric way, that was not there before at all. I think some of them especially through their experience in Khartoum and in the camps, when they came here, became militant against people they defined as Arabs.
494 This is not breaking down. Yet after the peace agreement there are now at least crossovers of meetings, but not as in my time.
Amani
In Canada there are so many Sudanese.
Still you can find some people, even after they came to this end of the world, they have that mentality, this person is from there, this person is from here, some people still don't get together. That's the thing.
For example, I am a Muslim but I am involved in everybody's things, like in Christmas time. I have some friends, I go to Church, I celebrate their Christmas with them. If somebody dies and they do the funeral in the church, I go, I don't mind. But some people, maybe they won't do that, some Muslims will say oh, you go to church, don't, why do you do that?
And some Christians, if you invite them, for example, to celebrate
Ramadan, they can come, like Jacob and his family. You can't tell us apart, they are Christian, we are Muslim but we are just like one family. We eat there, they eat here, we do all things together.
But with some peoples it's hard. I think it's different from person to person. Some people are so easy, you can interact with them. So even with my people, even the same people from Nuba Mountains, sometimes it's difficult to talk with them. I don't know, that's their way. But there are not many people from Nuba Mountains in Toronto. Here I
have my nephew and his wife, he came first to Windsor and then they moved to
Toronto. We are just three families in Toronto, me, my family, my nephew and
then there is another friend. Before in Toronto it was only me, and there was one
single guy. There are many Nuba people in Calgary, and we have a lot of people
in Kitchener and Windsor.
Anyway, I am open, I am myself, I can interact with anybody, maybe from
my life there in the refugee camps. I don't mind, I can talk to anybody. But
sometimes maybe you are willing to interact with a person but the other person is
not willing. For me, I think from that experience, because I was with different
people, different groups, since I have been here, if I get like a white person,
Indian, anybody, I can interact.
Like right now I have a business, a part-time e-commerce business, at
Lawrence and Keele. I want to invite you one day, you can come, every Tuesday
we meet there. It's only me from my people, and so many Indian ladies, you can
see one black woman. We go to the States, we travel to different cities. I go
anywhere, I don't mind. People sometimes talk, you are so strange. It's okay, I
don't mind.
I think I am like this because of the refugee experience. The first time I
left my family's house was after I married. Before that I just knew my city, where
I lived, my parents, some friends, relatives, I didn't know so many people. I learnt that when I went to the SPLA, that's where I met all these people, from Sudan. I knew before, I studied in Sudan, in the books, that there are these groups,
Sudan is a big country, but I never met them. I just only knew Nuba. Even Nuba has so many tribes, but only when I went there to Dima I knew that these were
Nuba but they speak other languages. I learnt a lot more than what I learnt in school, if you interact with people you can learn.
So, I always say, if you live in a refugee camp you can live anywhere. You can live with anybody, it's easy, because you meet all kinds of people, coming from everywhere, from Sudan. But if you stay in your place you are not going to learn much. All these people you can read in the book, this people, they do this, they speak this language, but you are not going to have the experience, how they do their cultural things, how they eat, what they drink, how they dance. What you see, you experience, you feel it. I learned, I made a lot of friends.
Santino
Right now, I don't have friends from North Sudan anymore.
I had my neighbours in Sudan, Haroon and Hashim, and another guy, I don't remember his name.
Here I don't talk with them, I don't like to talk to them because they are from the North. We have got a problem with them, so why would I talk with them. If I saw them I can't tell them yo, we got a beef with you, I just walk away.
497 I don't want to talk to them, all Arab people, only my friend from Kuwait is the best. He is nice, maybe today he's working on something, he always comes here. This is the only Arab person I talk to. But I hate all of them, even from
Kuwait, because they are all Arab. I always tell them clearly, Arabs are the same.
This isn't racism, they started it, not everyone of them but still if you say once my brother punched you but it's not me, it doesn't make sense to me, you and your brother you are the same.
In the land there, in Africa, we totally hate Arab people and we can say white people are better than Arabs. And black American in America are saying
Arab people are better than white people. We all know, every black person from
Sudan, if you ask anybody about Arab people, in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt or in
Sudan, they are going to tell you Arab people are just like white people. Sudanese people who are from the South came to Arab countries, they know what the Arabs do, so they know them, they are bad people.
The problem in Sudan is religion. We are Christian, and if my brother turns to be a Muslim, pure Muslim person, he's going to start hating me, he will not like me any more. The people in the North are not Sudanese, real Sudanese, we can say they are from Asia, they came selling salt, clothes or shoes, I don't know. They know that, they believe that themselves. And then later they said I am not going to pay you money till you to get the religion.
Before in Southern Sudan there were no Muslim people, we didn't have religion, people didn't hear about any religion. Arabs came and they gave you
498 religion. How do you think they got a religion there? Muslim people came and said who is going to build your hospital, your house, and you are going to be
Muslim.
And, I believe the people from the South who are Muslims right now are not the really Muslim, they are just trying to get payback too. In Sudan if I am
Muslim and you are Christian, Arab people are going to take me to the high positions, Christian and Muslim people we all know that.
I know Islam, I read about Muslim people, I do know what the rules say.
Other religions like Buddhism in China I didn't hear or read about it before, and we didn't see about Southern religions in our History classes, I didn't hear it before. So what I thought before I believe in it, when the other things are going to come maybe I could change after I saw it wasn't nice. But this is what we know.
I know Moses or Abraham didn't come from America here, they are not
Europeans, they were from there. So who is going to accept it if Muslims,
Americans, Europeans came again with the religion, what are they going to do more than this?
Sometimes I don't believe in all the religions too, from Buddha in China to Christianity wherever. Sometimes I say if God was not going to make you like a white person or Arab person, right now they are going to be the same, they walk with the same two feet, have the same hands, think the same. What happened that there are a lot of people down, and we are the same? Sometimes I do wait like maybe there is a Sunday, and it's going to turn to
something better, what I don't know. But we have been waiting enough and I
don't think it's going to be so.
And, white people came to Sudan with a lot of stuff to give it to them, and people said oh, these guys are nice. Then we came here to western countries and we know what the white people do, so we know them too. We call everywhere, we are all watching, we all feel the same way. They are doing things the same way, here, in Germany, everywhere. Now when we are going to go back to the
South we are going to be on our own, we are not going to trust anyone, we can
stay with no one. It's only a few of them, you can find, like they are nice.
I don't know why we are staying here. We can support each other within this country too, those who are in the same situation like us, who need a country, who don't like this country, we can be friends, because we know, and things will
change. But if everything changes I really don't know if then it's going to be fine
or not. What we do right now is to live our lives here, and then we are going to go back there.
Khalid
The problem with immigrant communities, Sudanese communities, is that they have a lot of problems within themselves, and somehow you can feel that they don't like themselves much. Everybody seems to be like forget this Sudanese thing. We don't really have anything to do with the Sudanese. Every Sudanese says that, which makes you wonder who is a Sudanese anyway because they don't like themselves very much. And most of time they are trying to disassociate themselves from the
Southern Sudanese.
There are so many experiences of creating a Sudanese community in the formal format like an organization. It's working but it's completely symbolic, and doesn't do anything, and people don't have much respect for it.
So, the possibility of creating a parallel world, at least like an island, to compensate us Sudanese doesn't seem to be working very well. The Chinese seem to be sort of doing this. But we are not really succeeding in creating this network that somehow supports us in our isolation here.
There are some attempts. For example, I with some of my friends managed to create certain things, sort of understanding our limits and our ability, in making use of all there is, creating reading groups for getting the mind occupied, filling your sense of being, to get something done. People like us, maybe from our leftist background or something, we need to be doing something, like contributing to something, like social cause, activism or some kind of art, to fulfill our role in life or something, your understanding of your potentiality as a human being. But it is very hard to do that here.
Sometimes I thought maybe I would go and join these parties. But I would personally be a token, like for a long time in the Northern Sudanese politics they always have a Southerner as a token. What is happening here right now is that you bring some black guys to talk about national legal stuff. I don't really want to go to NDP just because I am an immigrant. Actually NDP never attracted me. I was attracted at a certain point but when you get to deal with them it is a party, at the least, close to those crazy guys, I hope you are not part of them, the communist parties in Canada.
They are funny people. You need some communists here in Canada but sometimes they give you the impression that Stalin is still in power. With our political background, we critiqued the Communist Party back home that it is converted to what the communist party is in the west, we were far more progressive in terms of at least not having this kind of strict Stalinist kind of ideology, like Trotskyism, it's kind of nuts.
So, I was looking for some outlet, some affiliation of some kind, but you can't really find it. At the least you have the feeling that you can find it. I think
Hamad was doing some volunteer work with Amnesty for sometime. I like theatre, intellectual things. And, we used to go to Harbourfront looking for some groups, couldn't find it.
How can I be a part of an intellectual forum? We know it is a racist country, for certain people, but you have that feeling or the assumption, all the time, that people in the left always transcend these barriers. We have this feeling that the system in the west will be a little bit better. That is not really true. The strange thing about all this is how can you actually get to them. You can read a lot of stuff on the internet but there is no way to actually meet those people, and that's really bothering us because it seems like people are only meeting during the election time and that's not the way we do this grassroots thing, you go and talk. I ask myself how can I vote for these NDP guys, and they never come to us. So I gave up on the NDP and the new left. I am still searching.
Three years ago I turned myself into vegetarian, part of my Derridian mindset. Derrida was a vegetarian, I think. He has an interview with one of my favorite philosophers, Jean-Luc Nancy, it's called 'Eating Well'. I read the review on internet, it got me interested in vegetarianism. Earlier I wasn't really convinced, but then I read what Derrida wrote on animal rights, called 'The
Animal That Therefore I Am'. It completely disturbed me. Derrida said that it might be the animal who is actually responsible for the birth of self consciousness in the human mind. Then, I thought about the Green Party. My God, when I read their stuff on their website I liked it. But the thing that offended me is the process of application, these guys are not serious. They ask you to fill a form and send it to them, it seems there is no money involved, there is just a link, and that's about it. There is no meeting or talk somewhere. In Canada people usually have this open house or a common discussion at least. But, just write a form, like it used to be, for example, in the old days of communism, fill a form and then get it signed by people who know you because you could be a submarine.
Submarines are security officers masquerading as communists or leftists, within the Party. So you come in, and then suddenly it turns out that they took a lot of submarines, but those are just regular people. Communists always do that, accuse you that you are a submarine, you work for the government and then totally discard you, this is one of our main problems.
I am very critical of the communists. They always consider me a little bit harsh on them, but I think being communist is a really bad space. It's like the
Canadian experience. It could have been nice, because you end up trying to cure a lot of your legacy. But that's really too hard to know, particularly if you try to fix it in the wrong place. Part of it is friendship, relationships, it's more than the political commitment of communism itself. It's about how people live within it.
It's about reflecting not just about the political failure of communism but on the internal experiences that people don't really talk about. You invest so much on friendships, your life becomes part of a group, you can call it comradeship, what happened to it. But they never really got it, that there is no real sort of companionship and support within themselves. Even the fundamentalists have that. You don't even have it in the Spartan sense, you don't have that bond. When you get in it's just a pretext for politics for power.
It's when you turn this stuff into criticizing yourself, for doing this and doing that, and get yourself in line with yourself, that you get some kind of thought of self respect, you get orientation. But after that you don't really know what to do with all this and that's really frustrating because you seem to have this energy to help but there is really no outlet. You can't really go back for some obvious reason, maybe not obvious but complicated reason, like one does not belong anywhere anymore. So there is no socialist or leftist, I don't like this term anyway. They seem to lack a spiritual engagement with their ideals.
Anyway, the Green Party could have been nice, but they have nothing for you. Sometimes you sense an addiction to cultural sensitivity or multiculturalism, the attitude that some Canadian people, also Canadian leftists, have. Maybe they are multicultural, and sometimes they are very happy, they go on strike trying to actually serve multiculturalism. It's a hard way to say it but it's just the other side, people really slot us into certain zones, and everybody respects his own, that's multiculturalism.
What is happening in this country is that you get people in certain areas, like in office, bars, public parks, malls, meeting in a very narrow public domain, doing certain things, and then you go back home. Like I know I am black and they know I am black, and we pretend certain things have nothing to do with that. You get used to it, sometimes you use it for your advantage of course, sometimes I just hate you, and sometimes you just avoid doing this exercise because it won't even work, you can't really go with them. They try to get you to be some kind of a visitor, but it's not really that simple.
What I am trying to say is that at least the liberals put it in political terms, in their pamphlet, and the organizations that talk about multiculturalism have this token, like some black or whatever person. This Green Party has nothing for you because they don't have other people from other cultures.
505 The reason I am concentrating on the Green Party is because of grassrootism. It's supposed to combine this sense of ecology, sense of environment. In the traditional political organization our whole approach was based on certain political ideals. We have this political discourse but we never actually lived it in real life. You talk about changing human behavior and socialism but in real life you don't really experience that. There is a whole big difference between actually living it and turning it into a political program, literally translating it in any sense whatsoever to your behavior. I am not calling you to pretend you are poor while you are not, but there are a lot of things on a neighbourhood basis in your life that you could actually do. We never did that.
That's why I think that the left always failed, we always failed. This is just a point of view, we don't really have this activism that combined all these things. So, when I came here I was looking for some people who are not just talking about human rights in legal terms or writing petitions, but doing something larger in term of at least a human outlook.
I don't know much about other organizations, maybe I just have to look around again, but the Green Party doesn't really seem to be interested in these kinds of things.
And now it's getting very critical, at least for myself, this sense of contributing somehow, somewhere. Since I came here I always suggested this reading group and every time we end up with very few people. Other people lose interest in these things, and so many times just me and Hamad find ourselves looking at each other. We can talk about anything, right? It's kind of strange, but you can't really judge people, why they don't come there. Sometimes it gets really expensive for people to move or to come or to commit to certain things, a lot of people don't really have the time to read anything. So many things, and you can't really sustain a movement for a long time.
Before there were other settlement organizations, well established and with a good line of credit, who were providing services for the Sudanese.
They even employed Sudanese settlement workers.
But they got money in our name and used it for other programs and communities.
I don't know about Toronto but I am a settlement worker here in Calgary.
They employed me only part-time.
And they expect me to be available all the time, to translate, to go to the hospital, to help with so many things. How can that be?
And I have to also do other jobs because this money is not enough.
I really want to help but I can't always, also my job profile doesn't allow that.
It makes no sense, if they really want to help then they should do more than have programs, they have to address what really is the problem for people.
Like me, I am an old man, I have a problem with my leg, it's broken, I can't walk much or stand for too long. The welfare people told me that they can't help me
507 because they don't know what caused my injury. I tell them my story but they don't want to hear it, believe it, because I don't have documentations. And they told us that me or my wife has to work.
I don't know English and I am working as a cleaner at this old age because my husband can't work, and the welfare won't support us otherwise. He doesn't have education or English to get an office job and his leg is too bad for him to do other jobs. What's the point, that the government of Canada brought us here, where we can come and suffer? It's better even in our country, there we will suffer like anybody else, because we know the war and we speak the same language, and we could do the things we used to do when we grew up. But here we are just lost.
Elizabeth
I am presently working in an immigration agency, as a social worker for Sudanese families who are here and have difficulties with the language.
I translate for them, I also do workshops for them as to how they can raise their children according to the way that the Canadians do. Some programs like what I do is free, it doesn't cost anything. I connect the Sudanese families with other settlement agencies providing services for newcomers, if our agency cannot provide them with what they need.
I got this job through recommendation. One thing I learnt is that finding a job here is according to who you know, not what you know, not the experience. You can have the experience that they need but if you do not know somebody then it's really hard to get a job, especially a good job. This should not be happening, if you are qualified then you should have the job.
But that's what people are saying, the only job that conies your way is in the meat factories. It is a difficult job, available for immigrants. Maybe you have been frustrated looking for job for so long, maybe your professional background is not recognized, maybe you have family, or you want to survive, and you'll take anyjob.
The government of Alberta has a scheme to integrate immigrants. So, there were a group of people from the Sudanese community who talked to one of the agencies that we need a program for our families. Then these people talked to
Talisman and got money from them. Then these community leaders were looking for women to run the program. They recommended me, that's how I got the job.
I have been working here for two years. I don't work with Talisman, they give the money to an immigrants serving agency, and we work under them.
You heard about Talisman? I was also a part of the protest against
Talisman. Personally I didn't go for the protest but I supported it because what they were doing in Sudan was not right. It was business, the way they were doing business with the Sudanese government, and us, as Southerners, did not want them to be there because people were killed because of them in the areas wherever there is oil, the government of Sudan killed people in order for Talisman to get the oil. We were protesting against Talisman here, trying to say get out from that business.
I think they wanted to pay us back or politically maybe they didn't have a good case because people were looking at us, they were labeled a lot by Sudanese who were here that they are killing people. But obviously we the Sudanese, who are here, we don't have much say or power, all we can do is just go blah, blah, this is not good, this is bad but they, the government, and companies, have to implement it, it's not us. A lot of people get effected because of what they do, even us we who are here, we are affected by that.
Anyway, so our workshops are mainly about the way you should discipline your kids and how you can integrate your children into the Canadian society, like the social activities that the kids can have, for example daycare or programs like leadership for the kids where they can play a leader role for the younger kids.
Our kids stay home, and the cause of that is mainly that the mother's the one who is at home all the time with the kid, she's the one who can look for activities for the kid, but if she doesn't have the language, she doesn't have the resources, doesn't have the connection, then she doesn't know where to put the kids. So we provide an opportunity for the parents or the families that are new, to know all this.
The programs are to make them aware of what they can access, actually it's to make them integrate into the society, to make them do the activities the
510 Canadians are doing. The kids need to have activities that they can do, which if they are here with me then I just discipline them, you don't do this and that, but if
I don't know what's outside for them.
Let's say for example, the after school program. I just know that my kids go to school. Then when they come home to me, I just came here and I do not know English, I cannot help my children with homework, and I do not know about the after school programs here. Like, we have Calgary Youth, a program for immigrant kids where they can get help with homework, they can also learn ESL if they have a problem with the language and they can go to camps in the summertime. If you are new you don't know that.
Also, the kids go with the society, when they go to school they do things the way Canadians do, and when they come home we as parents need them to do the things we know, that we have been brought up with, and then there is a clash on that.
In the culture back home how we raise our children is different from here.
Back home we have the family together. If the mother has something to do outside then there is somebody to take care of the kid, and usually the father is outside bringing income home. But here it is different, the mother and father go to work and maybe only the small child who is like twelve or six will stay home.
Back there it is ok because your neighbour, your cousin or your sister can be there to look after the kids. Here it is just you and your husband, and if one person is not around then one person is responsible. Also the kids there are more responsible, if your child is like ten then you don't worry that much. But here you have to worry till they are eighteen. Then the fear of the stranger, we don't have this back home. That's why we have workshop, to say that kids are kids.
But sometime I do not agree with so many things, even in my work place.
A social worker can say I am coming to help you, and then the family will say okay, they will help but that's not what they do. There are some things that will benefit the family, but not with their needs, and because of the politics behind it the workers will make it seem like they are going to do it, according to the needs.
Let's say like in my work, I am supposed to tell the parent that here in
Canada we do not slap kids, we talk to the kid, we give them time out. We need the parent to come to the classes, to listen to that. That's where we are hurting you. I am not supposed to drive the client to the workshop, and here I have a client with half or no language, no knowledge of the city and maybe four, six children who are very small and I am telling her to come by bus. Am I helping that person?
When you say you have to help somebody you have to meet their basic needs, before you actually give somebody a lesson. Let's say if a child does not speak English or any language you cannot tell the child to write the language. The child has to have basic understanding of the language for the child to write anything down. Here they say you come on your own and I am going to teach you how to raise your children, and there is no way for that person to come. Maybe I have a vehicle, I can help, and I am not helping. Maybe the person will say I am not going because I do not know how to take the bus. And then if you are not coming I am not going to be forcing you or helping you in a different way.
Or if the person is a single mom and she is not working and she has a financial crisis like she's all the time thinking about that, she won't be able to come to class and just sit and listen to how she can raise her children while she is worried about how she can provide food for them. Here I am telling her about what to do when your kid did this and that, and when she says she has financial problems I tell her I am sorry I can't help you, my job description does not allow for that. If I know somebody who can help then I would refer them to that person, but most of the time it does not happen like.
For me, all the time, I always break the rule because I tend to go beyond what I am supposed to do, if I see the need then I have to help.
When you are new here it seems to be really good, the way you want, because somebody says we will give you something good, you are happy because you actually didn't go deep into reality. But after a few years when you come to know more you come to realize that's not the way things are supposed to be, you will see things differently, you know they are manipulating people.
Like me, when I came here I said oh, Canada is a great place for people to get schooling, you can work. But when you really get stuck into the system then you know better than what it seems. All the people don't have requirements like education or
English, and the system is not helping. So what's the point? And when you know, if you
513 hear those things, and you are the person that knows better then it hurts to know that the
space behind is really hard to break.
The way it works, the settlement agencies are established.
They have been in this business for more than thirty years, and they are connected
to the right people in the government and Citizenship and Immigration Canada,
CIC. They are not really held accountable, they are not asked if their services are
really for the Sudanese community or even if the services are useful.
We started questioning this in Toronto, and at the end of a long struggle we got
our own centre.
But they changed the name of the organization, when we got the centre, to get the
centre.
We had to, the government says that we have to provide services to all Sudanese,
not only the Southern Sudanese, and to all communities in the neighbourhood.
And the centre is not really helping.
Yes, but we are trying.
You know we are new, only a few of us are doing most of the work, and we have our own people who want to stop our work, we don't even know why, maybe ego.
514 And the way the government sets up these organizations, the CIC funds and allows only certain programs in the centre, they mainly want to integrate newcomers. In our community we don't have that many newcomers.
But people have real problems.
They thought the centre can help with that.
We are trying to see how we can fit all this, it is difficult.
CIC is not totally understanding our community and its needs.
Right now the important thing also is to continue being a centre, and then to slowly get more programs for the community, even from other funders.
We need everyone's patience and support.
How long to wait?
We are frustrated.
It's okay, they are doing a good job.
We also have to learn from our mistakes.
And we have satellite centres all over Ontario, in Windsor, Kitchener and
London.
In Ottawa, we are three communities for people from the South, now we are trying to come together. We think this is a good opportunity, to get our own centre.
Then there are other communities from the other parts of Sudan too.
Ya, we are trying to see how we can serve all Sudanese people. To bring everyone together is not easy.
I think it's not necessary too.
But that's how the CIC wants it.
And, the centre means many rules too.
It's not a social club, for people to hangout and meet each other.
But why not?
I think all this is a part of the multiculturalism of Canada. They get people from other places, even or basically for their own interest, acknowledging that these people had problems in their own countries, even with each other, they were persecuted. And here they try to again get them all together in a common
community organization space, even forcing them to do so. Funding is attached to this criteria.
It's not bad to get people together.
It's also good that because we all left the country we can at least now meet and talk to each other.
Yes, talking is always good.
But how can they really bring people together, that involves a different and long process of interactions and not simply a formal organizational set up.
If they make this a precondition to funding to solve problems then it can't help. It totally denies the context of why people got here in the first place, even as they have narrowly understood this history to be, a conflict between certain peoples, usually two. In fact such a precondition prevents people from accessing the funding since as
such it's almost impossible for people to come together as one organization.
But yes, this is another good opportunity for people to be able to talk to one
another, really talk.
And, it's not like we never did talk in the past though, in Sudan or in other places.
Yes.
So they try to fit people into neat national boxes. And then they ignore the real
concerns and fund only those programs that promote the interests of Canada. To
make the newcomers more Canadian while making sure that they can never really
become totally Canadian, even if that was ever really the goal. All the time
allowing for and even making sure through the settlement services that people can
be exploited as cheap and flexible labor, when these programs are just basic
programs and one size fits all programs, that are set up based on the idea that all
immigrants to Canada are the same, not really capable and not significant enough
to have more given to them in these programs. That they need to be grateful for
what they are provided, didn't we save you from the horrors of Africa, haven't
you escaped death, life without hope, even the manual labor that you are doing is
better than what you had there.
Ya, that's why we need to manipulate the system.
Not change it?
No. Yes, but not all at once.
But how can you really do this within the system? When the system is defined as a system of states, and the states defines their national identity by enforcing who can belong in its territory as real citizens and who can never ever really belong, those who are outsiders even if they are recognized as citizens in a legal, technical sense. That Canada has to exist, yes at the level of getting labor to do their jobs, but also and significantly as a nation of similar people who can't be turned into something else, into whom others have to be integrated but not to the point of polluting them, so that these others can't and shouldn't really be integrated. So that segregation, marginalization and ghettoization works even when it is not stated. It is done.
Same as in Sudan.
Only that was our land and this isn't.
But they give Canadian citizenship.
Same nonsense.
51* So, we work in factories, in cleaning, in meat factories, as security.
Some are lucky, they go to university, and some have good jobs.
After I finished my Bachelor's here I was so depressed, I had to work as security for some time.
Oh, I am doing fine, not great but okay.
Athaia
I am doing fine up to now.
I have two kids in Canada, plus one in Sudan. I have one kid that is challenged with disability during birth, she has cerebral palsy. That is not affecting my life because I was looking at what I was at that time, during her birth. Sometimes I can say the doctors injured her, sometimes I feel like they did the right thing because it was between the two of us, which was first and which was last, who comes first will be alive and who comes last may die. People will say that when they used the vacuum to get her out they injured her brain. I know that can affect it, but when I go back, she was hurting my heart, like she was going up to my heart until they got me on oxygen. When I see all that I say maybe they were risking two people at one time. If they went for surgery at that time it would take them time to set up for surgery before they started to rescue one of us, and they decided to use the vacuum to bring her out and to see if I will be okay.
She was injured by that time.
519 People say you have got to sue them. For me I could sue them if I was
okay and there were no difficulties in having birth, then I will say that I have the
right to sue them. But when you have your own situation you give them a right to
do their thing. The doctor should ask permission every time, but there is a time
when they don't need to ask, they just have to do it, and if they do it for your good
and if it turns into something bad in the end and you are safe, you should be proud
of them for doing that. So that's why I didn't have that mind, same like my husband or my family, to think about suing the doctors or asking them why did you do this, why you didn't ask me if I wanted to go for surgery. I just take it
easy, I always think why should I worry about it too much. It's like choice, like I
give you a choice and you know you need both, sometimes the challenge will be that you really have to take one, you can't take two. And they took one, it was my health, and by my health maybe I could help her.
I am just so proud of what I have and I am happy with it. I don't regret that.
About Canada there is a time when you face difficulties, and there is a time when you just see like I have seen a lot, more than this, and I can bear it.
That is what I see.
I do remember like two years, three years ago, my husband was sick and I couldn't do anything, he was sick and my daughter was sick too, two people in the house, and nobody was working. We got funding from social services but that was not enough, to help or to do anything.
520 I don't like to get sick in this country. If they give you unemployment
money, they give you less, they don't care if you have kids. Then when you run
out of this they say go to social service. They give you seven hundred dollars, that
doesn't help with anything, maybe just for rent, only if you are in subsidized housing. They are supposed to help you, solve your problem, but they make it
worse for you, aggravate your situation. Then they make everybody to be a liar, if you tell the truth you don't get help, only if you cheat them, only when you tell
lies.
So, you just have to be somebody who is very strong, to handle these
situations. Some people get frustrated, and some people just break their marriage, if you don't understand your husband well, he is sick or he is not sick. It was okay with me. I was just saying I know he is sick. And I know we got a lot of support
from friends, talking a lot. But it was not just their talking that encouraged me, it's me. I decided that he's going to be okay, so from there we just focused on his medication and seeing the doctors, and in taking my daughter to the hospital.
Doing all this together we just became fine. Now he's back to work.
And life, always, you don't expect everything to be okay in one day. There is difficulty sometimes, you have to be strong enough to deal with it.
Santino
I am here by myself. Here no one really cares for you. I only got my uncle, my aunt. They are here in West since I came, when I was in Bayshore. They told me there is no one in this country from whom you can get a dollar. So I tried to find a job, I was working since then.
When I came here I gave people thousands of dollars but it doesn't make sense too. An old Egyptian man told me if someone is greedy don't be greedy, give him because you are going to then find something to swear at him, it's going to be easy. So I give, I know when I give money they are not going to give it back, I asked them before and they told me no, we can't. When I quit my job and tried to find a school, nobody cared anymore, like if I say hi now they are not going to say hi.
It's hard, but right now I don't care. I don't need anyone because that is part of being a man. Right now I don't need any help because I used to take care of myself since I was a kid. If I need real help or money I can still stay in USA, I can make money. And there are a lot of people, they need me, like my grandmother in USA.
And, I write lyrics, my own words. What I think about is only my mind, about my own problem, positive and whatever, both of them, or flashing back to my life like what happened to me, and about love.
Like there was a guy who was hustling me for money, when we met we got in a fight inside the Rideau Centre, at daytime. I went home, I didn't even think about it, but my friends were like, oh my God this guy dis you. I did a song about him, to dis him back. What I think is only for me but sometimes if you read it maybe you are going to feel like it is yours too. Sometimes I talk about racism because there are a lot of people who don't know that. But they do, if you ask a black person right now outside there he's going to tell you what is going on.
I have like twenty two songs, it's all about Africa, about African people who came here, or have lost themselves in North America, because there are a lot of people who are underage, smoke weed, and do whatever, they don't know what to dream, they act around.
Some of the songs are in 89.9 station, they buy the lyrics to give it to rappers. They told me we can buy the songs that you want to give us, I choose and
I give it to them.
I am always watching movies. I am taking like the truth, from Tupac DVDs. I write songs the way he was talking, to put my things together and find something, my word. It's not like I am copying. I respect this guy a lot because he was representing gangs, black people, reminding them that they came from Africa. He was talking about the government, that they are bad, like they got no black person from that time till right now, about what is going on in the streets there, and about drug dealers. And he has music too like he can take a mike and rap right away, he can go with the beats with no written lyrics, only saying his mind right away, and he can answer you, the right answer at the right time. Then he died at twenty five, with no kids. And he was born in the jail.
His mom and him, they had a struggle life like everybody, like me, he used to hustle when he was younger. He used the word, other rappers are all liars, except Nas. You don't know Nas? You want to see a picture? The guy who sang I know I can. Oh, you don't know this song?
Lubanga
Once I finished PhD I was lucky enough.
I got a job in an engineering company as a communication analyst. Shortly after that I got a job with the government as a Program Coordinator. I had tried to go to other African countries but I wasn't taken anywhere. To be very honest my goal was to go back but it was not easy. So, I said I am not going to sit here and wait, I will get myself a job, whatever, private or government. Once I became a landed immigrant I was able to get a loan, and I couldn't just wait because the loan for education was accumulating.
I was aiming at teaching at the university, but at that time, in the 80s, the starting salary was very low, between twenty three and twenty seven thousand. In the government it was a lot more, it was thirty five and up. So part of the reason why I came to work with the government was the financial incentives.
Now, I am a Vocational Training Supervisor for Ontario. There are eleven of us and we travel to other parts of Canada as well. Sometimes I am on the road for weeks. There is no part of this province that I have not seen. There are a few people including the ministers who have seen Ontario as I have seen it. In a lot of
524 the places I am the first black person to have gotten there. There are a lot of
communities here, even in the South, where there are no non-whites.
The people who are totally breaking down these barriers in this province
are the Chinese. You don't find them confined to Toronto. This is good. Across
Canada places that used to be hundred percent Anglo are no more like that. In
some places the richest people are not Anglos, they have moved because they
cannot afford the place anymore, wealth there is no longer identified with one particular group. Some people are cracking it in their ways and fast.
It was even more difficult earlier, when I came to Toronto in 1972. Most people today, who are here now, those who came in the '80s, think this is the way
Ontario has been always. Toronto in the '70s was a different world altogether.
This is all new, the last fifteen, twenty years made the big difference. Toronto has changed for the better in many ways, it has become multinational and multicultural. For me it's for the better, and it keeps on changing too. As the city has changed it is also easy for the immigrants to adapt.
Now the segregation in Toronto is of two types maybe, in terms of residence and social interactions. In commerce and such activities people are all there, all together, like here, in my office building. The moment you get out of the elevator and go out in the street you begin to go your own ways, but at least you do converge on some common grounds.
And, in Canada there are no camps like those in Kenya and Khartoum.
People arrive, they are in orientation centres, and later on they disperse. If you don't have to be in Toronto then you can go to any other city. So, that experience that people have elsewhere is not here.
I am not minimizing the problem here, but if I am a Southern Sudanese, say before the peace, the CPA, is it better I be here or in Africa, particularly in places like Kenya? There is no comparison. In some African countries it's a dead end because they cannot afford to support their own people. In fact the refugees have become a means of helping the host countries as well. They set up the refugee camps, and construct roads, water systems.
Here, it's a question of understanding how the society works. The important thing that is missing there in the Sudan is this issue of individual responsibility. Lots of the Sudanese always functioned under the system where the government tells them what to do, whether they trust the system or they don't, they do what they are told to do anyway. Besides individualism or individual decision-making is not part of the system. Everything revolves around the family.
When I make a decision to do something it is assumed that the others would follow in. So people don't see it much, that here it doesn't work that way, here you are responsible for your own decisions. Even if you advise me about something, if I am doing it I am doing it because I have decided to do it.
The first generation may or may not understand this but you have to build the rest, they are going to be here. To understand how this situation works even if you don't want it makes you carve your own niche, and live better.
526 Khalid
I did well, actually I did very well.
But I don't really like my work any more. I am trying to get connected to some
communication things so that I could, at least, utilize my knowledge with the internet, I
know it very well, to go into the communication business, at least from a digital
perspective, to apply all this that we talked about, this discourse analysis, to the digital
which has now become part of the whole cultural consumption. This is my idea of going
forward, but I don't know if I can actually manage that change of career.
Alek
We were just stuck here in Toronto, we didn't move anywhere.
Adol and I don't like to move too much. We were like four years in that
place in Dufferin, it is a nice area. When I had the kids, they are two, the problem
was that the one bedroom couldn't fit us. That's when we moved from there to
here.
Now I think I am going to move to another place when Adol goes to
Africa. If Adol leaves I can't handle the rent for this two bedroom place. If I find
a job before he leaves and I have a good salary then I can stay here with the kids.
But if I don't the first thing I can do is go to the welfare to help me until I find a job.
Then when I know I have a good job I don't want to stay with the welfare.
527 Welfare, they talk too much, they bother you too much. I want to be on my own, it's better than when you are on welfare in this country. That's what I know.
The first time when we came here, when we finished one year, the immigration sent us to the welfare. They send everybody to welfare, after the first year, except people who are sponsored, who come through the church.
The workers at welfare have a lot of questions during the interview. I remember that day when they said to Adol, now you are in the welfare but you are not to stay at home. You are going to think, either you are going to school and your wife is going to stay with the baby or your wife is going to do work and you stay with the baby, both of you cannot stay at home, then we cannot pay the money. It looked like he is going to take the money from his pocket and give it to you. They talk, talk. That's the bad thing, Adol and I didn't like it.
But that's the way Adol stayed, till little by little he found his job. Then before they laid him off he took his checks to the welfare. The welfare always saw it but they keep following you every morning and keep calling. If they didn't call today, then after two days they will be calling. What are you doing, did Adol go to work?
In the first job Adol found in this country, I remember, he got like six dollars per hour. He found the job with Ambrose, he went in the morning and came back in the afternoon. He paid the rent and had a little money to take home for the baby, for the food, and some things like that. After some months the company said guys, the job is slowing down, you have to stay at home until we give you a call and then you come back, they laid off Adol and Ambrose. They didn't call them back.
Then Adol looked for another job, he got a permanent job. We said thanks
God, just quit the welfare, after getting the job, permanent, fulltime, with health cover.
Adol was working with an agency, until it took him to the company that he is with until now.
I remember that he was working nightshifts for three years. Three years I was staying home with Ayen, she was little, and then when I had Adul I stayed with Adul at home too, all the years I was living at home by myself with the kids.
He came in the morning. Sometimes in the winter time he couldn't find the bus early in the morning, he just relaxed at Magak's place. He would give me a call, I am in Magak's place, I want to sleep a little bit and then when I wake up I will come home. After that he came home at one o'clock or something like that. He was here a little bit and then he went back to work again. He took like three buses sometimes, from Keele to Jane, Jane to Finch, Finch to his work.
But here now from this apartment he is not far from his work, it's better with him than when he was there. Ajak
After school I got a job in Ottawa with a homeless shelter for a year and four months, and I was still looking for other jobs. I got the next one with a housing agency called Ottawa Salus Corporation, I was doing community development. I did that for almost two and a half years, and now I got a job with the Canadian
Mental Health Association.
It's a new job, it's a good job. I really like it, working with people with persistent mental illness, I do hospital outreach. We usually do a lot of advocacy work with our clients, navigating the system for our clients. I have been working in this job for about six months, it's a permanent job.
I think for me I have a lot of advantage, because I came young, and went to school here. So in terms of adjusting, let's say in terms of jobs, in terms of making friends or making this place more of a home, I am able to do that I think because of this.
But I am not sure for the people who came married with kids and their husbands, I am not that sheltered but I think they are sheltered, they have their family. For me I have no choice. I have to get out to get things, I have to meet other people, to make friends, to be able to survive. But when people come as a family they have that support ready, even though sometimes you need other outside support to be more healthy. I think initially you have that support.
530 Khalid
I made a mistake, I bought a house. I don't know why, my wife encouraged me to do this. This is another story too.
At a certain point you get this feeling that you are okay and fine, and you can actually buy a house, which is a sign of settlement, a sign of agreeing with the whole world, when you start getting internal to this place. You find a face in the morning to buy this house from.
But when I bought that house I had this bad feeling in my heart. This is serious business, and I can't really consider myself as someone who lives in a house and becomes part of this whole Canadian thing and stays here forever.
Some people convinced me that I could sell the house any time, that was a relief because I asked how can I get rid of this thing if I want to go home or something, meaning I am not really a part of this country.
I had a problem the first time I did my snow shoveling, this set of routine that you have to do when you become a house owner, that make you part of the society, doing certain things. I don't buy into this, it doesn't really fool me, all these sets of signs or routine or social behavior that will combine to make you a middle class white person or make you a successful immigrant. It seemed not really enough at the end of the day, it's not satisfying. You could make it satisfying in certain ways but it needs a whole different set of understanding, a whole different attitude, a whole different psychological makeup, to think that you are really making all these successes and doing fine. I am not angry or anything. But how can I become a Canadian, if I am the
guy coming from the United States on a business trip after 9/11, and you stop me, take like five hours of interrogation, searching every piece of paper, even the pizza receipts from the hotel, photocopying every Arabic text. And these are not the American guys, Americans will actually arrest me. These are the guys in
Toronto airport.
I keep telling the Canadians, you guys know I am not Canadian, so can you really help me? I make these kind of jokes, to say I am ignorant or rather incapable of performing many of the markers, signs or whatever, that makes one
Canadian, like becoming a baseball fan or something. Even in the office I always tell them that I am not really Canadian.
And they here are immigrants too, actually thieves, they took other people's lands and are now calling it their own.
They try to keep, make, native people stay in reserves and immigrants in ghettos.
Santino
I came from the US to Ramsey, it is a ghetto.
You can see a lot of people on the street, mothers, daddies somewhere, surviving. It's too dirty, some of them are in drugs, some of them selling weed.
532 When I came there I was inside all the time, in the basement playing games. I came out sometimes because there was just my uncle there and no one.
He's got no kids, like older than me, only a girl, and I had no friends.
Then I got some friends, they introduced themselves to me, outside at the backyard, in the summer. All of them were hustling me for my money. Oh, give me money, today is my birthday. I was like ya, wish you a happy birthday, and gave my money. But it was not their birthday, after I learnt that I couldn't find them. A guy was like yo, why you giving money, don't you know that they are hustling you? I was like I am not going to give money. Then they were like yo, give me five dollars or ten dollars or fifty dollars, I want to go somewhere, and I gave it. They got a lot of girls outside there, it was summer, some of them were wearing bras. They told me hundred dollars and we are going to give you one girl to kiss. That was crazy, I didn't even know what the hell I was doing.
Afterwards I was controlling all of them. I introduced myself to only three guys in the hood, we played soccer. Then I found guys playing soccer, and I signed up in that team, I was the best because in Africa that's what we do. In
Canada it's nothing, they don't play soccer, so I was the best, I was the captain.
Then I saw the guys, they got CDs, tapes, they were rapping. I signed into it, we did songs together but I wasn't the best in that team because they had an album before. It was only my dream, so I got in that time and made money on it.
When I controlled them I didn't control them by power, by the power of guns or the power of knife or whatever. I was controlling by talking, and the saying money talks. When I came from the United States I had enough cash, you
got cash you can play. You can do something a bit legal, you can do it beside police station because you got money. So I controlled with my money. They
didn't hustle me after I knew what was going on. They tried to do that but I was
learning from my mistakes, when I tried to kiss a girl for a hundred dollars.
I was paying back for it, I could say like I don't want this guy to be in our
soccer team, they were going to tell him to leave. When they got a party I paid all what it was going to cost. And I give them some ideas too, I didn't rap or sing with them a lot but I gave them some ideas. They were rapping about Ramsey, they were rapping about the gangs, they were rapping about love with the girls in the hood or wherever, they were rapping about themselves, like yo we are hustlers, we hustle, we are surviving. But I was talking how life is, about Africa
and racism.
I do speak different from them. I don't say I am a pimp, I am a pimp,
because a pimp is a guy who's got girls in his control, takes this girl today, tomorrow is going to take that girl. That's what they were saying. Or some guys
were like I will kill you, I will put a gun on you, I will cut your heart out, I will do
whatever. I don't say that, I was saying what we hope for, we are going to be
surviving. I was saying God, he didn't make this world for one person to rule it
alone, it's all colours, wherever you belong, so don't you control everything, you
can't imagine you are controlling the world, that's lying, you have got only your
own house. I don't say bitches in my songs, like generally, like all of them are
534 bitches because even if you are a bitch outside there you are still my home girl, I don't care what she's doing. And I was like black on black crime, put them down a little bit, and let's see the real thing, gang violence is the real thing. I am talking about love but I know it's a lie, it's a way to get money.
I told them make money instead of hustling in the street, hustling at the stores or from someone who got money, whatever, do it yourselves, sell it, rap.
When we rapped, one CD, the first album was twelve dollars for one and we had more than a thousand copies, so it can be better. Let's make money, lots of money and it is your work. You mix, you can say whatever, you are a pimp, there are a lot of girls, that's a beautiful girl, I never saw someone like her before.
They were paid so well, that's when I controlled them. Plus I gave money.
If someone was fighting about money I was like don't fight man, take my cigarette man, I will give you two cigarettes instead of one or instead of half. So there's going to be peace.
Lubanga
My best bet would have been to live in the North, Sudbury, Thunder Bay or Sault
Sainte Marie.
But my wife and son don't like to live out there. They want to live where they can talk to a Sudanese here or talk to somebody from Asia or who they are familiar with. This is the question of group dynamics, they don't want to be isolated. They think it will be so
535 in the North. I personally don't think so, and with today's transportation, of flights or driving, Toronto is not far. But I cannot argue against them, so I have given up. I can live anywhere, it's my family that doesn't want to. My experience in BC enabled me to live anywhere.
Alek
Then, some people they find some places here that can sponsor one person for you, to get them here.
Like in Calgary now, they bring a lot of people from Egypt because they have some churches to sponsor those people, like one church, where some
Sudanese people pray, they sponsor people. In Toronto we don't have this, I didn't see this from any churches. If they have it I think it's a secret for the people who know it, but it is not for everyone. But in Calgary, in the church they selected some Sudanese people, they deal with us, help us with the process.
If I was in Calgary and I wanted to sponsor someone then I will go to our community people working in the church, to write our case to give it to the church, because the church says give it back to the Sudanese people who are working with us, they can look at this and bring it to us, then you can give it to the immigration. Some churches can sponsor the person and not take the money back, and others say that person will have to work to pay back. You can also say this person can come, you pay everything for that person, ticket and medicals, everything. Then when he comes in he
536 can work and return the money back to you. After he returns the money then he can go with welfare or the government or he can just do something by himself. But sometime, like now, when you sponsor a person you have to be responsible for that person for ten years. When you apply for this person they check your bank account, they want you to have at least ten thousand dollars. Anyway, what they have in Calgary, to sponsor people, is good. We don't have that here. Maybe we have, maybe it's in other churches, I don't know them, we don't have Sudanese working in that here in Toronto.
The bad thing in Calgary, was that some people when they applied like this the Sudanese people selected by the church rejected their application, they only helped those people who they know. And people there got angry about this.
537 Oh, you are done.
You must eat something.
And I will drop you home.
I will drop you at the bus station.
Wait, I am going to call my friend, he will come and drive you to your place.
And do you want to go for the wedding on the weekend? You can meet many people there.
This one will be good for you to see, it's a mixed wedding, from North and South.
Yes. Thank you. And if you have any other events please let me know. I am trying to meet many people, from all over Sudan.
See you.
53* See you!
Because I would like to.
That's the best reason.
But really, who do I see again? There's so much going on here, with so many people, in
so many places, that I don't even recognize some people and places any more. Especially
when the context is not entirely clear.
See, you, me, them.
Ah! That wordplay again.
Don't you remember at least some of the people? Places?
Yes.
So isn't there a hope that we can know others too, just have to give some time, energy
and interest in knowing. To develop relationships, with people like oneself, from
different places, spaces, to know them, us. More than knowing, exploring. Relationships.
The only way that people and their things can matter.
Us, me, them.
539 A hope: Going back
Osama
I have to go back. That's it. That's all.
Athaia
Going back makes sense to me.
Right now I will be going back to visit, definitely next year.
I will be going back to see my grandpa, he came from Uganda to Khartoum. I will go and see him before it is too late, because he is 93.1 just want to make it up to him and see him one more time before everything gets too late.
Alek
I am going to be going back but not now. I want to work a little bit and then after that I can go. I can't say I am going to go with big money but I am going to go with a little bit of money. I know what I am going to do back home.
If Adol went and made a house then I can go but if he doesn't have a house I am not going until I find my money, and then I can go and do something myself or to give it to a good person to make it for me. Then I will come back to some more money and send it to finish that thing. When he's done then I can take my kids and go. 540 If I have citizenship I can come back here for a visit, to do business. Or if I get
sick, it's better here a little bit. But I cannot come back here to stay forever, no, just come here to do something and then go back.
Amani
I wish I can go back, but the thing is maybe I need some time for my two boys.
When they reach like eighteen years, when they go to their college or university, they become adults, then I can go back. Maybe I can come to visit, for my kids, if I am
still alive, but I don't think I will like to stay here. I would like to go back home.
The first time I said to my God, why did I decide to come to Ethiopia? Then the time when they said SPLA has to leave Ethiopia I wanted to go back to Sudan, I wanted to leave.
I had one friend of mine, she's from Ethiopia, she was working in the hospital, I told her please take me, my girls and my son, I want to go to Addis Ababa and I want to go home. I don't want to go running around again, refugee camps and walking, and my baby is just born, I don't want to do that, rain and rivers, having to cross so many rivers.
If my husband didn't come back maybe I would have left that time because I had had enough. I couldn't even imagine to walk, I just had a baby, and then you have to walk miles, miles.
But then sometimes something is written for you, to go look, to go around all the way, and then we ended up in Canada. It's my life.
54! I told my husband this is enough, Canada is the end of the world, what is wrong with you, you just keep traveling. I swear, I said, if I go on a plane with you, I just want that plane to fall down. Everybody said don't say that. I said I want to go in a different plane, I will go back home, you go wherever. Everybody said you are lucky, in twenty eight days, less than a month, you are going to Canada. I said I don't care about Canada, I just want to go home, that's enough running, running, running.
People when they get married they enjoy life, sit down, family comes, family goes. But for me its just traveling, just got married and after forty days I left my country to Saudi Arabia, and then back and forth and back and forth, and then I didn't go to my country for fifteen years.
From 1994 I just went back last year 2003. For fifteen years I didn't even see my father, and he passed away last year. That's why I went, I went there to Nuba Mountains.
I went to see my mother, my sister, brother, everybody there.
It's only me, the poor girl from all of the family who left.
Elizabeth
I would like to go back, but not at this moment because I want my kids to grow up here and have their education.
Later on if things become different there I would like to have a hand in the government there. I am not politician but maybe I will go for politics one day, there are a lot of things that I think that people should do. I believe that if you can contribute then why not, you can contribute to the society, in the parliament, in so many things.
In the country, if the peace will really succeed then there's a lot of development that needs to be done and anybody with work experience needs to pitch in, people who have experience and people who decided to help or contribute.
It's not going to be all the Sudanese people who are here, some of them have decided just to have their life and take it normal, some of them will go, like I am going there, to do at least something for our community.
At the moment because things are being controlled by SPLA you cannot really do much. Even now I am hearing that all the organizations and agencies which are going to
South Sudan have to go through SPLA in order for them to do things. So also for individuals, you have to go through that system, otherwise you won't be allowed to do what you want. It is very dangerous.
I think now there are so many things the SPLA is afraid of, now the government is feeling that they have to take control of everything. After that when things are settled maybe people will have the freedom to do the things they want to.
I think freedom will not exist right now but there are so many things to be learnt for that. For so long people lived under pressure, there's actually no human rights that exists for all the people, if there's human rights then there's freedom for everyone.
So what I am saying is if you don't have a hand, in that government, then you don't have freedom, you don't have a say, you don't have a voice, you don't have anything unless you are connected somewhere.
543 Santino
I will go to the South, because my grandmother, she is leaving too. She told me, she doesn't want to die here, she wants to die there.
I will go I guess to Aweil where my granddad is, when everything is nice, it is cool.
Maybe I will call you when I am going.
Now, all we need is our lives.
I am not supposed to be here, this country is not the spot to be, like you can die here for no reason and no one is going to find you, where you are.
When I left from Sudan it was hard, we were crying because I was leaving. We had a party, all over the hood, in my area. They were crying and they were happy when I came to Egypt. And it was a little bit hard, not like the first time, to leave my friends in Egypt. We were crying a little bit but not that much when I came to USA. Now if I hear my friend is dead, right there, I can't even say oh, how did he die? I don't like it for sure but I am like okay no problem, we going to meet one day, in hell or in heaven, like I can't even miss them. When I left from the US, came here, I was like yo guys, I am leaving. I don't even care about this, if there are some friends and if they left it means they are leaving.
There was a guy, he was leaving for Australia, he was not going to come back. We were sleeping in the same room, in my room, because he is my friend for so many years. He woke me up, he was like yo, I am leaving. I was like okay leave, and he left. I was sleeping, I didn't even wake up. It will not be like this if it was in Sudan, there is nothing like there. In
Sudan you got a lot of family, you got your cousins, your friends, and Sudanese security or police could take care of you or find out about you if you die.
We here but this is not our culture, to be staying here. It's to take knowledge from here, how to do things, then when you are going to go back there you are going to know some things.
Lubanga
Because of my background, particularly studying education and working in the government now for eighteen years, I strongly feel I can contribute to Sudan and
Southern Sudan in particular. I do have the experience to take with me, if nothing else.
Here, true, I have got a job but in terms of making a difference definitely the
South is the place to be. In Sudan I could work with the government, I could even form my own consulting group.
My brother in Namibia, his wife, I and my cousin in Sudan, who is also doing his
Masters in Education, thought we could form a consultancy because Sudan at present needs people. The reason this kind of an incentive may work is because the government process in Sudan is so slow. If you can establish yourself and say I can offer a given service or product, in a timely fashion and exactly as ordered, it will make a difference.
At present the system is a drag, it takes ages and ages to get things done. It's just the way people do things. In Sudan when they say bukhra, tomorrow, that is it. They
545 don't mean to hurt, it's just that attitude, it is accepted. Airlines, suppose you have a two o'clock flight it will delay until four and nobody complains about it.
I have the belief that if Sudan has to change, we have to change our work attitude, in particular the people who are supposed to deliver the services. Sometimes they don't show up until ten o'clock, eleven o'clock. Twelve o'clock they are going for lunch and they don't come back until three o'clock, four o'clock. Then they leave. I have seen all this.
I do intend to go back for sure, there is no question of that.
When the Addis Ababa Agreement was reached I was already in Canada and I was more interested in completing my education. The Agreement did not last very long. I was preparing to go back and then another war started in 1983 with the SPLA/SPLM.
I did go to Sudan in 1978 but my parents were not comfortable that I should settle there. They sensed that there was going to be a war again because the situation was not getting better with the regional government in the South. They encouraged me to return to Canada. By then I was doing my PhD. They said go and finish your PhD and maybe that would give you enough time to see whether the country becomes stable. They were concerned about my safety.
In '96 I went to Kenya, but not to Sudan.
Now, I was hoping to go back to Sudan but Garang's death discouraged me a bit, because I don't want to end up as a refugee again. After his death I began to feel that there is another instability coming again. If the situation had not happened most likely I
546r would have already packed and gone because I already made up my mind if the peace agreement was signed, things had normalized, it's time to head back.
Now unfortunately we will wait and see. It also can cause me to change my mind and not go back, which I don't want. I have got people there who are in contact with me all the time, by internet or phone, telling me we will let you know exactly when it is convenient to go to Southern Sudan, we are still working on this.
What I will do maybe is just go for six months and see how things work out. If it works out then I will just come back, pack and go for good because I have always had it in my mind that I go back.
Many of the Southern Sudanese here are in the same situation, they are taking a wait and see approach. I have talked to many of them, even those who already were packed and about to go. When Garang died they just unpacked. We don't know what is going to happen.
It is the political situation in Sudan that has so many of us to hang out here. Not only here, in the US too. There are lots and lots of Sudanese there, and in other places all over the world.
Ajak
Sometimes they talk, we are going home, I am going home and I am going to do this.
I have a feeling even when they go back they will be lost again because things have changed after they left, people have changed too, things are not the same. I don't
547 know but whether we like it or not things are changing, whether for the good or for the bad there is change. It's how you look at it.
For me home is where my family, it's not Sudan, it's not Kenya. Again I think it has a lot to do with the moving, even though you have been in one place for many years.
Probably my younger sisters may respond differently because they went to Kenya when they were young and they grew up in Kenya, probably they may have more feelings or roots there. But personally when I say home is going to my family, it's not a land or a country, it's family.
About going back to Sudan, I don't know. I don't know Sudan. It doesn't mean I won't go, no. But I don't have the urge to be running again, and that's why I try to do the best now for me here, as there is nowhere else to go. I don't hold back because I know tomorrow I am going back to Sudan.
So for me it's making the best now, what I am doing where I am, if it means in my job I want to do the best, if it means going back to school I will, I have to make this home and good for me.
Do I feel I am home? I feel safe, I feel nobody is sending me away anywhere.
Again it is not Canada, its home, I don't know, it's just my comfort level, like what I feel.
If you ask me are you going to move to your family, no, I don't think so. You know it's a lot of work, to always move and build life from scratch. I don't think I can do that any more, to move. And here I feel like I have built my own family now, even though I am alone but it feels like that, it feels like I have my own family. I don't think I can leave everything and go to them. But I don't know, things change. I am a very adventurous person in my own ways, I am surprised I admit to this today, adventurous sounds like a luxury but I don't mean it that way, it's more like I don't mind change. If I have a calling, if I feel like something maybe I will go to Sudan, but it is not something I consciously think about, that I am going to go back, like many people probably tell you. I don't.
Khalid
This whole western experience, I think it's totally unnecessary. I don't think I would miss it.
If you would be allowed to reflect back on it maybe you'll ask what if you go back because, this is the whole problem, we have lost the whole thing, the whole project, it is melancholy. It's a huge loss, not just the socialist or something project, but people have lost their whole life outlook You spend all your life just missing where you came from, when you get together you talk about the time when you were in the university, you always start talking about 1989. And you start all these violent justifications, that you really don't find here, to live on here. Sometimes you piggyback on the fact that your country is not doing very well, which is something good.
I was telling this guy, we sometimes would like to have a country doing that bad so that we feel that we made the right choice, or we are trapped. I sometimes sense that feeling when people start talking about how bad the country is. If you listen carefully they are not talking about that place as really bad in terms that they really sympathize
549 with it, they are talking about it in a very pornographic way, in so much details, with all these stories, and no passion whatsoever. It all ends up with the conclusion that I am not going to that place again.
You can say the same thing without really trying to make that country look that bad, but this is how we are sometimes trapped in because every time we are trying to really make this a kind of your home, at least for us or for me, it's not.
We knew about this kind of immigration, like Indians, for example, immigrated for long, the Chinese did that. But for us there were very few people living abroad forever.
The only memory that we have of Sudanese immigrants are of very exotic immigrants, those three, four people who left to show up in Guatemala or something, these kind of strange stories. The memory of immigration for us, at least what immigration means to us, is of those guys who work out there, spend a couple of years, in the related country, they migrate and bring money back and finally will end up in Sudan building houses and all that. As far as I recall there was no question of a complete kind of a detachment or immigration.
We only sort of knew this, and we are still grappling with this idea every time you come to think about it. Okay, let me make this decision like those other guys, I always envy Indians for their courage in deciding to not go back to India. I know a lot of them and I say how are you guys resisting, to not to settle this self psychologically and to living here. We seem unable to do that mentally, physically we are living here, you could
55Q end up like twenty five years not going there but we can't settle this question. I can't settle this question in my head, I always want to go back.
I was talking to my friend a couple of days ago, she said I hope you are not one of those Sudanese guys who want to go back. I said I have no illusion about Sudan as a better place, but I don't think I am going to let this feeling go away at all. Otherwise I am rucked up here because it is really sometimes playing a part in actually living here, this idea that you can go somewhere else. Otherwise you are going to have to kill yourself or do something devastating. Living here becomes totally hard.
So this idea of a Sudan, of the country, is like a backup of some kind, like your mother or something, if you say that you can get back to at any time, which is quite not true. You can actually go there and find nothing, but every time you try to engage in the
Canadian society in any capacity they always sort of tell you that you are not really a part of it. I can think like a thousand examples of this. You can feel it too.
Mustafa Sayeed in Season of Migration to the North went back to his village, but he actually had a fireplace, a classic Victorian fireplace, in his small room there, which is he brings back some part of the west. Metaphorically, the west will never go away. I have got to tell you something, everybody including myself goes back to Sudan but we don't really burn our bridges with the west. Everybody's like this. Nobody goes to Sudan, because of having to leave Sudan again. There is a trust totally lost, about going back.
We are going back to some strange place. We are going back, but this whole sense of going back to some kinds of ways of thinking about the place.
So our story is just complicated, also with the situation in Sudan the way it is.
551 Now, after all this I am looking for a disaster to take me out from here. This is the only way I can actually leave this country, to end up the story with a tragic conclusion.
My wife doesn't seem to have that interest to go back, but I really can't see myself living the rest of my life in this country.
The only thing I am going to miss here, the only thing that is worrying me, is that
I won't have access to books as I used to here. I think Hamad is not going anywhere, he said he almost made that decision. Maybe I can ask him to buy me some books, and I can get some book from Amazon, the internet can get me some of this.
You can ask me anything else if you want, I think I just talked like forever. Conclusions: To all of this
Going back, to what we talked about, long back, could you please let me know if you are okay with what I wrote about you, from what you told me, and how I reordered it.
Also please let me know if I should add anything, or delete something. If there are things that you think you want said differently.
And I have some specific questions, about certain details and sometimes about the process of you getting here or history.
Then, also if you want to tell me about what has happened since we last spoke, about your stories.
No problem.
Just that I am very busy, so let's talk another time.
Anytime.
Oh, you are still not done.
This is good that you didn't give up on this.
Things have changed. I am now not in the same position as before.
Nothing's changed.
It's become worse.
Better.
553 There's nothing new to say.
Some things.
Lots of things.
Hehe. Are you also going to write about your relationships with us?
Ya, this is fine.
It's the same that I told you.
The story is still the same.
It brings back memories.
Oh! Did I say it like that? I don't know why. I will tell you what it was, more.
Nothing to add, it's the same thing that we spoke before.
It is so interesting, it was long back that we spoke, and it's still true.
It's really interesting to read this.
I think this is good, that you wrote my story like this, I know it's from what I told you,
but still I have seen people write stories from what they hear, this is very close to how it
was. There's little to add, unless you ask me questions.
I think we had good conversations.
And now I think what you wrote about ESL is even more true.
Send me an email with the story, what you want to know too. I will go through it in
detail, and then you tell me if you need something more.
554 Thank you so much for this. I think this is the best way that you could have told my story.
It shows me how much I did too.
Do change some things, remove the details about my personal life.
Because there's some really personal things here, please don't write my details.
Ya, I know if there are people who really know me they will still know it's my story.
You can write my name in, it's my story and I have nothing to hide.
It's funny, hehe, that you change all these names, like even my husband. Funny to read it
like this.
But, change the name if you have to.
I will give you a name.
You give whatever name you want.
Alek
This is Alek's story. So much happened, like in Egypt, with the police beating us, that protest. You should make a movie from this. I don't think about all this, it's like it happened and it's gone but it should be into a movie. Us, Sudanese, you will never see that we are sitting like we are sad, we just laugh with each other about all this.
What else do I have to add to Deepa's story? Hmm, it's bad that now they don't accept people, Sudanese, to come here, after they signed the peace agreement, CPA. But people are still struggling, to come here.
555 See you Deepa. Come and stay in my house sometime when you have time, or if you need a change. The girls say hello to you.
Santino
Since then, when we talked, I moved. I got a different house better than that. I went back to school a bit, a computer course. Then I worked. I quit. And I worked again. Not right now, any more.
You know, reading some this, reminds me of Ramsey, where I had been, back then.
But I don't support the gangs no more, I don't wear red, because I don't want my kid to follow my footsteps. Since I have my kid I totally changed.
Also, my grandma, she left now, she went in the beginning of 2006. She is back in Sudan, with her son who is a doctor.
And yes, what I said about the five white girls, only five are good. Maybe it's four now, one of them left, she left. And yes I got one, I am with a white girl.
But what can you do when you can't turn nowhere, every road is blocked. Then you go to the street that's open. They say keep your friends close to you but keep your enemies closer. I know what I am doing, but I am regretting it too, what I got right now. My own community turned their back on me, I tried to show them. I still have lots of issues, personal issue. I am not happy, I am not supposed to live
556 like this. I am not racist, I love all the colors. But don't take them into your life, just be their friends.
I can't move on, where I am going to go. As long as I am in Canada. But believe me in 30 yrs from now you will still see, I will be alive. My friends will all be dead, but I will be alive. Because I use my head. I didn't choose this life here, they gave it to me, then I will take it.
Osama
Politically, if I went back to Sudan, I am going to work for something really different. I think I am going to work for united Sudan, by law. We don't have a constitution. We suffered, every new government in Sudan has its own laws, it has been changed and changed, every government has its own constitution. If we achieve this constitution then we will have our own country, we will not fear who will rule us then. It's not easy but it will unite a lot of people to work just for this. But this is not 'just', not simple to achieve.
This is the first thing, maybe it's not going to achieve a lot but will provide a little bit of stability, some fairness. After that we can fight about what we want really, as a Nubian, as a socialist, as a Umma, as whatever. Without a stable constitution it is a dictatorship.
We need some kind of a law, an agreement to put an end to this crazy situation, a couple of years of democracy and years and years of dictatorship. How is this going to end? I don't know. I hope its going to be a new way. Something different, a constitution that fits
Sudan. Not like till now, with constitutions that come from so far and then they try to fit Sudan into it, it doesn't fit Sudan. When you find this kind of a law, constitution, I can say I am Nubian, Dinka or Arab without offending anyone.
I feel like there's a lot that I need to add, especially about the sensitive issue of the
South, that I can say better what I already said. It seems flat sometimes.
But yes, get in touch with me whenever, I should call too. I will tell you next time
I am in Toronto, I am closer now, as you know I moved from Ottawa. You should also come and meet this interesting group of Sudanese artists, musicians here, you can spend a day with us. I will tell you when we, our group, perform, or if I come to Toronto.
Ajak
I have moved to Calgary, and I am married now. So it's a totally different life for me now.
Who knows, if I have kids then this ESL issue will become even closer to me.
Now, I am also much more exposed to this and what's happening to the community.
Working in the system I have become more aware of the barriers, very closely. I am working with the Alberta Children's Services with the provincial government, this is like the Children's Aid Society in Ontario.
Good to talk to you again, its been a long time. I guess we have all been busy. I did see you more in Ottawa, but moving to Calgary has been a different experience, life is busier.
558 Amani
I have nothing to add. I wish you the best with your things. Yes, keep in touch. I know we have all been busy, I go to school and work, it's a lot.
Khalid
Lots has changed. I have moved.
It's always been good to see you whenever I come to Toronto. Next time I come we should meet, only I am so busy that I don't know when that will be. You should come here too, to visit.
About what I wrote, I think there's much more to say, politically, about political analysis of what's going on with Sudan, what has been going on.
And I don't even know where I am now. I went back to Sudan couple of times, I really enjoy when I go back there. But I don't have any plan to go back, I am still waiting for a tragic event to happen to me. It's kind of like a predicament. Life here doesn't mean much, and with time running out the value of life is diminished. You still want to survive, you really live here for pragmatic reasons, and you are still away from doing some thing, doing some real action. You know when I went back home, I found it very easy to write there, so easily without any hassle. You get an attack of African time. When you suspend things, then you feel you can really stay there. You feel the dynamic what's going on there, of the place or the memory, without really forcing it. You just feel ok. You feel there are things you can do, you can move around, write. This sense of time, you feel the
559 time. Khartoum's changed a lot, people even come late from work now, but still. The only problem there is the political and economic situation. I wish I could live there, it's about family. But I don't want to spend all my time chasing basic things. It's not a dilemma but just the situation. I can actually live here, it's not a tragic question anymore.
It's not either or anymore, I can live in both places. But I just want to sell a book in a book store. I even asked this guy here, if he will sell his book store to me. He said if I wait for fifteen years, maybe. I think if I go to Sudan, somewhere in Africa, Khartoum would be nice, it's just simple, I would be happy, selling books, talking about books. I don't want to report to anyone. This is the whole universality of oppression, to report to someone.
The whole problem was always being in the wrong places, and when you come here you are stuck in the same wrong places. It even seems the same here, even with different rationalizations, different logics. But it's easy in places like ours which are not encapsulated into systematic logic, into a whole totality, there's still room for maneuver.
It's ironical. People pushed to the margins, use whatever they can, that's the beauty of it, they play games against marginalization. In Africa there are marginalizations but that helps, these are symptoms. Here it's all so regulated, that even in the margins you can't talk to each other. It takes different shapes, maybe different time zone, not Canadian not
Sudanese but immigrant time zone. The idea of creating a way of living in the diaspora would have been nice, to relate to one another, in a language to facilitate friendships, that could make living beyond the boundaries nice. But it seems there's no horizon of
560 diasporic living, to make it better, maybe for another generation. Sudanese don't really talk to one another.
And, these stories, the ethnographic method, your method to some extent as well, is also a problem. People change how they say things, each time they tell a story, things change over time. And you can't capture everything, not their real experience, through these.
Elizabeth
Nothing much to add. Things have changed, yes lots. But my story here is okay.
Lubanga
Best of luck with your things.
Athaia
What did you do with your stories? How does it help you with your progress, moving forward?
My stories? Hehe. Your stories! But yes I recorded them and wrote them down though, here, got the stories to talk to one another.
561 Ya, it does help, a lot. If you mean in completing my studies, yes, but also in my project, my political project. Because I am trying to show through your stories that there is no one refugee figure, identity, as such. There are people who have experiences of a certain displacement from their country. Through this, before this and after this, people have lives, which have their limitations and possibilities, even when they are resettled, like here in Canada. Their lives, looked at by people everyday, making policies and writing about them, are mainly decontextualized and depoliticized as a result. Even as people who have lived through these situations of displacement, negotiate their lives, in various ways, and look for other possibilities.
What I am saying is that there are no natural boundaries, only those that are made, naturalized. To show that this is part of the necessary unmaking of these, the boundaries, as these continue to be made. Like there is no inherent difference between the citizen and the refugee, except in the ongoing everyday practices that make the differences. Then, to talk of lives, contexts, journeys, implications, through stories and knowledges of people, is to show this, the unreality of this difference, the boundaries, and the violent implications of these borders. My aim is to transgress the borders and categories in spite of the power they have, in their surety of who one is, and who the other is, in who can belong and who can't belong, and who must belong and who mustn't. And on what terms. To change the terms is to know differently. Your stories, in conjunction with other stories, and with their knowledges, do that. They change the terms of knowing, and also of speaking. Of who can speak, and tell. And who listens. To different stories, to be different. In yes small ways, but in ways that can make a difference. In different ways. In different stories. By different authors. Us, you, them.
563 You can see, easily see what I am here.
Whatever you want to do, whatever you are going to do with it, it's the truth. Me,
I say it in the face, I don't fear, I am not scared of someone, I say what I feel. And
I don't really even care if you have got a white friend, like she wants to listen. I even like that, if you give this to her.
—Santino Appendix: Conversations
So many stories, so many languages. My English is not good. They think my English is not good. Canadian English. I don't care. Let's just talk. If I don't understand you I will ask, and if you don't understand me you will ask. Of course. We have so many stories, same stories, different stories, my story, story of my people. Long story, short story, life story. What do you want to know? Ask me questions. You tell me anything you feel like, from whenever you think your journey started. I will keep you anonymous, and all your information confidential. We know ourselves, so nothing can be hidden. I have nothing to hide. I do. I will not let them know everything that you say, about you, only that which I want known. But I am not always going to agree with you. Me neither. We can discuss. We can argue. We will laugh. And then I will drop you home, after dinner. Thank you. And thank you. Hope to see you again. Yes!
So, we talked. So many of us. At homes, at home, in parties, in buses, cars, walking, hanging out. Fleetingly, intensely, making friends, planning to stay in touch. Recording some of the talks. Why are you talking to me, and so openly? I don't think you are telling me everything, maybe even because I didn't ask or because you don't think it's relevant, but you are telling me so much. We can help you for your studies. It's important that people, other people, know our stories. Nobody documented our journeys to Canada so far. But I also heard that, especially in Calgary, but in other places too, like in Ontario, there are many people, including from organizations, doing research among many people from Sudan. Really? I never heard this before. You are the first person to speak to me for research. Ya? It's nice that I was introduced to you at the parking lot yesterday, here in Calgary. Yes. And some people from Sudan did tell me about these kinds of research and how based on this the Alberta government is trying to involve people, even some Sudanese, to work with agencies, to provide settlement services to the people here. I don't even know them, these people from the Sudanese community who are trying to get things for us from the government. I know some but not all of them. Ya, so many Sudanese in Calgary. And now even more. We have jobs here, and here they pay more than in other places to do the same jobs.
And I came to your house. Ya, if you come to my house then you are my guest, and I will do my best for you. There is no real answer. I don't know, but also because a friend referred you to me and me to you, I trust him. For the same reason that you can walk into the house of a single black man at this time of the night. I didn't even think of it, of meeting you, in this way. Ya, I guess I have to be asked too why I can trust people, and their stories. I just do, and I don't seem to have heard anything that seems like a lie even if I question it. Not everyone tells the truth. I know. But things can't all be invented and why would someone just tell a lie? I know now that at least one person told me some invented but interesting stories, but he's been very nice to me as well. And he didn't say anything that couldn't have happened. It's also interesting, nobody told me stories like the ones I read about, say in books like Escape from Slavery (Francis Bok and Edward Tivnan. 2004), about Southerners being taken as slaves, or The Lost Boys of Sudan (Mark Bixler. 2005. 11), about people being eaten by lions on their way to and from Ethiopia. Those things happened too, but maybe not to all the people who claim this, even write this for themselves, and not all the time. Ya, I saw it, someone being dragged by a lion.
566 I met total strangers too, even introduced myself to people I thought 'looked' Sudanese and asked them if they would talk to me. And most did. I am grateful. But like Derrida says, in Aporias, there is an ingratitude in expressing this gratitude, especially when I really wanted to be obliged. And I still don't know how someone who has maybe less than three hours in the day for himself or herself can still give me some of that time. Time that would otherwise be for people 'back home', family, friends and romantic relationships, connecting with people all over the world through long phone conversations, boredom, socializing, depression, partying, sleeping, paying bills, bureaucracies etc. Even if people thanked me too, for doing this research, for talking to them, for listening to them.
You know you should, after this, go and research the SPLA in Sudan, nobody has documented that. They have. Only partially, not the soldiers' stories. What if I then tell stories that are not favorable to SPLA? It's okay. And why will people talk to me? You are a woman, even if you try to deny that as a fixed identity. Men will want to talk to you, and women can talk to you more easily. True but I (like to) think that's not enough. Ya. We have been through a lot, we know who we can talk to. I am not special though. No. Only as much as any other person.
And we talked to researchers before. They came, in the camps too. Are you doing anthropology? No, political science, international relations, IR, critical IR. I am doing the same. I want to. Are you going to be a political leader? No. I am trying to learn of politics among people.
There is this other guy, this researcher. I tried to help him for a while. But he came and tried to tell us about our tribes. We know we have tribes and that's how we do things, but that's not the only thing. It was too much, it's like he's trying to put us into a box. Of tribes, and of religions. I may be doing that too. Especially when I am trying to be somewhat representative, impossible as it is, talking about the many stories, of the tribes, the regions, religions, genders, classes, occupations, routes taken to reach Canada, etc. Thinking this may be somewhat useful, impossible as it is to know what is useful. And then trying to constantly question what is useful as well. Ya. But I am not going to talk to him anymore.
567 And what if at the end I write a dissertation that you don't like? You can't please everybody.
568 So, how many of these words are mine. Almost none, and so many. The style, the mixing, the (re)saying is mine. The approach, and analysis too, borrowed and developed upon, through my readings, my life, my interactions, with others. Working through dilemmas: I want to tell so many stories, stories that even contradict. And how can I adequately, properly, cite those who said things to me, sometimes even in casual conversations. After all, I was doing participatory research. We also interacted, without the recorder being on, outside the context of a predefined space of fixed research, researcher, researched. Of course, there was always the context of research. And there was the context of the feel of research when we discussed my research, the stories within this context, without the recorder. Then there were our lives, intermingling sometimes, with some get- togethers, hanging outs, friendships. My joys, my sorrows, theirs, and ours together. And to put all this in here, but still is it right? Isn't there something that's so personal that it can't be shared, even if it was between us during my formal recordings? And then there are things which must be told, because others, and even us, me, don't want to hear that or want it known. And things were told. Because, and when, I asked, and because I didn't. Because, and when, they asked and because they didn't. Because, and when, we asked and because we didn't.
You have to do something with our stories. Do justice to us. Hehe!
569 A list of interviews. Of, one hundred and forty two people. With two people being recorded twice, and one person thrice.
In Calgary Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 1 2005. 7 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 3 2005. 11 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 3 2005. 7 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 6 2005. 5 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 6 2005. 7 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 7 2005. 3 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 8 2005. 11 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 14 2005. 4 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 16 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 16 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 17 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 18 2005. 7 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 19 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 19 2005. 2 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 21 2005. 11 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 21 2005. 5 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 23 2005. 7 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 24 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 24 2005. 2 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 25 2005. 11 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 27 2005. 2 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 27 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 28 2005. 11 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 28 2005. 3 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 28 2005. 7:30 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 29 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 29 2005. 2 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 29 2005. 3 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 29 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. June 30 2005. 2 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 1 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 1 2005. 8 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 2 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 2 2005. 2 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 4 2005. 2:30 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 4 2005. 4 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 5 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 5 2005. 2 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 5 2005. 6 pm.
570 Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 6 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 6 2005. 2 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 6 2005. 7 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 7 2005. 9 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 7 2005. 7 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 8 2005. 1:40 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 8 2005. 5 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 11 2005. 1 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 11 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 12 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 12 2005. 2:30 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 12 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 13 2005. 5 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 14 2005. 1 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 14 2005. 7 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 15 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 16 2005. 11 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 16 2005. 3 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 16 2005. 7 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 18 2005. 2 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 19 2005. 3 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 19 2005. 6:30 pm. Elizabeth. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. July 20 2005. 1 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 20 2005. 5:30 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 20 2005. 5 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 22 2005. 1 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 22 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 23 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 23 2005. 5 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 25 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 30 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 30 2005. 1 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. July 30 2005. 5 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. August 3 2005. 6 pm.
In Toronto Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 4 2005. 2 pm. Khalid. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. October 5 2005. 6:30 pm. Athaia. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. October 6 2005. 3 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 10 2005. 3:30 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 13 2005. 1 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 13 2005. 7:45 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 13 2005. 10 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 14 2005. 11 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 14 2005. 5:30 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 20 2005. 3 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 21 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 21 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 21 2005. 7:30. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 26 2005. 4 pm. Lubanga. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. October 27 2005. 9 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 26 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 26 2005. 5 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. October 30 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 7 2005. 2 pm. Alek. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. November 9 2005. 4:30 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 10 2005. 1 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 11 2005. 3 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 13 2005. 2 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 15 2005. 5 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 17 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 18 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 18 2005. 8 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 19 2005. 2 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 20 2005. 12 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 20 2005. 1 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 24 2005. 12 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 27 2005. 10:30 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 27 2005. 12 pm. Amani. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. November 27 2005. 5 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 28 2005. 7 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. November 28 2005. 9:30 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. March 24 2006. 12 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. March 26 2006. 2 pm.
In Ottawa Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 6 2005. 4 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 7 2005. 12:30 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 8 2005. 3 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 8 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 9 2005. 3 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 9 2005. 7 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 10 2005. 11 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 11 2005. 11 am. Ajak. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. December 12 2005. 7:30 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 13 2005. 11 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 14 2005. 10 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 15 2005. 12 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 15 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 16 2005. 12 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 17 2005. 6 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 17 2005. 9 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 18 2005. 4 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 18 2005. 8 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 19 2005. 10 am. Santino. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. December 19 2005. 1 pm. Osama. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. December 19 2005. 7 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 20 2005. 11 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 20 2005. 2 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 21 2005. 1 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 22 2005. 12 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 22 2005. 4 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 23 2005. 11 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 25 2005. 4 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 25 2005. 7 pm. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 28 2005. 11:30 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. December 30 2005. 10:30 am. Anonymous. Deepa Rajkumar. February 18 2006. 12 pm.
We kept talking, some of us in any case. Sometimes off and on. Sometimes more often.
And then there were follow up conversations:
In person Santino. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. December 29 2008. 3pm. Ottawa Osama. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. January 9 2009. 12pm. Toronto. Alek. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. March 5 2009. 11 am. Toronto.
Over Phone Ajak. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. January 7 2009. 9pm. Toronto. Amani. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. January 17 2009. 6pm. Toronto. Athaia. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. February 21 2009. 10am. Toronto. Khalid. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. March 1 2009. 10pm. Toronto. Lubanga. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. March 15 2009. Toronto. Elizabeth. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. March 29 2009. 7pm. Toronto. Osama. Pseudonym. Deepa Rajkumar. April 05 2009. 3pm. Toronto.
And we also followed up on email. And we continued to talk. With others too. Glossary: A selective referring
Addis Ababa (Peace) Agreement. Lubanga: Until the Addis Ababa Agreement, in 1972, the chances of me going to Sudan were almost zero because of the warring situation, with Anya Nya I (252). Then I was preparing to go back and then another war started in 1983 with the SPLA/SPLM (546). Khalid: In Political Science, they taught us that every political party in the North that came to power had to sort the political, the Southern, problem. The one that did it more had the chance to stay in power longer. This is almost like a fundamental rule in Sudanese politics. It happened with Nimeri, he negotiated the Addis Ababa Agreement (115). Lubanga: After the first war, before the SPLA movement, Southern Sudan had certain tensions. It was also the President of the Sudan, Gaafar Mohammed Nimeri, playing, things that he created, agreeing to the breakdown of the Addis Ababa Agreement, which had provided for Southern Sudan to be ruled as one autonomous entity (92-93). A Storyteller: And for some of us the war didn't have a break. There were mutinies' and then there was Anya Nya II, and we continued to fight the government (54). Another one: No, it was good those ten years. We were able, to some extent, to do our things ourselves, have autonomy (54). And another one: But the government in the North never thought of our interests, our development (54). Osama: In most of the places there's nothing, no factories, no schools, even after the Addis Ababa Agreement (90). And one more: The Southern government was corrupt too (55). Another Storyteller: Nimeri ended the peace, in 1983. He abrogated the Agreement, introduced Sharia laws all over Sudan, and divided the South into three provinces, Kokora, decentralization (55).
Anya Nya I. Lubanga: In the South there were two wars, first the Anya Nya I war, and then the SPLA war (92). A Storyteller: Anya Nya I fought the North, from before independence, from 1955. But mainly after '63, when it became bigger (86). Amani: First when the Southerners fought, in Anya Nya I, they wanted only to separate from North Sudan, they fought only for Southern Sudan (23). Another Storyteller: In Anya Nya I, the first movement, there were so many Equatorians, and others (53). And one more: The students with Anya Nya I studied mainly in Uganda, then in Kenya, and some in Ethiopia, Congo and Central African Republic. We supported Anya Nya I, and they told us to study, to help the movement (55-56). One more: My father, we are from Bahr Ghazal, died because of the war, he was part of Anya Nya I, in the internal cell (69).
574 And more: With the peace, with Addis Ababa Agreement, many people from Anya Nya I were included in the Sudan government, especially in the wild life department, and in the army and police. And then they were fighting the Anya Nya II, and later SPLA (55). And another storyteller: But most were retired (55).
Anya Nya II. A Storyteller: Anya Nya II formed starting with the Akobo breakaway group in '75, led by Samuel Gai Tut, Akot Atem de Mayen, Gordon Kong Choi (54). Another Storyteller: But Anya Nya II was a decentralized movement. Besides these people based at the Ethiopian border there were others in Bahr el Ghazal. They were not fully under the others' authority, people like Anthony Bol Madut, Paul Malong Awan. Later they joined SPLA (54). Lubanga: There were also tensions when Anya Nya II was created, leading up to the formation of SPLA (93). Anya Nya II collided with the SPLA and that led to thousands of innocent people dying (94). One more storyteller: That's because of what happened with who should lead the SPLA (60). One more: I was there in Bilpham that time, I know what happened (60). And another: No, you don't (60). And another: I do (60). And more: No, I do (60). Deepa: Can I choose the version that I feel is true? (60)
British. A storyteller: The British were there, in Sudan, with the Egyptians, who had come with the Turks before. It was a condominium (84). Osama: Under British there were areas in the South, that were just closed, you couldn't enter it. It was just for Southern people and they did nothing for the people there (89). Another storyteller: Same with Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains (85). Osama: Then, with these ideas of racism and race system, they started to separate Arabs and non-Arabs, based on this sense of superiority and hierarchy, based on colour. So the suffering in Sudan, it started from then, with the English occupation (89). Lubanga: The Sudanization Commission was appointed, consisting of Northern Sudanese, Egyptians and British, to replace Egyptian and British officers in the Sudanese civil service with Sudanese nationals. It announced that there were eight hundred senior posts to be Sudanized, and only four Assistant District Commissioners and two Mamurs were appointed from the South. People said how can you be members of the same country while this is going on? (28) Another storyteller: The leaders, civil servants, priests, army personnel, tribal chiefs, who were part of the consultations, on independence, agreed to this, to being part of the North (86). One more: The tribal chiefs were also appointed, hand picked, by the British. You know how they reorganized tribes in Africa in systematic hierarchical tribal ways. The British did this in areas where there was no clear administrative structure, like in the Dinka areas,
575 with the Equatorians, actually in most of Sudan. And they also made use of established administration in Chollo, Azande and Anyuak areas (86). Lubanga: Marginalization in Sudan did not occur just because of bad policies. It was deliberately planned, a clear case of policies. There were government policies aimed at economic, social and political development of the Northern Sudan that the British initiated, that were maintained when Sudan became independent (88).
Comprehensive Peace Agreement. CPA. Naivasha Agreement. Lubanga: Hopefully, the political situation and the relation between the North and the South has been put to rest by the peace that John Garang and the President of the Sudan, Omer Hassan al Bashir worked out (29-30). A storyteller: People are tired. But we are ready for war too. In 2011, six years after CPA, we will vote, have a referendum, to decide if we will separate from the North (86-87). Osama: I really don't feel Sudan is going to separate. After the peace agreement the Southerners are going to ask for everything immediately to the Southern government and things are not going to happen that quick. In the meantime it's also a trick from the Northern government. They promised the Southerners everything, not everything but most of what they want. But they can't do everything immediately, and then people in South are going to rethink the way they think about the government of Khartoum (134). Elizabeth: And even now when people are talking peace in Sudan, there is actually too much tension, and we don't know whether peace is going to work because of these other political things (97). Lubanga: I was hoping to go back to Sudan but Garang's death discouraged me a bit, because I don't want to end up as a refugee again. After his death I began to feel that there is another instability coming again. So now unfortunately we will wait and see (546-547). One more storyteller: Now after the peace they don't want to give refugee status to many people in the cities, only to people from Darfur. But I think they have to also give individual stories (213).
English as Second Language. ESL. Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada. LINC. Elizabeth: I think there are three stages. In the first year that the government gives you its LINC, Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada, then the year after that you do ESL, and when you finish from ESL you go to upgrading (333). A storyteller: LINC is for orienting newcomers to Canadian culture, to deal with everyday situations. You don't automatically go from LINC to ESL (323). Another storyteller: When I kept asking them why they don't teach anything they finally said yes, we teach you only enough for you to go to supermarket and to get a survival job (378). Lubanga: If you look at the refugees who came here after World War II, they were mainly from Eastern Europe. They went through the ESL, English as Second Language, not knowing the system. The stories are identical. People who were professors, medical doctors, classic cases of people who were specialists, when they came here they were not
576 recognized. People almost go through some of these difficulties generation after generation regardless of where they come from, if we look historically. That's the problem (354). Amani: You go to immigration and do the test, it depends how you do. Then they put you in the English classes or they put you in those classes, for upgrading, to get high school diploma (358-359). Santino: And for kids who came from another country, who are under eighteen, and in ESL, it's not ESL like for older people. There is math in it, there is science there, everything. But it's a little bit lower than for the kids who were here before (350). Lubanga: But ESL is not meant for people who are born here or people who are brought here when they are little and then grew up here. No. That's not the policy (402).
John Garang. A storyteller: John Garang, was with Anya Nya I, as a student (55). He later became an officer in Anya Nya I, and then after the Addis Ababa Agreement an officer in the Sudanese army. Then, in '83 he left for the South, and was the negotiator between the Sudan Government and Southern mutineers led by Kerubino Kuanyin Bol and William Nyuon. And he joined them, Kerubino and William Nyuon, in the bush. Then he formed the SPLA, and became the leader of SPLA and SPLM (56). Another storyteller: It was not just him but others too, like Kerubino, William Nyuon, Salva Kiir, who also formed SPLA. Even some from Anya Anya II were part of the planning, like Abdallah Chuol. They declared the SPLA and SPLM, its formation, in Ethiopia (56). Deepa: Wasn't unity with the North what John Garang was fighting for? Why many people from Nuba and the North, and other places, joined SPLA? (72) One more storyteller: You know it's confusing. People in the South don't want that. John Garang said that's okay. I am on a train, we are on the train together now, when we reach the border with the North then you can decide what you want. Me, I will go ahead (72). Khalid: This New Sudan inspired us at a certain point, in its promise of a new political movement and project that for the first time addressed the issue of marginalization, uneven development, secularism, a broader concept of culture, a more inclusive state, a just redistribution of wealth and power etc. But shortly after SPLA/SPLM emerged it stuck to its military non-democratic structure and failed to create a more open democratic political structure, and their leader become a larger than life and Stalinist figure (117). Lubanga: It's unfortunate that Garang died (119). Another storyteller: We needed him to keep the government in North in check. His death is even worse for us in the North, he was our only hope. He even talked about women and equality for them in the government. Now you in the South can even separate, for us we are stuck with this same government (81-82).
577 SPLA/SPLM. Sudanese People's Liberation Army/Sudanese People's Liberation Movement. Lubanga: John Garang combined both the SPLM and SPLA, they were not separate, and he was the leader of SPLM, the political party, and of SPLA, the army (119). A storyteller: They declared the SPLA and SPLM, its formation, in Ethiopia. Russians, Soviet Union, and Mengistu in Ethiopia, were involved. At the time, when SPLA was communist, socialist, they said they were fighting for a socialist Sudan state (56-57). Ajak: My father left to join Sudanese People's Liberation Army, SPLA, because of the injustices that were done to the Southerners by the Northerners. That's all I can say (11). Amani: When Garang created Sudanese People's Liberation Movement, SPLM, he wanted to make a New Sudan. It doesn't matter if you are Muslim, if you are Arab, if you join SPLA we are going to fight to bring peace, for all of us to be equal. He said he was going to create a New Sudan with everybody (23). A Storyteller: Quite many SPLA leaders didn't agree with unity. Many died as a result too. Also because of personal issues, and other political issues (77). Another storyteller: With the split in the SPLA, in 1991, into Nasir faction with Riek Machar and Lam Akol and Torit faction with John Garang, people were divided again, even along tribes. Many people killed each other (72). One more: At that time many of us left SPLA too, deserted it. We didn't join the SPLA to fight ourselves (72). Lubanga: The SPLA/SPLM time has affected the Sudan, and Southern Sudan in particular, more than Anya Nya I because millions of people were not only coming outside Sudan but also going to the camps, displaced in their own country, in Khartoum and other parts of Sudan. The biggest impact of this war is that it forced a lot of the Southerners to go northwards. That is when the average person came to be affected by what the government is doing and what also the other people, the average Northerner, are doing (122). Another storyteller: You know the military, everywhere, is all wrong. There is nothing, not one thing, that is right about it. I was with them before, but this is what I know. But, even now I support some of the things SPLA is doing, they have to fight. (71). Bibliography
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