Sudan War: Part 2

Why people eat themselves?

By: Amira Abdalla

         People eat themselves refers to those people whom rejected part or parts from their body. We know that if one part of your body was cut or died, the body cannot function efficiently. Sudan is one country contains many different ethnic groups; just like the human body build up from different tissues and it has different parts that coordinate and function to maintain that one body. So, if that body rejects one part, it will still function but not efficiency.

         The war in Sudan acts as a tumor that kept eating and destroying the country. The people kept killing each other and rejecting one another. Everyone wanted to be the head master and the leader. First, the central government of Sudan (the head control) decided that there was no need of some parts of Sudan and they must be removed and they thought that, they can function without them; that is when the civil war started. So, we ask ourselves, why people kill one another. Why they eating themselves in the process of the war? And why they destroy their country? The answer is cleared; they do it for the money, the power and the control.

           One of the reasons that I wrote about this war, it was the lost of the relatives and friends whom are close to my heart. In the early 1990, my mom took us back to the state where she and my dad were grew up; and where both of my grandmothers and grandfathers were born; it is where my roots and culture originated; the area called Nuba Mountains.

          In Nuba Mountains, my mom has her best cousin, best friend and best place over there. One day while we were there, my mom called my older brother and I, she let us sat down near our auntie and she said: “She is your mother (she hold my aunt’s hand), me and her are more than sisters, I brought you all the way here to meet her, and to give you a chance to know her; because if anything happen to me, she is the one she will take care of you, and she will be your mom”. At that moment, we know how much the love between my mom and my aunt. We told her, we will respect her wishes. We did spent a three beautiful months with my aunt and our cousins, and then we came back to the capital city, where we live.

          View years past, in 1994 exact as I remember, the people in my aunt village had been attack by the government army, farmers had been taken from their farms and tossing in jails or buried alive; most of the young people ran from their villages and joined the SPLM/A; the villages and the clinics burned. My mom started worry about her relatives, specially my aunt; she sent for her to take the kids and come to stay with us until the attacks stop. But, she did not get any respond from her.

          One day, someone walked to our front door asking about my mom by her name and holding a young boy hand. This boy is my aunt oldest son; he looked terrible, his cloth was old and dirty. My mom was very happy when she saw him; we all did. She asked him about his mom and the rest of the family. He started crying, screaming and saying “they killed them, all of them, in front of my eyes; I saw them tied my mom, my dad and sisters, and then they shot them; I ran so fast to the forest; they cased me but they did not get me; I hide between the trees then I walked for three days until I reach kadogly city; and one of the bus driver let me ride with him and he brought me here.

          My mom heart was broken; we all cried with her for the whole day. In the next day we started to gather ourselves and bay attention to our cousin. He kept having bad dreams, waking up screaming “do not kill me”; and then, he started hallucinated about his mom and his sisters, for the past two months since he arrived. My dad took him to the psychiatric doctor. He put him under his supervisions and some treatments. 

          He was twelve years old; he was just a kid at that time. He saw terrible things that done to his village; but the most terrified of all were to see his family vanished in front of his eyes. He lost his mom and so are we. I still remember that day like it is today. It was the very bad year for us; my mom and dad kept receiving bad news about people grew up with them. We lost a lot of close family on that year. My family still called it, the year of sadness.

          For that reason and other many reasons I wrote about the war and how the consequences of it caused many sadness and many destructions to my country. I wrote about the war in Sudan to let the word know how we suffered from it, direct by loosing someone we love or indirect by leaving them behind and seeking protection in other country. I will still write about the war in Sudan at any given opportunity to do so. I even tell it as story to my kids and my grand kids, to let them know that there is nothing beautiful in this world than peace.