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Everything is not gwar in Sudan

By Alberta Schweitzer - posted Tuesday, 13 June 2006


Their names are unprounceable - Nyamal Pal, Chome Ngome, Riak Puk Minydhot, Nyatouk Chuoi Wei, and even if you try to pronounce them phonetically, it isn’t the way the locals pronounce it, and they crack up when you try. So the “small boy with the yellow shirt” is the way to go, or sometimes “the small boy with the fever”, or abscess, or chest infection, or brucellosis, or malaria.

It would be a whole lot easier if they were all Tom, Dick or Harry from an identification point of view. Most of the women have Nya, which means woman, as a prefix to their names.

Another quaint tradition for both beautification and to facilitate the accuracy, velocity, and volume of spitting, is the removal of the four bottom teeth from both girls and boys. And again, they all seem to have had their teeth ripped out, and I can vouch for the fact that they sure as hell can spit. Men and women. Often. Right in front of where they are sitting or standing. Noisily. While talking to you. Though they never hit your feet.

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And they all make this odd clicking sound in their throats to indicate agreement as they lift their heads.

They are mostly very tall, and very thin. And many of the sick ones walk with a long stick, especially the Kala-Azar patients, as they are flat-out walking.

From what I have worked out so far, the women are pretty much slaves. Marriages are arranged, and the girl has no selection rights. She is bought for a dowry, agreed upon by the families, which is often a number of cows. She is usually married by 13.

Until that time she has been her mother’s slave looking after her brothers and younger members of the family. It seems to be the small girl’s duty to carry water, which she does in a huge plastic jerry, which I could not even lift off the ground, on her head.

When she is married, she then moves into her husband's family’s compound, and is the property of her husband, so she gets to be the slave of a whole new set of “rellies”. She does all the water carrying, food preparation, tukul maintenance and cleaning. Her husband looks after the cattle if they are cattle herders, which involves a lot of sitting around and spitting, or if they are not cattle herders he sits around doing nothing except spitting.

Most of the men have several wives, even though this is a mainly Christian area. It is perfectly acceptable, not only to the less educated locals but to the staff, to beat the hell out of any wife if she fails to comply with directives.

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We rescued one such unfortunate from the bush last week, unconscious, bleeding, and beaten with a stick. The doctor and I had a hard time persuading the guards to carry the stretcher along the airstrip and back to the clinic, as it is not a man’s job to carry things! It was all I could do not to take a stick to them.

We wanted to report the assault to the SRRC - Sudanese Rehabilitation and Relief Committee - a group here with a very greasy representative, who has to come to the compound every day and deal with the project co-ordinator about staff contracts, security, and why the airstrip isn’t being maintained etc, etc. I am sooooooo glad I don’t have to do that job - it is much more pleasant being up to my elbows in spitballs and placentas.

Men and women eat separately, only twice a day, and what they eat can only be described as awful. Porridge muck, with old warm clotted milk, poured from smelling rotten calabashes. It’s all I can do to look at it. If they are in the clinic, their family comes from outside, and they all sit around under the tree, or in the tukul: the women bring the food, the men eat in one group, and the women in another. It is how they operate in life outside, and they still do the same while in hospital.

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About the Author

Alberta Schweitzer is a health worker for an aid organisation in South Sudan. This is a pseudonym to protect her safety and that of her co-workers.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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