The good old days of our lives!
By Daniel Abushery Daniel
“Your life doesn’t get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Jim John.
February 1, 2012 — I am pretty sure that there are many words that could be used to describe our life experiences. Most of all, I know that all of us have a thing or two that we can be proud of in our past, or what I always referred to as ” Good old days.”
Growing up in Nasir and other places in South Sudan, I remember quite vividly some of the old tales from elders about a one universal ethnic group in ancient times that; all human beings spoke the same language, then they decided to build a tower to reach the heaven connected with the Almighty God. The construction goes smoothly in the first few days until they reached a certain level of advancement, then God said; Human being is complex and disturbance.
Along the way, God Almighty, for reasons only known to Him, created different languages, while folks were in the middle of excitement to finish their tower. Unfortunately, things didn’t go well, they couldn’t understand one another, because the communication process was broken, which caused a whole hosts of disagreements and confusion among them, which eventually resulted in the cancellation of their task, and to the failure of the project. And that was the beginning of the different tongues and languages in the world.
The questions that I am asking our human race with are that: what can we do to speak with one universal language again like the way it used to be? And how can we eradicate and root out all forms of tribalism, sections and nepotism of our society?
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Thus, I’m truly blessed to have the opportunity to witness the greatness of the generation of my father, who carried themselves with respect, dignity and honour. For example: I have never ever heard my dad saying something negative about other community member including foreigners. We were constantly reminded to respect anybody that’s older than you. Today, what some of us do is diligently poisoning the minds and hearts of our children with negative adjectives about other tribes, such as: ” Our tribe is better then the rest.”, “we are the warriors”, “we are the liberators, and those are traitors.” The list of negativity goes on and on.
To this very moment, I remember one of my dad’s best friends, who happened to be from the Murle tribe, Ustaz David Arrani. He was at Malakal Teachers Institute. I thought that uncle David was my blood relative, until some years later when I grew up and met his son, John in Nasir.
Also, I will never forget my neighbours, Ustaz Manasseh, the father of my friends, Kuol and Malak, and the late uncle Nicodemous Arou, the father of the prestigious journalist, Ustaz Majok Arou. In addition to our school Head Master uncle Burnaby Anguuoi, and many more. Honestly speaking, we had lived like a one big family.
Thus “good old days ” were truly and really golden in every way. They were just like when you want to find some information on something, which was called the Internet that has now become the daily basic needs, not to mention that fact that it is our dictionary that allows us to check out the difficult words, encyclopaedia, and every possible way to be updated.
Recently, I saw an ad of a kindle book that you can start reading anything on the new iphone, android phone, or blackberry phone etc…. accessing the information is about everything, and giving the universal access to a gold old book is another. It’s just like a review, survey, or contemplation of things in the past which we realize and say;
The old days will remain golden days.
Frankly speaking, what is now going in South Sudan is tragic. From the mass killing of helpless civilians, and lost of properties between different ethnic groups in our homeland, is simply obnoxious, disgusted and brutal, just to say the least. I lose sleep over it, and it’s a fire in my bones, and I can’t remain silent, something must be done now before it’s escalation like a wild fire to the other parts of our beloved country. The golden phrase says; “prevention is better than cure”.
Compatriots, what I am trying to address here is to appeal to President 1st Let. General Salva Kiir Mayardit, the president of the republic of South Sudan to implement a decentrelization system, then, consider a random appointment of counties commissioners, heads of the states and public service personnel from across the republic of South Sudan. Beyond a doubt, such policy will not only help in the reduction of tribal sensitivities that are happening today, but it can also subdue, and minimize corruption. It’s time to go back to the old system that has proved to work diligently.
Can we all just say; enough is enough of these tribalism, sectionism, nepotism, and corruption and just focus on the goals that will unite us as one nation? Can we turn around to the good old days in our lives? Yes, we can.
This is my prospective.
The author is south Sudanese citizen, and can be reached at [email protected]