The Lost Country of Sudan

By Steve Paterno

December 5, 2010 — I am writing this in commemoration of my birthday, which is today. It is my special way to respond to all those who wish me a “Happy Birthday.” By sharing this, I am in effect showing my appreciation and gratitude to all of you.

Birthday is an important event in someone’s life. It is a ritual that is usually associated with wishes, gifts and celebrations of some sort. However, since it is my birthday, I just realized something, which prompted me to immediately think of how much portion of my life is spent outside my country. Despite my youthful age, the journey for me thus far to a distant land and to a ripe age, has been quite long and painful. The journey started with the outbreak of war. Just as the war began, I tragically lost my father as a direct result of war. Nonetheless, at the time of his death, I was not made to be aware that he was dead. There were two main reasons for that. First, I was too young to know or to grasp the magnitude of such a tragedy. Second, the funeral of my father was conducted in secrecy, because the authorities could not allow an open funeral.

In a richly cultural place like Sudan, when you reach the stage that the mourning of a human being is whispered through secret channels to only few relatives and friends, then you know the people are being really subjected into horrendous situation. The soul of humankind is not valued anymore. This was dehumanization at its worst, where one is even denied its rights at death. Then you can imagine how someone could be accorded any birth rights. It was a situation were celebration of birth, enjoyment of life, and respect for the dead, were all rendered meaningless.

Such a situation, though I felt it at a personal level, it was far too common, because it engulfed the entire country and affected the lives of millions of people—the people who without doubt can relate to this tragic experience.

War in its nature is very cruel to humankind. It ceases progress, disrupts livelihood, separates families, and ends many lives at one time. For those who experience war, it is at times difficult for them to describe the ordeal in words; either because of the trauma endured, or due to lack of existing words to accurately capture the encounter.

Being born in a military family, I heard gun shoots before my first experience of real war. I vividly remember, before dad died, we had several trips to the army’s shooting range, where the army personnel practiced by firing lots of bullets in successions. However, this had never prepared me through the war, which I was about to experience first hand. The real war is different, with bullets whistling, bombs falling, and body parts being chopped up.

My first experience of the real war came too much early than I was prepared for it. It was in Torit town. Our home was at the fringe of the town and it was the epicenter of the ensuing fire attack. As the attack commenced, we cowed down inside the house and could not know how to respond to the firing and bombing. We tried hiding underneath the beds, but it was shaking everywhere. Running out of the house was not an option, because we then noticed we could be at the mercy of flying bullets and the falling bombs. When the attack subsided, we were trapped inside the house, because a propeller of an exploded shell was stuck right in front of our house. Due to our own ignorance, we thought by stepping out of the house, we will trigger the explosion of the device. (Little did we know that the ordnance had already exploded, luckily without blowing us up).

From this first encounter, I, like many others, had to undergo more gruesome experience in the war that would last for decades, killed as many, and displaced millions. There were the helpless moments of being attacked from thousands of feet above the air. There were those daring moments of skipping over land mines. And then, there were those risky moments of catching flying bullets. There were also the diseases, starvation and other calamities associated with war, which added more to this man made misery.

In hindsight, I cannot imagine how much progress Sudan would have had and stood among the nations of this world today, had it not been because of war. The country had all the potential for growth and prosperity. It is us the humankind who bear the brunt of all these. We suffered indeed and lost great deal in the course of decades of war. So, if we are the lost boys/girls of the Sudan, then Sudan is the lost country. Since Sudan is lost, it must find and define itself. The upcoming South Sudan referendum is the answer for that. It is my birthday’s wish that freedom should rein through referendum.

Steve Paterno is the author of The Rev. Fr. Saturnino Lohure, A Romain Catholic Priest Turned Rebel. He can be reached at [email protected]