Bor vs. Twic: The Last Twi Man Standing
10 min readBy Apioth Mayom Apioth
Pawuoi Ajokbil holds an indomitable eccentric figure. “Indomitable” in the sense that when something is bothering him, he would go to enormous lengths to emancipate himself from whatever is holding his nose in the dirt. He was born a Twi Dinka, formerly a sub-tribe of the Dinka tribe, and now irritatingly believed to be a sub-section of Dinka Bor. Twi Dinka has been moved around the block ephemerally since the Anglo-Egyptian colonial days; first, when Jonglei state was part of the Upper Nile province, Dinka Twi, along with Dinka Nyarweng, Dinka Hol, and Dinka Bor, were all part of Duk Payuel district; and in the later years, when Bor became a district, it became one of its fledging pawns, again together with Nyarweng, Hol, and of course Bor, which was originally divided into two main sub-groups of Gok and Athoc.
These days, Bor district is defunct and a thing of the past, but the name has stuck in the minds of countless diverse people worldwide. On Martyrs’ Day, or any other communal gathering, Twi people are seen celebrating in isolation from Dinka Bor people. Many witness accounts have also reported encountering Dinka Bor people holding separate fund raising events, away from Twi people. Major cultural distinctions, such as the dialect, have remained intact unadulterated from the infusion. The frictions are still looming large in the air, and, Pawuoi, among all people, is losing his mind over the squabble. He blames the Twi elders and the youth for sleepwalking over the issue for far too long. The Dinka are the most economically powerful and make up about 11% of the overall total population of South Sudan. The Nuer are the next populous ethnic group totaling 5% of the South Sudanese population.
“Had the Twi elders and youth taken the cantankerous issue to all the Dinka elders, they would have talked it over, found a solution and everyone would have been saved from many insomniac sleepless nights over this problem?” he questioned his conscientious inner self, thinking the consent was needed first from the Dinka elders before everyone starts campaigning for Twi autonomy from Dinka Bor hegemony. “The source of the problem is the Dinka community itself. Once the Dinka community acknowledges the pure intentions of Twi people, then all well and good, they would go ahead and spread the news to other ethnic groups of South Sudan who knew little or nothing about Twi,” he remarked, still stuck in his latest depressed state.
“Perhaps, the transition from Duk Payuel to Bor came when the history of South Sudan was generating stormy dust to change its course of being a remote peripheral region of Sudan to become an independent state of its own. Whatever melancholic issue is holding Dinka Twi a prisoner to become a world renounced Dinka sub-tribe of the Dinka, in the same category as Dinka Malual, Agar, and many others, is too much a task for one man to handle solely,” Pawuoi would thought. In these dubious times of the fastidious academia, it may be too late for Twi Dinka to reclaim its past glory of their namesake because once something becomes entrenched in the scholarly circles, it would take a painstaking effort to erect it back to their rightful owners. Not to mention finding funding sources to keep the research from derailing off the tracks.
After South Sudan gained its independence, Dinka Twi emerged as part of Dinka Bor. While the whole world was busily welcoming the newly independent state of South Sudan to the coliseum of nations, Twi Dinka remains eclipsed behind the limelight shadows of Dinka Bor. On that fateful day when South Sudanese were granted the freedom to be the masters of their own destinies, with its intoxicating cascading jubilee dancers going merry-go-round from place to place, the global audience captured only one name to champion the cause of every event to come in the foreseeable future and that was Dinka Bor. After an intrepid “Dinka Bor” ship weathered a torrential weather at sea, Dinka Twi name will be lost to the bottom pit annals of world history; a place where anyone would find it hard to nurse it back to fruition. History has revealed itself to Pawuoi time and time again that at the birth of anything, the name that is given to any creation at birth, is the name people will remember for futuristic events.
“Even after much tampering with the Dinka Bor name during the course of its lifespan, the new name that will prop up would probably have nothing to do with the subordinate names that were incorporated into Bor when it became a merger of the Twi, Hol, Nyarweng, and Bor,” he concludes. Subordinate “Twi” name it may seem, Pawuoi is now more than convinced to live as free-spirited and original as his legs can drive him.
Lately, the major causation of Pawuoi’s irritations, has been springing from his Dinka brethren. At Trident Seafoods Corporation, in Akutan, Alaska, where he works as an environmental contaminant consultant, Pawuoi has been facing an uphill battle against the waves of unpleasant conversations hurdled his way by his Dinka brethren. Be it a brother from Dinka Malual, or Panaruu, the conversation keeps on swaying to the same direction.
“Riek Machar’s militias are displacing our people in Bor,” Bith Miyak, a Dinka Panaruu added. “The events of 1991’s Bor Massacre are repeating themselves again,” said Diing Akol, a Dinka Malual. “Guys! Guys!” Cried Pawuoi, his voice becoming lethargic from the high-pitched shouting. “You may have been misled into believing that I am a Dinka Bor, however, in the purest reality of things, I am a Twi Dinka.” “Pawuoi, brother come on now, haven’t you heard that Twi has already been subjugated by Dinka Bor?” shrieked Thon Aguto, a Dinka Bor.
The much heated debate went on for about twenty five good minutes until it was disrupted by the call of their foreman to get back to work. There seemed to be no mention of Dinka Twi by any non-Dinka Twi in every conversation circulating the galley – a kitchen lounge building that offers meals to the company’s employees. Pawuoi was getting despondent with this Twi-Bor arm’s twisting and decided to do something about it. First, he thought: ‘Where there is no central force commanding obedience among the horde, disintegration into a total anarchy is imminent.’ The atmosphere was getting stale and he wants to shake things up a notch.
By becoming the general in command of the Dinka nation at Trident, even for a mere five minutes at lunch, he would accomplish his personal mission. And for this matter, he thinks he has found the answer to this stalemate. For him, it wouldn’t make any significant difference if his commandeering turns a little dictatorial as long as they understand his envisagement. The following evening, after work, he went to a Ship’s specialty store in town and bought himself a rather awkward looking club, four razor-sharp nails and a glue. The club came with four holes on each side of its head. To avoid the harvest from easily slipping back into the sea, fishermen simply plunged threaded nylons into those four holes. And thus, the normal function of this club is to pull nets out of the water after its preys have been tamed.
The next day, at lunch hour, Pawuoi hurriedly walked to his room in the housing building complex. The housing units are a three minute walk from the fish processing plant where he inspects the worksite for environmental contaminants. In his room, he quickly grabs his three components of the weaponry: the club, the four nails and a glue. Staying vigilant of the limited time allotted to him for lunch, he stomped back towards the direction of the galley. But what was that? He realized he must hide his unassembled parts of the weaponry to avoid the bullish garish faces of the security guards stationed at the galley’s entrance. He hides both the glue and the four nails in the linen of his bump cap; a cocooned head cover he uses to protect the center of his thinking machinery against overhead scuffling.
As with what to do with the club; he conceals it inside the woolen fleece jacket he armors to shell himself from the cold winters of Alaska. Walking past the security guards, he puts up a truant happy face to draw the attention away from his much anticipated adventure. Inside the galley, he runs to the vacant storage room, recovered the club from his warm body, swung out the nails and a glue for assemblage. He pours the glue into the four holes of the club, shoves the nails inside and forty five seconds later, the nails were cemented into the club as the hardened granite bricks on the walls of the Great Zimbabwe. The final product resembles a hammer with four distinctive porcupine’s needles adorning its head.
As he was readying himself for the possible final showdown with his Dinka brethren, he plastic-wrapped the porcupine-headed club so as to fool the other lunch breakers from discovering his contentious plot. He opens the door for a minute just to check whether the Dinka boys were seated at their usual spot; at the roundtable desk with two benches on each opposing end. Diing Akol, Thon Aguto and Bith Miyak, were all seated at the spot simply dubbed as the “mini Juba” among some quarters of the company in reference to the South Sudanese politics frequently heard wafting from that parliament. Springing out of the storage room with a flood of confidence, holding the club on his right hand, he bypassed the meal-hand-out window and headed straight to where the boys were seated. Arriving at the table, he placed the club down on the table, now fully unwrapped from its plastic sheath, and sat down next to it. Everyone exchanged greetings.
Then Pawuoi began: ‘Brothers, you know how much I dislike being called a Dinka Bor, don’t you? So from here and now, I am begging all of you to always refrain from calling me Dinka Bor and adopt Dinka Twi instead.’ “Pawuoi! Pawuoi! How many times do we have to tell you that no one under the sun knows Dinka Twi anymore?” Bith Miyak remarked, swinging his head from side to side as if he was possessed by a meningitis disease. “Is this how you want it, ha? Here I am, begging my heart out to you guys in an effort to accept my sincerest desire to live a dignified life with honors in the same carefree manner my grandfather did; who lived as a Twi Dinka all his life without ever experiencing Dinka Bor’s predatory long reach. And what I get in return for my naïve pleadings are insults. That is it, I have had enough of this deafening hell talk,” Pawuoi added, with sporadic slippery dew seen escaping from his spread out teeth. He stood up, grabs the club and GOOM! He hits the table with a Tsunami type of earth shaking force, making the four saber-toothed club to stand with two nails pointing upward, while the other two nails etched inside the wooden layers of the table, never letting go.
“Do you want me to make a minced beef out of every one of you, just to understand where I am going with this talk?” he asked, looking them squarely in the eye to provoke them into submission. The Dinka boys were flabbergasted, having never seen such an egregious behavior from someone they have always known as a down to earth person. The whole table hummed in total silence. “Silence means I remain to be called a Twi until the day I exit this earth. It doesn’t matter if everyone in South Sudan get converted to Dinka Borism. Standing up to what I believe in means the whole universe to me,” Pawuoi said. “Who is creating all this commotion?” questioned the security guard, who was alerted in the midst of altercation among the Dinka contingent. His employment came to a screeching halt. He was found guilty of threatening his associates with violence.
The next morning, he was on an Alaskan Airlines flight, back to Washington State; a hibernating place he calls second home, while lurking in wait for an opportune fortune for life reconstruction back home. Later that day, thinking of his exploits, he felt there could have been no other way to reclaim his lost dignity other than to let his club do the talking for him. Those few moments of silence he received from the lads meant Dinka Bor wasn’t so mightier than a saber-toothed club after all. For now, he will have to live as free as a wind, savoring the freedom granted to him by his beloved barbed-toothed club, until the new Dinka Bor sympathizers arrive on the horizons.
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