The Shameful Marginalization of “Thony Community” within Greater Bor Community
“THONY COMMUNITY SHALL NEVER BE THE LAST IN GREATER BOR FOR THE GOVERNOR WILL OUT OF IT”
By Chol Deng
People in Greater Bor have always looked down on the Thony community as people of the lowest class to the extent that they have created/composed songs that depict this precious community as weak or incapable to compete with in any event.
I have a different version of Thony community to say “Thony community shall not be the last of all in Greater Bor for the Governor shall come out of it” for Thony has always been and will always be the last hope at the time of hunger or famine. With their patience I’m quite certain that they will present South Sudan with a leader in less than 50 years from now if they start to strategize on it.
Thony has always saved the life of the people on the Eastern Bank; the very vivid example that went unnoticed is the life of over half a million people who fled Bortown in Dec 2013 together with those in three counties of Bor, Twic and Duk who crossed using the modern boats to Guolyar.
I attribute this to Thony community; in fact the history of these people can be dated back both to Paweer famine and in 1991 at the time when there was no food, or even when someone lost his cows to the raiders, then the first and the only option is to join Thony and he will always be welcome.
I will be a liar to county how we have benefited from this community but I will try my best by saying that at the time of liberation in the late 1980s it is said that Thany contributed 300 boats to SPLA with 600 volunteers to row them for 15 days to transport ammunitions that were used to capture Leer and Mayom.
Not only that there were those who could dive for 6 hours into the water to go and get the guns that had fallen into the waters of the Nile or else the ones who let the gun fall in the water will be court marshalled, at that time when the guns were very rare.
Wise leaders in Bor begun to integrate Thony community along the Nile into their payams and gave them separate alamat or organize their chiefdoms to report to court centers at the eastern Bank e.g Maar, Jalle, Baidit Makuach, Anyidi and Kolnyang and slowly the relationship begun to improve drastically.
Thony has always remains as a decent, patient, enduring and lovely community. To those who will always stand up in the crowd today proudly and say here I’m from Bor community that presented Southern Sudan with leaders such as Abel Alier, Dr Garang Kuol Manyang Elijah Malok, Thon Leek and many others must think about Thony in this.
Why am I saying this? You know without the character traits that I have mentioned above, the missionaries couldn’t have established their mission school in Malek, of course Thony could have resisted the missionaries like they were resisted in Ajakbeker at Jonglei of Maar and Jalle and the history would be different from the way it is now.
Long ago our people used to go to Thony and stay there to survive the disaster, but unfortunately they always come back and start to entertain their age mates about how foolish these people are, and how they have been tricking them while there, just simply because they have been generous to them.
Because there are areas where generosity is a rare commodity, so the returnees will come and talk unfinished and negative stories about Thony, the same Thony they will go back and kneel down tomorrow when things get back to worse.
One person from Thony Community called Looch was executed unjustly back in the day when the British were the colonial masters, it is said that all the Chiefs from Bor agreed to let him be executed by the law he did not break yet he died while singing a song of courage.
There are people who still believe that the song he sang that day has remained as a curse and I heard one of the pastors saying that they are planning to term that curse on Bortwon, by organizing prayers for forgiveness.
In the last years no one could accept to wrestle with the champions of Thony such as Noonliel, Nyalueth Abiar and the rests, because they were so powerful and people used to scare them not to come near, because there were attitudes developed that a person defeated by Monythaany will be overlooked and for the people to continue claiming superiority they have let Thony stayed away from them.
Recently Ajang Mapuordit who has championed in the field feel of wrestling together with Ajith Nyankuoi are being claimed as relatives by everyone, in the recent match of Bor against Twic they were the ones who led Bor county into triumphant victory and everyone will always want to take a picture and have time to chat with Ajang Mapuordit, which was not possible in the last two decades.
This can be seen by the quote in the song of Mapuordit “Duoke wet ee Thaany cok nyieei we Buor…….. wek aa kor rot tir ayang deen” that you Bor don’t let superiority over Thony mislead you or curiosity will kill you.
There existed a relation of Jews and Gentiles between Bor and Thony in the past because the confusion was brought by the use and intermingle of the three words namely
- Abuur someone who has no cows
- Atooch and someone who depends on fish in Toch
- Thony a community that spread along the Nile (Toch) and like others they can have Abuur, Atooch and cattle keeper as well
With this I urge the rests to have respects and stop negative comments in the public against Thony community and see them as equal brothers and stop subjecting them to inferiority such that we can escape the punishment of God.
I have heard people saying they don’t eat fish because they are not Monthaany and some time you find people dying because there are no fishes in Toch during the time of hunger because God wants to punish people of what they say.
I shed tears when I saw my family offshoring at Guolyar after spending 24 sleepless nights when they got struck in Toch as all the routes were closed and it was like resurrection to me that day, and one must admits that this article is more of confession than anything else. Thany deserve rewards than insults.
“THONY COMMUNITY SHALL NEVER BE THE LAST IN GREATER BOR FOR THE GOVERNOR WILL OUT OF IT”
The author can be reached on choljoshwa@gmail.com or on facebook on Chol Joshua.
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