The letter to us, the South Sudanese, on finding ourselves, and the four languages [Part 1]
5 min readDear my fellow South Sudanese,
By Kur Wel Kur, Adelaide, Australia
January 5, 2016 (SSB) — I won’t take long introducing aspects in this letter. I will go straight into the ways I believe we must follow to find ourselves. These ways are what I called the four languages. We must understand and speak them as South Sudanese. Here they are: Empathy, Diversity, God’s creation and Hard-work.
So, my dear South Sudanese…
EMPATHY is a word whose origin and meaning originated from Greek, which means:
“The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.”
It goes beyond another contender, the SYMPATHY, which means “feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune;” empathy overlooks sympathy because the ‘sharing’ and ‘understanding’ aspects of it, make it (empathy) speaks louder than sympathy. To understand the language of empathy, I would like to use war and its angels: death, displacement, and poverty, which encompasses illiteracy and hunger, as example.
A child-refugee
“Take them by their hands and run to the South,” Mr. Deng shouted to his wife.
…That particular night was humid, the summer night of February, 1995. Deng’s family peeled off every rag they wore to cover themselves during the day. Lobone’s summers in Equatoria weren’t always hot, but that particular night was extra hot. So, Deng, his wife and four children: two boys of 12 and 8 years old with two girls: 10 and 6 years old, spread apart to make use of little air in their congested hut.
The boys grunted at each other whenever one of them swung an arm around, touching the other in his corner. While the girls kept turning, whimpering as they spread their arms to expose their sweating armpits. The night’s hours crawled on to small hours of the morning with slow motion.
The first rooster crowed. And just after some minutes the children caught their nibbles of sleep. However, Mr. Deng stayed awake because there was something uneasy about that night. His body yearned for energy, his mind played images and words of his dead relatives and friends. He was thinking of how many rounds of ammunitions he had. At around 4.00 AM, he fumbled his hands on his AKS-762 just to make sure. After 30 minutes, he snored as a respond to a cooling air in the smallest hours of the morning.
Woken up by her husband’s snores, Achol went outside to pee. She paced back into the hut. And before she laid beside her husband, a gun was fired. Then the sounds of more than 100 guns followed.
Mr. Deng sprang up, picking up his AKS-762.
“Aluel!” “Ayen!” “Wake up!” Achol patted her daughters on their shoulders.
The sounds of the guns awakened the boys.
Mr. Deng pushed himself outside and before he knew it, he got hit in the abdomen. He knelt in a shooting position so that his wife and children wouldn’t know.
“Run to the South!” “Bullets are landing in the west!” “Take Mabior and Ayen (their younger children) by their hands!” “Hurry, Hurry!” he shouted at his wife.
He got hit again in the chest and he fell, facing up. And within three minutes he died.
In 500 metres from his hut, his three oldest children and his wife, Achol got hit and they died instantly. His last born, a six years old, Ayen ran, following the same direction. She almost cried herself to her death. She reached the bamboo forest. There, she got picked by a relative who assumed the responsibility of taking care of her.
In a few months, she found herself in Kakuma refugee’s camp. She stayed with the family, doing all sorts of house duties, babysitting and going to a nearby primary school. She had a few clothes. Ayen and her new family got resettled in Canada. Now she is a mother of three beautiful children: two girls and a boy. She has a master degree in Human Rights. She sent money to her hometown to support the children of war.
N/B: take it as a fiction.
But, the point is, if our politicians and all South Sudanese understand that the war causes suffering to women and children, they won’t go around causing war or supporting policies, which will rekindle war. The language we must understand as South Sudanese is EMPATHY. You don’t have to be a philosophical giant to understand that empathy is in the above story and it will help our country.
Thanks for your time and happy New Year.
Lookout for part two: The Complexity in Simplicity, The Creation
Kur Wel Kur has a Bachelor Degree in Genetics and Zoology from Australian National University (ANU). He pursues a Masters of International Security Studies at Macquarie University (Australia). He is presently the General Secretary of Greater Bor Community in Adelaide, Australia. He can be reached via his email contact: kurwelkur @ yahoo.com
The opinion expressed here is solely the view of the writer. The veracity of any claim made are the responsibility of the author, not PaanLuel Wël: South Sudanese Bloggers (SSB) website. If you want to submit an opinion article or news analysis, please email it to paanluel2011@gmail.com. SSB do reserve the right to edit material before publication. Please include your full name, email address and the country you are writing from.
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