Polataka Face Foundation: Dr. John Garang’s Predictable Seeds for New Sudan (part 6)
6 min readBy David Matiop Gai, Juba, South Sudan
June 3, 2016 (SSB) — The Polataka was in Acholi home land and was a fertile area for Agriculture. Within one year and half, the activities of agriculture and building started. We exhibited number of things in Polataka as composed of many sources of area development. A Polataka face foundation was a camp of 13 groups with thousands of thousands of children including marerek. When the completion of groups’ mixture was over, the whole camp started activities in different fields such Agriculture, School, military training and discipline etc. We built houses roofing for grass thatching in our groups.
A good number of children learned in those years how to build the houses thatching with local roofing. If a group has many children who know how to build a house, the group can finish building of roof up for one day. We were really hardworking children. In a day, some of us can go for grass cutting, others will go for short poles and long poles, but still other will remained to measure the house, dig the holes for short poles, and the whole house will stand in few hours until it is used.
The children significantly learned how to work or used hours in Polataka while we used to sleep in short time for night hours. When we want to go for work, we can leaved earlier in the morning to Obo, Paem, Yiri, ARC, Pan de Guermonydit, and distant around Polataka. We used go and cut short poles and long poles for our houses as well as houses for teachers and military Officers. We did everything possible to make Polataka look beautiful. We were so committed to our objectives, goals and mission. Our objectives, goals, and mission are to study, fight the Arabs, and achieve the New Sudan to free the marginalized people of the Sudan. We were well educated and well fed by the mission of the SPLA/M. In Polataka we were used as machines by some ignorant people but the pain of these memories are in mental records; we were also used as slaves or as children who have no parents.
One day I remember, most of us were very happy with Commander Kuol Manyang mum Kethdit who got annoyed with women in Polataka who used to send little children to Obo to bring milk in cattle camp while LRA make ambush along roadside. She was questioning them, “why do send little children who have no guns to protect themselves against LRA? Do you think these children have no parents? And she ordered them not to send any child again to Obo. At that time no child was send to Obo but the platoon of jehec al thuoth began collecting milk from Obo to Polataka for officers’ families. In other analyzes, the hard work in Polataka, taught us endure ship or hardship and how we can do our own things, and simplifying way forward until the present. Dr. John Garang said, “Colonialism or ethemaar, has no colour”, there is color for colonialism. It’s should happen the way one may applying it. Those whom we did everything to them in form of military discipline thought that Red army are just machines which have no pain in their bodies, but it was slightly mistreatment of human dignity.
In Polataka, we first got Catholic Father John Gary in the area. John Gary was a missionary and also an agriculturist. He had many years in Polataka, and he built a second tower or second floor of concrete building in his compound. He had many tractors, and big two gardens. One garden was at the eastern side of Polataka, and the other garden was on the southeast part along the road to Parajok. In 1990, the Catholic father had many people who support him in his garden and they do come for garden cleaning. Acholi people used to come from the village to clean the garden, and being paid for salt, soap, and clothes. At the end of 1990, the gardens which were cultivated with maize; and after the maize got ready, it was putting in long big granaries, the storehouses or room in a barn for threshed grain in Polataka. He gave us one barn of storehouse full of maize.
In the year 1990, the same year where John Gary dug two gardens, we Red army in our different groups also cultivated small gardens in northern part of Polataka. We made small gardens with local digging but our gardens were not enough comparing to John Gary’s gardens. During the harvesting time, we harvested few productions, but Father John Gary filled long and huge storehouses with maize, onions, beans, soybeans, sun flows, egg plant, tomatoes, watermelon, and many other plants. The Red army administration got motivated and they consulted John Gary about what they can do in the next season. The Catholic missionary promised the administration to give two tractors near February and March in 1991 for us to try our all groups’ gardens.
Exactly in 1991, Dr. John Garang sent Mayen Ngor, the current minister of Agriculture in Jonglei State to us in Polataka and to help Bol Dau who was the head of agriculture. The Red army cleared a vast area for agriculture with the guidance of Mayen Ngor, and (he used to say, “etiom kene, ee mieth nyin”). The garden was divided according to groups, and all the groups were told to remove big trees from the roots so that when the tractors began digging, they can dig the land without any obstacles, and we clean the whole garden for few days. At that time hoes, and axes were brought by SPLA, we removed trees.
It was very principles, and disciplines; each group will awake up at 4 am and clean the group first. People will stand in military parade to get ready for garden activities. We will count ourselves, and identified sick people among us for daily report, and give group staff sergeant reports to the head quarter. At 6:30 am, or sometimes too earlier, each group will go to the garden; we will work there for five (5) hours, and come back homes for a little while to rest and launch hours.
In the afternoon every day, we will go to our classes for learning sessions. The Polataka face foundation adapted three (w), that we will wisely (www) used our four hours of the evening time for teaching subjects, i.e. English, Mathematics, Science, Geography, C.R.E, History, and Social studies. After classes, we will start again evening work which was bit light compared to morning works. Even though we got tired from the work, the vision of SPLM for school will forced us to faced challenges of studies. We were very cleverest pupils of our days.
Also 1st Lt Bol Dau was not yet promoted to the ranks of captain in 1991. He was a Polataka face foundation director of agriculture. We nickname him, “Bol thiera”, meaning Bol for Agriculture. Together with Mayen Ngor, they were tasked to encouraged the camp with agricultural productions because the hunger strikes the camp seriously when the Khartoum regime captured Kapoeta, and is also victoriously coming to Torit from Juba , the headquarter of SPLA/M in 1990 until June 1992. The Red army garden was the main option to produce food, because a way from Kenya was blocked since fall of Kapoeta into the hand of Khartoum. Things got worse and everywhere become enemy against SPLA; the movement was growing weak and weaker and many supporters of SPLA were deserting in all corners like fallen of tree leaves. We will read about garden and how we survived in 1992-1993 in Polataka.
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