Tributes to Ustaz Antipas Arok Biowei: Homage to a Creative Teacher and Great Man of Culture

By Atem Yaak Atem, Sydney, Australia

Friday, December 13, 2019 (PW) — Antipas Arok Biowei who has passed away recently was one of South Sudan’s long serving and creative teachers, having taught at various village and elementary schools in the former Upper Nile Province. His long and distinguished service earned promotions that included being made headmaster of several elementary schools, county inspector of education among other roles spanning over 60 years. According to a statement from his family, Antipas Arok was born 89 years ago in Pakuoor village (also this writer’s birthplace), not far from Pawel (Pawɛ̈l), the local name for Kongor, as well as for the area, the inhabitants and their administrative centre.

Antipas Arok hailed from a very large family- and his own family was no exception family- with many siblings, who included his younger brother, late Philip Chol, a retired SPLA general. Philip Chol studied history and obtained an MA from the University of Khartoum. Although his dissertation was on the history of education in Southern Sudan, unlike his elder teacher brother Antipas Arok, who was avowed civil servant, Philip Chol preferred politics to teaching or any other career, including academia for which he was qualified. Philip Chol was known for his wits and biting sarcasm, which he sometimes used to a devastating effect, with the result that this trait earned him fans as well as opponents.

A former pupil remembers

I was one Antipas Arok Biowei’s pupils at Kongor Bush School many years ago. During my brief visit to in 2010 to Panyagoor, then headquarters of what was known as Twic [Twi] East County, I held a lengthy chat with Ustaz Antipas Arok. The conversation that began as a courtesy later developed into a revisit of my former teacher’s own school days and the spirit of the time, mainly 1940s.

There was something unusual about the respected elderly school man, who despite his advanced age he was in robust health, physically and mentally: at the time of the chat he was the county’s head of education. And he was teaching in a nearby primary school, a role which he willingly- without any additional financial incentives- combined with classroom teaching to children aged between five to seven.

Teacher remembering his school days

During the interview I listened to my former teacher narrate his early days as a schoolboy in the 1940s. He mentioned Ajang Bior Duot, Isaac Bior Deng and John Garang Bior as his classmates at the time. Ajang Bior and Isaac Bior later became senior civil servants and finally academics in both the governments of Sudan and that of Southern Region in Juba. Ajang is professor emeritus of government and a member of South Sudan’s Council of State, a legislative body, while Isaac Bior is professor of economics at University of Juba. John Garang Bior, popularly known as Garang-Jaden and self-styled Duke of Pachol because his father Bior Aguer was a retired chief whose home was at Pachol, a suburb of Kongor. Garang Jaden who died in 1970s was one of pioneer broadcasters of South Sudan.  After cutting short his schooling at Rumbek Secondary School during the first civil war, Jaden briefly went to the border of Sudan and Congo, where he briefly joined the Anya Nya guerrillas. He later became one of journalists on the first Radio Juba station as a newsreader in English. He briefly worked on the Nile Mirror weekly newspaper before his death.

Top of the pack

Taking me back to his days at Kongor Bush School, Antipas Arok said that during the second half of 1940, he and colleagues sat for entrance exam. Successful students would then get into third year at an elementary school. There were more than 10 bush schools all over the district competing for limited places at Malek Elementary School, 86 miles southeast of Kongor. He told me that his school topped the exam; with all the students having passed and accepted in third year, an achievement for which their teacher, Gabriel Dau Akech, was promoted and transferred to Malek as headmaster.

 At Malek, Antipas Arok continued to be both a high scoring student as well as excelling in other extramural activities. It was taken for granted that he was destined to proceed to intermediate school and beyond.

Two years later he and his fourth year classmates took what was called entrance examination. Successful candidates would be sent to intermediate school. Loka in Equatoria and Atar in Upper Nile, were the dream elite schools as Eton as a public school was to the British. But since there were students competing for very places there, even some of the bright boys failed to get a place. Antipas Arok’s case was a different problem: when the results were released, the first to receive the news with disbelief were his own teachers and colleagues. He was neither going to Loka nor to Atar because he had failed.

A failure that shocked everyone

Having been a very bright student one would wonder why Antipas Arok was unable to progress to the level achieved by his former peers mentioned earlier. What happened to him could be described as unexpected or disappointing; or for others, it was simply a case of bad luck. Disappointed but realistic, Arok accepted what appears to have been a second choice. He was going to Panekar, a training centre for elementary and bush school teachers, graded as “approved teachers.” While there Arok took his course very seriously. That category of teachers formed the backbone of education at its lower rung all over the South. Panekar is in former Yirol District of former Bahr el Ghazal Province.

Stopped here- Dec 8, 2019

 But something out of the ordinary happened. Antipas Arok recalled that during the year a communication from Province Education Officer (PEO) in Malakal was sent to Malek. The message was that there had been an error involving the marks of one of the students: Antipas Arok Biowei had actually passed with high marks and qualified to be admitted into an intermediate school.  According to him, the educational authorities in the province regretted what its authors of the message termed as a “technical mistake,” for having not allocated a place in an intermediate school for the successful student. The PEO office, Antipas Arok recalled, advised that the student should repeat class try the next exam, an offer Arok told me, he declined, preferring instead to continue with his two-year long course.

Young teacher

After his successful completion of his training Antipas Arok was posted to his old school, Malek. There he taught for a couple of years. That coincided with country’s preparation for independence from Anglo-Egyptian rule. One of the features of the constitutional change taking place in the educational system was that the foreign Christian missionaries who were largely responsible for education in elementary and village schools in the South were going to be replaced by the government of Sudan and that teaching of the African languages was going to cease all over the South. The plan effectively gave Arabic not only as a national language but had to be introduced into all the schools in the South. The good news was that the system of class naught was going to be abolished, while the bad news was that teachers of vernacular languages were in the long run to be sent back to school to learn Arabic or they would irrelevant and lose jobs. That was the situation when Antipas Arok was transferred to Kongor Bush School.

In 1957 Antipas Arok arrived. That was the year I went to school. Bush school began with class naught, probably an imitation of preschool and kindergarten system, but whatever merits the system had, it was an unwarranted waste of time for both pupils and their teachers. Under the old system, my colleagues and I were destined to spend two more years before going to class one. My teachers were Thepano Reng Arok Reng for introduction to numeracy and Dinka language, and Nathan Garang Awer Diing, who taught the scriptures in Dinka. I was one of the favourite pupils of those teachers. For my part I admired them; being particularly fond of Nathan because of his dry humour.

Promotions that boomeranged

By August of that year the two teachers were satisfied with my performance that they transferred me to class naught two. As if that was not fast enough, by November of the same year, I was transferred to class one. I did not understand what all that meant nor its consequences. Some of my colleagues I had left behind were not amused either, but for their own reasons.

Not surprisingly, such steps were to land me in a very serious problem: the end of the year exams were within days away. My new classmates had been taught subjects such as fraction, “long division,” dictation and spelling in English, among other subjects which were totally new to me. I flunked. Although I was numbed with sadness and shame because of my dismal performance, I was not surprised; it served me right such since I might have felt different from the rest of my colleagues I had left behind. At the time I blamed my teachers for the promotion they gave me, which I thought was unfair and unrealistic.

For their part, the teachers consoled and encouraged me, saying I would be able to catch up in class two. The most important exam, they told me, would be after 12 months, adding that failure in that exam would matter very much for my future. That result of such an exam, as we will see later, was either break or make for the student concerned.

Practicals that made learning fun

Looking back now, I am convinced that my class naught teachers must have had an unshakeable faith in the competence and ability of my next teacher was going to make me catch up and be at a par with the pupils who had been taught subjects I had no inkling about. That miracle worker was Antipas Arok Biowei. He was teaching nearly all the subjects in the second (and final year at the bush school.)

At this juncture it is relevant for one to pause and ask: what was the secret magic that Antipas Arok the teacher had that would turn around a pupil who had failed catch up and pass an important exam such the one for entrance to elementary school?

The following paragraphs will try to illustrate his effective methods.

In teaching any subject, Antipas Arok excelled. He had the gift of making complex ideas simple and fun. He was also patient with any student who appeared to be slow learners. While strokes of ruler on the back of a student’s palm was the standard punishment, Antipas preferred to explain things to the students, and if necessary several times.  calm advice as corrective measures.

Subjects taught

Those consisted of Mathematics, English, Dinka, Scriptures (in Dinka), Singing and PE or physical education, and handwriting. In handwriting, I still remember the famous line for the writing of letter /G, g/ “GORDON GARAŊ GAI GƆK” from a beautifully designed book in Dinka.  Arabic was not taught in all the bush schools of the South.

The entire class loved their new teacher who made any subject he taught very interesting. He introduced singing. We all loved the subject, always sing along as he intoned a refrain. In later years I realised that most of the songs taught to us in second year were for kids in nursery. Among them were “Row, row, row your boat,” and “Old Macdonald had a farm.” Since none of us knew the background of the nursery rhyme we did not care. We enjoyed singing them, nonetheless.

Learning English

In teaching English, Antipas Arok urged the need that students should increase their vocabulary, and spell words correctly. In fact, dictation and spelling were treated as subject in their own right. Since the school did not have text books in English which could provide us with new words to expand our vocabulary, one day he came up with an idea: he and the class should go out for a tour of the town. Search for words to expand our vocabulary included a spell at the marketplace. While there, whatever object was seen its name was recorded especially if its name in English was not known already to the students. Only two places were excluded lest their normal function would be disrupted: the town’s health care centre and the court of customary law.

On return to the classrooms we had amassed more than 50 new words in Dinka with their English translation. As I can recall, sewing machine, onion, sugar, rope, sack (then made of jute), iron (box powered by charcoal for pressing clothes), and bandage (although we did not visit the dispensary,) were among the words we learned during our outdoor lesson.

Maths: conversion and measurement in the real world

One of the best ways of making lesson interesting and much easier to understand, especially for children, is for a teacher to apply practical demonstration. I still clearly remember a lesson by Antipas Arok to our class two lessons in maths involving measurement of destination. He was talking about inches, feet, inches, yards and their conversion for one unit to the other and vice versa. That day we were to go out to measure a mile for real. One of the tools already secured was a very huge roll of slender rope made of a type of a fibrous grass called thiɛ̈th in Dinka. The grass was widely used at the time in the area. The ropes from this type of grass was basic to building especially in thatching shelters such as huts and cattle byres (luaks,) as it played the role of a nail, glue, strings and many more.

 Antipas then told the students to use a ruler for measuring the exact length of the rope that would equal a mile (12 inches to a foot and a foot being 3 yards and so forth.) Since I was one of the students who were not good at maths, we left the calculation and conversion to the wizards such as Madit Timothy Aleth (now a professor of medicine at the University of Bahr el Ghazal) and Kuol Awai, among others, to work with the teacher while we looked on, answering only when a question was thrown in one’s direction.

The demonstration began at the town’s centre- where public dancing used to be staged- and moved southeast on the Cape-Cairo Road. We ended the practical just a very short distance away from one of the area’s prominent landmarks- a tree known as *Thän Paan de Thïkït. That was a very tall and lanky tree, without branches, only a conically shaped cap. (The famous tree became one of the victims of the 1960s, which ravaged the area.)

Years later and after I had acquired a wrist watch, I timed my walk- on average pace- to my home. The distance lasted exactly 15 minutes. That is what Wikipedia tells me is the average time it takes someone walking a mile at an average speed.

Teachers’ prediction proved correct  

At the end of 1958 we in class two took one of the most the exam of our lives. There were fewer places at Malek, while there were many candidates from all the district bush school. Each student had three options: first was to get very high marks to be admitted to Malek; failing to score those marks, one could do either of the following: return to the village and lead the life of drudgery consisting of herding livestock and growing grains by means of primordial agricultural methods, or move to urban centres such as Bor town, the district headquarters, Malakal or Juba, in vain hope of finding a casual manual job. Lucky few could be recruited into police force, health care jobs or very rarely, a junior job as a clerk in government office.

About a month later in the early 1959, I received the news that I one among some of us who had been accepted at Malek. We were told to prepare to travel to the boarding school early March. Antipas Arok Biowei, my teacher had made my success possible. However, although we were celebrating our admission to elementary, most of us had cause to feel bad: two of our best performing colleagues were not joining us, not because they had failed. No. they had scored very high marks that qualified them for admission to Malek; the problem was that they had been disqualified as “too old” for education. They were Kuol Awan Mabur and Duot Bior Duot. Kuol was a student from Duk Padiet. He came to Kongor with the family of his elder sister who was married to Gabriel Ayiei Chath, then a police sergeant in charge of the small force deployed in the area. Kuol Awan, a very talented boy, used to be either number two or three after exams. Three years later when I met him, he had gone to live in countryside. While there, he underwent scarification in his forehead showing prominent six parallel lines, the traditional way of initiation into manhood. Duot, one of elder brothers to late Dr William Kon Bior, had also passed the exams but was rejected on the same grounds as Kuol Awan: “advanced” age.

We felt deeply sorry for our friends and former colleagues who had missed out because the educational authorities judged them as not young enough to continue with formal education. We deprecated what we saw as injustice in the educational system.  

An exciting first Christmas

The 1957 Christmas was my first. Since all the schools all over the South had closed for the year, there were students and teachers from other parts of the districts who went to celebrate Christmas with relatives and friends at Kongor, the second largest urban centre in the district. Antipas Arok was appointed to organise and manage the school various sporting events to mark Christmas celebrations. Some persons, probably school teachers from other schools in Bor helped Antipas with the management of the occasion which was attended by many people, about half of them had just come from Bor town. I can still see and hear a very tall man, really taller than Antipas Arok, who was a tall man by any standards. The guest was running slowly and gently, calling out “Antipa! Antipa!” I do not recall what such a call was for, but certainly, the visitor was drawing Antipas’s attention to something which might have required immediate attention by the host.

For the celebrations Thepano Reng and Nathan Garang in the days preceding Christmas had rehearsed carols in Dinka with us. We enjoyed the preparation and were eagerly looking towards the arrival of the great day. Two of the hymns we had memorised for the season were Once in Royal David City, and Come All Ye Faithful. We enjoyed singing them during the Christmas service. The carols have not stale with times; I still sing them when an occasion presents itself; there is something nostalgic about those carols. It goes to that day.

I took part in the 100 metre track race. One among other competitors was Garang Diing Duot. Following the blowing of the whistle, the boy ran as fast as gazelle, as the Arabs say.I was determined to beat him to win but it was too late when I saw him about two paces before the finishing line. I became second. There was no prize for that.

Another competition I witnessed was swimming, which was stage took in what was called Wer e Miir or Government Pool, a manmade reservoir, which sometimes was secretly used at night by the town’s residents for disposing their household refuse such as food leftovers. Its water was most of the time creamy in colour with some floating green weed.

I have forgotten the name of the winner- the swimming champion, but at the back of my mind I still see an image a boy with his shorts dripping with water while he being congratulated by one of the students either from Loka Intermediate or Rumbek Secondary with “Ya battal”, which is Arabic for Hey, hero! That became a new saving for building my stock of Arabic vocabulary which by then was virtually zero.

Positive spinoffs from teachers’ posting

Before the 1960s, lack of adequate means of communication in the then Southern Sudan considerably limited mobility and interaction among various communities of the region. In that situation, understanding of social norms and cultural practices of others was not widely available even to those who wanted to know. Teachers, junior government workers and students, to some extent, were the groups whose members were able to work and live outside their native districts. For a society in need of social integration and creation of a sense of shared past and common future, that was a big problem. In the early 1980s, Joseph Oduho, a former teacher and one of the first liberation leaders, told parliament in Juba, during a heated debate on “greater decentralisation” also known as kokora, that although many Southern Sudanese were aspiring for nationhood the mechanism for achieving that was missing since the majority of ordinary Southern Sudanese people were not interacting with one another. He singled out school system as the main crucible for national integration: students from different linguistic and geographical parts of the South bonding together in mutual trust and sense of fraternity.

For our story, teachers who taught in previously taught at another part of the district included Antipas Arok (while teaching at Malek Antipas Arok married his first wife Achol Kok Ngong, from Guala people of Kolnyang, and in later years another wife from Duk Padiet to the north), Thepano Reng and Nathan Garang. Not only did they marry from outside their home areas, but also their young brothers in law attended school at Kongor- Mabior Deng Nai (Reng’s brother in law), and Abdon Abuol Nuer Kur (Nathan Garang’s brother in law). Previously, there was Paul Panrach Alier, who might have been a relative of Nikodemo Arou, who was teacher at Kongor earlier. It was a two-way traffic: men from other parts of the district working at Kongor married local girls. Among them, Agany Aguto, Gai Kuot or Gordon Jok Rit (teacher at Pan Piol whose wife was from there.)     

Teachers as students once more

The nationalisation of educational system in the South meant that teachers who were fluent in English and vernacular languages had to return to classroom as students for the second time in their lives or they were going to lose their jobs. Antipas Arok was one of the batches who were sent to Malakal. In 1967, Antipas Arok and some his fellow teachers who had not learned Arabic when they were students had been ordered to study Arabic. In that year he returned as a student at Malakal Institute of Education. One of his senior lecturers and supervisors was Barnaba Angui Dau Guem, a graduate of Maridi Institute of Education. As far as age was concerned, Arok’s teacher would have been his student if the two were in the same area. Life, as they say, is full of paradoxes.

Role in local cultural activities oral history and genealogy

While teaching in Kongor in late 1950s and early 1960s Antipas Arok frequently took part in weekly dances, which used to be staged at Kongor town centre from April to December (from January to early April young people would be in cattle camps in swampland, far from home.) A serious participant in traditional Dinka dance was expected to be a good dancer and a composer and singer as well; males have to compose and sing their own songs. For a singer to earn popularity his lyrics have to be memorable and delivered melodiously at the same time. Antipas Arok was very good at both. His co-dancer was Agany Aguto, a local vet, who would become in later years the richest man in cattle in the district.

As dancing and singing were a hobby and a contribution to public entertainment, Antipas Arok was also active in collecting and improving in the mode of telling oral history based on the genealogies of clans inhabiting what is now known as Kongor County. Oral history in our context presence a lot of difficulties. First, it is oral in the sense the narratives are passed from generation to the next, and second it is by word of mouth since in a preliterate society such as ours there have been little and in many cases, no written account exists at all. All this means that the veracity and reliability of any account about the past is bound to suffer wear and tear or distortion, intended or otherwise.

Being literate, Antipas Arok was able to put him aside for consistency and near accuracy of the narratives of clans’ lineages and migrations he heard from adults especially ageing genealogists. Because of that rare attribute, a young teacher studying for postgraduate degree in Australia has informed me that he had approached some of his friends at home to record whatever information on clan lineage Antipas Arok knew. Unfortunately, the request was made at the time the veteran teacher’s health was already deteriorating.

The same student has information this writer that late Enoch Manyok Diing Akoi Awan, a member of Padol clan, and someone with secondary school education had record some narratives in a previous conversation with late Antipas Arok. Enoch Manyok died several a couple of years ago. Nobody knows where the document(s) or copies of the records are.

The importance of oral history 

It is not an easy job to accurately record and preserve community oral history. When such accounts exist, there is a danger that they could sometimes be politicised in areas such as “disputes” over who was more “indigenous” to the area than the others among the current inhabitants. But for the teacher whose main interest was to capture and preserve the past in as objective a way as possible, quarrel over who “owns” what part of the land, would be immaterial to him; his main concern was in line with his mission as a teacher: passing knowledge to others. And like professional historians, scientists or journalists, who treat facts as sacred, late Antipas Arok encouraged young people to know their past based on what could be seen as a “commonly shared” version rather than on a redacted or distorted rendering of narratives to serve narrow purposes.  

For Antipas Arok, the teacher knowledge that could pass critical scrutiny was good in itself. (Genealogy based on oral accounts, especially when claiming to answer matters such as presumed original home of one’s ancestors or proto-language; or their migration over time, can be as mystifying as they could be fascinating.

For example, a few years ago, while I was riding a car with a friend from Arok’s clan, Padol- pronounced in Dinka as Padɔ̈ɔ̈l– his driver, a Dinka from central Bahr el Ghazal told us his clan was called Padol.) In fact, there are several clans carrying the name Padol, namely, among the Rek of Bahr el Ghazal (Padol-Muot of Chief Giir Thiik), within Abyei Ngok Dinka and Panaru of western Upper Nile, and finally Padol of Kongor in greater Upper Nile.

 Gratefully remembered

Worldwide, teachers are among the lest compensated for giving knowledge of every kind to children and young adults for which many, especially former students remain grateful for the rest of their lives. Rarely do states decorate teachers. That is unfortunate. However, it should not be forgotten that students who succeed in life sometimes honour their former teachers. When Sudan’s former army colonel, Jaafar Mohammed Nimeiri, became his country’s ruler in 1969, he invited a certain Brown, a retired British teacher to attend an anniversary of his ascendency to power. Mr Brown was headmaster at Hantoub Secondary School (near Wad Medani) and had written in a school report that Nimeiri, his former student, who was a skilled sportsman, had leadership qualities.

Coming home to South Sudan, we read in Abel Alier’s memoir Southern Sudan: Too Many Agreements Dishonoured his lasting and sincere gratitude to Thepano Reng Arok, his teacher at Baidit Bush School. Alier, who became the first South Sudanese vice president of the whole country, and also the first executive president of the self-governing Southern Region, has recorded how his teacher, Ustaz Thepano Reng Arok saved his education, as well as his future, by allowing the schoolboy to spend weekdays in his family home as daily trips from the distant village, often through heavy rain and dew in early morning, almost forced Alier to drop out.

Many, many good teachers, deceased or alive today, who might have taught some of our prominent public figures but are bound to remain unacknowledged. This is a pity. For late Ustaz Antipas Arok Biowei, however, I am happy that he is one of my former teachers at different schools, whom I have credited in a book, with inspiring in me love the of words and their use. Antipas Arok Biowei, late Samuel Lual Dhoka, headmaster and my English teacher (of grammar in particular) at Malek, and late Pasquale Rumunu, my English composition, literature and grammar at Atar Intermediate School, who were some of my past teachers whose stimulating teaching style of English language undoubtedly paved my way to be a writer.

Modest as that memorial may sound, I am glad that I have done my small bit to do homage to my former teachers, who, to paraphrase a Chinese saying “did not give me fish for a meal but taught me how to catch fish.”     

Atem Yaak Atem is a South Sudanese journalist, writer and translator. He is currently living with his family in Australia, where he is writing his three part-volume memoir planned for release in early 2020.

* Thän is a possessive case of thääu/thɔ̈u or labob in Arabic, scientifically known as Balanites aegyptiaca. The tree whose fruit and its kernel are edible has other uses for traditional communities. Until recently, the lalob used to be one of what is known as palaver tree, which provided shade for open air functions such as marriage settlement, court cases or mere conversation among elderly people during dry season when there was virtually no work on the grain farms. The tree, too, was in some cases used a classroom for preschool teaching affiliated to bush school educational system. At Kongor, for instance, there is a dwarf thääu/thɔ̈u, a few yards away from a spot where mud-thatched buildings for classrooms stood many years ago. In addition to its role as a place where schoolboys (it was male-only institution) received lessons, a gong was hung on one of its branches. The metal piece served to announce the beginning, breaks and end of lessons. On Sundays, the gong was sounded to call the faithful within town to attend church services, which were held in class two.

Atem Yaak Atem is the former deputy minister for information in Juba and a veteran South Sudanese journalist who was the founding director, chief editor, and trainer of Radio SPLA (1984-1991). He studied Master of Education at University of Wales; Advanced Journalism at International Institute of Journalism, West Berlin and Journalism at Khartoum Institute of Mass Communications. He was also the editor in chief of Southern Sudan monthly magazine (1977-1982), SPLM/A newsletter (1986-1988), Horn of Africa Vision magazine (1997-2000), The Pioneer weekly newspaper (2010-2011), as well as the Nile Mirror (1975-1977) when its chief editor Kosti Manibe had travelled abroad on duty. As a senior journalist, he was also a prominent columnist and contributor to the SPLM/Update (1993-1996), and the Sudan Mirror (2003-2005). He is the author of a new book, “Jungle Chronicles and Other Writings: Recollections of a South Sudanese“, a four-volume memoir, of which Jungle Chronicle is the first installment.

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