JULY 30th: Testimony of Jesh Amer on the Martyrs’ Day
By Gabriel Kuchdit Kachuol, Nairobi, Kenya
I was very very young that time,
when I was ‘ass-kicked’ into Anyanya
I left home with ‘nhom-gol’; willing to die
for my country and people, it was my time
for my father thought I was incorrigible child
He sent me to fight arabs tho’ young that time.
On the way I met with so many other minors
who left their home due to similar factors
expecting nothing but dystopia;
We together matched to Ethiopia,
Where with our infantile hands
we clutch instruments of death
that were not only bigger than us & the pain
we’d bear but which we were forced to train
to shoot and kill oftentimes just for fun;
with our young hands we carried guns,
and wore red uniforms of the military
and so we were called ‘red army.’
We wondered as we wandered in wilderness,
the road to our future was marked by darkness
as the sun stared at us with eye that says:
‘Thou shall not kill’ though it is us being killed
by merchants & mercenaries of human blood
from the North and lands from far-aways.
‘Those little minors’ men on camels points at us,
‘Catch the stronger ones as slaves & shoot the rest;
If some must survive, uproot & drive them to far West’
The antinovs roars above our heads
we scamper into trenches and bushes
even as others fell with each fall from above,
we had to keep running and hiding and walking
but none had the strength to carry the wounded
or bury the fallen or simply wait for the simply tired.
The world kept bombing us with death
But we hoped there was a land before us,
a land we thought not only belongs to all of us
but a land rich in God-given goodies of the earth
a land for which we willingly ran toward our death
with conviction of protecting & defending
from those we thought were our enemies
oppressing and exploiting our peoples;
Little did we know that each step to this land
Was a step to our own cruel & grasping hands;
Little did we know there was another shocking truth
The dreadful truth of dread and fear not of death
But of dread and fear of belonging to each other
and that’s why we had hardly arrived
when we began to viciously fight each other;
We had hardly arrived when a roaring iron-bird
dived and with our leader Garang crashed
leaving us shattered & our hopes dashed.
Even then we kept faith in our father in the sky,
believing Nhialij is the one who drives away fly
from the back-wound of the tailless cow;
We believe Nhialij perfectly knows
what evil is for in this world;
We believe Nhialij pounds
The dura of a person with only one arm
He gave us to men in uniforms and arms
We believed Nhialij fought with us for our country
We now still believe He knows our fate & destiny.
The poet, GABRIEL KUCDIT KACHUOL, is a South Sudanese student in Nairobi, Kenya. Can be reached by Kucdidgab@gmail.com
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