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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