Lino Arop | The Year the Women Rebelled

In Makom village where the rivers meet, the year 2008 is known as the year the women rebelled. I don’t call it that. I call it the year of unparalleled madness. That year, a mysterious white bird entered headman Kurdit’s hut, sat on his forehead and dropped dead a few minutes later. A rabid dog resurrected two days after being killed by a mob. A disgruntled kite hunted down a young boy for months after he dismantled its nest and used its talons to design his face; changing his clothes was no use because the kite always spotted him. I am not saying the women did not rebel that year; they did so and big time too, which is what I am going to tell you about.

I remember vividly when it all started. I remember because it was around that time that the Sudan Armed Forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army faced off in Abyei, their heavy artilleries sending tremors to Makom although we were tens of miles away. It was in fact the Abyei incident that triggered the rebellion for it made the SPLA fall back on its old habit of conscription in the South. This time, the recruits came from Raja, short men all of them. The women of Makom laughed at them when they were first brought to the training ground in our village. They had never seen men so short but they would soon discover that what these men lacked in body, they more than made up for with their sweet talk. But let me start from the beginning.

The first reported incident involved a girl named Adut Akok and it came just two weeks after the recruits from Raja landed in the village. At the time, the Makom residents had a habit of accommodating soldiers or potential soldiers in their homes; their modest contribution to the struggle. Adut had been going to fetch water at the borehole. It never came out how she ended up in the room given to one recruit named Uchalla in the neighbour’s house but she was discovered there later by a young boy who entered intending to play with Uchalla. Uchalla and Adut must have heard him coming because the boy reported seeing her skirt on the bed but no one. He was about to exit the room again when he heard a sigh from under the bed and bent down to look. There under the bed lay Adut and Uchalla, stark naked. The boy screamed.

When word reached Adut’s father who was a high-ranking officer at the second SPLA infantry division headquarters in Wunyik, his reply was short and to the point.

“I have got many men under me here who would do with a wife. Send her over.”

The night after the incident, we (that’s Wol, Mayen, Dut and I) sat at our usual place in the playground having eaten early, waiting for the other boys and girls to show up. In the meantime, we caught up with the latest gossip while the moon shone brightly.

“Did you guys hear what the guy from Raja did to Adut Akok?” Dut asked.

“You mean that whore? I swear if she was my sister I would kill her. How dare she sleep with that uncircumcised guy,” Mayen said, biting his index finger. “If all she wanted was to sleep around, couldn’t she at least have had the decency to do it with one of our people, or better still, get married?”

Wol laughed. “One of our people like you, you mean? It really pains seeing how you two tried her all these years and she wouldn’t let you so much as touch her cheek, only to give it to Uchalla in just a matter of two weeks.” He laughed some more.

“Watch your mouth, Wol,” Mayen threatened.

“What will you do if I don’t?” Wol asked, still laughing.

“I’ll shut it for you. It seems you have forgotten what I did to you last month. Right here in this playground,” Mayen said, standing up. Wol stood up too.

“Try again if you are a man. You don’t know how long I have been waiting for this.”

The two started edging closer to each other.

“The peacemakers have gone to Khartoum,” Dut declared as he stood up and pulled me along with him, meaning to stop me from separating the two. I pulled away from him. I could hear a few girls coming towards the playground.

“Guys,” I said. “Adut is a gone case. If you continue to fight, you could soon lose these girls to the Raja guys too.” With that, I pulled them gently apart and they reluctantly let go.

The playground was now full of young boys and girls, most of them our age mates. Boys lined up on one side and girls lined up on the other, both groups facing each other. The play had begun. We sang;

Everyone will be picking his wife

Everyone will be picking her husband

Ma eeii alakayango

Then we ran turn by turn to pick the girl we liked and danced back to our line with her. The girls did the same by picking us and dancing back with us too. I would have enjoyed those moments better if I had known that they would soon be no more. The elephants were about fight and we, the children would be crushed.

The rebellion ignited by Adut Akok soon started to spread. I have never found out what it was that the short recruits from Raja told our girls and women but looking back now, I think they promised to show them the things of the city, things we couldn’t; namely, that there was more to sex than just making children. I remember watching an American film with some women around that time and when there was a kissing scene, one of them commented,

“I never knew you could do that with your mouth.”

Anyway, the things we considered abominable soon became common place. Girls were getting pregnant in their fathers’ houses and women whose husbands had been away with the SPLA for years were suddenly sprouting bellies yet their husbands hadn’t returned.

At first, the whole thing was a joke to us boys. We sat under the shade of the big palm tree in the market place and discussed which women had lately fallen victims to the Raja men and how the world was about to end like pastor John Awan used to say. Pastor John Awan of the Christ temple church had at the time started to commence his sermons with a proclamation;

“Look around you, brothers and sisters. The end time is at hand and our Lord’s return is nigh.”

But then, there was this one time we began to look at the whole thing differently. We had just settled down at our usual place under the palm tree when Wol said gravely,

“One of us here is about to have a Raja shorty for a stepdaddy.”

All of us but Dut looked up at him, surprised and annoyed.

“Take your nonsense away from here. Maybe they got your mom,” Mayen said angrily.

“I am not talking about you stupid,” Wol shot back.  “I am talking about him.” He slid out his tongue towards Dut who was silent as a shadow. Dut fidgeted and turned away from us.

“She will see when dad comes back,” he said, his voice teary. We laughed and Dut walked away, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. When he was gone, the three of us sat silently side by side, our legs crossed and covered with dust. I don’t know what the other two were thinking but I was thinking, whose ma or whose sister would be next.

 Wol later told us that he had overheard his ma telling a friend that Dut’s ma was pregnant, that the Raja guys had gotten to her.

After that incident, I was constantly afraid. Even when we sat under the palm tree and talked and laughed about Achol Kur who was discovered at night by her brother sitting on the lap of one of the Raja guys and moaning or about Abuk Dut who had taken in a Raja boy lover barely two days after getting the news that her husband had fallen in the battle for Abyei, my heart was never in it. ‘Who’s next?’ was the question that constantly plagued my mind, and in December that year, I learnt who it was.

That morning, the Harmattan was in full swing. The three of us squatted around a fire we had started in the garden to warm ourselves and yet we still shivered. We fed the fire with sorghum husks and brought our palms close to the fire then touched our cheeks to warm them as we waited for the sun to come out from under the clouds so we could go fishing. We were still warming ourselves when Wol started smiling, then burst out laughing. We stared at him inquiringly.

“We have a winner,” Wol said.

“What winner?” Mayen and I asked almost in unison.

“Why, the next to have a shorty for a stepdaddy!”

Mayen and I glanced at each other but kept quiet. I prayed in my heart; God let it not be me, please. We had learnt at this point that Wol’s mum got the inside information before everyone else. Women knew another pregnant woman long before the belly showed.

“And the winner is,” Wol said, standing up and rotating around. “Mayen Dengdit!”  His right index finger pointed directly at Mayen.

“You are calling my mother a whore?” Mayen asked, standing up.

“Isn’t she?” Wol asked, rolling his fists. Mayen charged at him and before I could do anything to stop them, they were already exchanging punches and I thought it best to let them finish it then. The two exchanged punches and kicks and tried to wrestle each other down. At last, both had used all their energy and were still even. They stood, facing each other like fighting cocks and reverted to words.

“I’ll tell ma what that witch ma of yours has been spreading about her,” Mayen said, breathing heavily.

“Between a witch and a whore, I’ll always choose the former,” Wol said, “Just wait for a month or two, you seem to believe by seeing.”

I never found out what convinced Mayen but two days later, he left to stay with his aunt in Ayat. In Makom, everything we had considered abnormal was slowly becoming normal. Singers were composing songs about sex and women sang them in public without shame. Women whose husbands had died in the frontline were suddenly getting fat as if their husbands had stopped them from eating while they still lived. The neighbouring villages joked about how sex was the cheapest commodity in Makom.

Young as I was, I felt the pain in my heart. The village I adored was dying. It was losing everything that made it beautiful and yet there was none to save it. All the strong men had either gone to the frontline or to the many SPLA barracks all over the country. Left in the village were us the young ones and the old men and we were no match for the recruits. I wanted to get out of there with my family intact.

With Mayen in Ayat and Dut avoiding us, our original group of four was now left with only the two of us. Wol and I. Still in my mind the question persisted. Who’s next? Every night when I went to sleep, I prayed hard and willed my father to appear in Makom the next day and whisk us away to Malakal with him. Still, I was only a kid and there was a limit to how much I dwelled on things. At night, when the moon was up and I heard the merry singing of the little girls and boys my age in the playground, I forgot everything happening around me and ran full speed to join them.

About that time, Dad sent mum a Thuraya phone and whenever he called, my brother Tong and I would nag him,

“Dad, take us to Malakal. We are tired of Makom. We’ll die in here because the Arabs have already reached Dokul.” 

“Soon,” Dad would reply.

We never spoke of the real reason we wanted to leave, not even between ourselves but thinking of it now, I believe Tong and his friends were also watching each other with the same question on their minds: Who’s next?

Wol and I continued to be friends and time slipped by. The whole question left our minds. For myself, I had real confidence in my ma like every child should. But even at thirteen, I wasn’t stupid if only because I had seen Mayen’s ma, Dut’s ma and other countless women do it regardless of their children. There was a possibility there. Still, the question wasn’t so much intense in my mind anymore.

One day, Wol didn’t show up at the playground at night and none would tell me where he was. So, I visited their house early in the morning. His ma told me Wol had gone to stay with his uncle in Akut. I nodded my head and left. I didn’t bother to ask why he departed so suddenly because I could see that his ma was heavy with child. My thoughts now turned to myself. How long till the goddamn recruits set the wedge between dad and ma, I asked myself repeatedly and no answer came.

I started spending my days under a little palm tree next to our house, praying silently for dad to come for us before I ran mad waiting for the inevitable.

A month later, a green open roof Toyota stopped at our home and four soldiers alighted.

“General Akot Tong has instructed us to take you to Malakal with us,” one of the soldiers told ma. I ran to the pen, slipping on the goat droppings in the process. Once inside, I leaned my head against the wall and cried. Tears of joy.

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Image: ChatGPT remixed