My friends Rose and Paul's children jumping rope in Akot, South Sudan

Gordon on the myth related to the origins of the Dinka Agaar.

Recorded and transcribed in December, 2006.

It was like this, our clan was originated from Rumbek. They were the people who were inhabitants of Rumbek and they were called “Tiak”. And the other name was called “Pabuut.” Those people they were very strong. They can defeat every tribe around them.  If they go to war the symbol can bless them and they will be the victor of the war.  So there was another man who was beny-byth from another tribe called Manchan Awout. That man, he had a hatred of these people because they are strong, they defeated even the tribe. So he killed a red cow. He removed the tongue of the cow. He cut the tongue of the cow into pieces. He removed the heart of the cow. He cut the heart into pieces. He mixed that one with a certain (?). I don’t know how to call that one, but he mixed it with it. Then he threw the pieces of the tongue and the heart into different directions saying that “this tribe can be scattered everywhere.” And that time, the people got started what the Beny-Bith did. Other people moved up to Pakom. Other people moved up to Raie. Other people moved to this area, like my grandfather came up to this area and he married from here. So the people they scattered all over the state of Lake State. And now they have peer people in this area. They have peer people in Pakom area. They have people in other area because they were casts by this Beny-Bith to scatter. And they have two symbols. One of the symbols is crocodile. We call it “Nyang”. And they believe that if you eat a crocodile by mistake, you can get leprosy. Or what your uncles can get cracks. When you see someone with cracks, you might say that he may have eaten a crocodile by mistake or you have stepped on the crocodile’s bones which is dead. That is how they believe.

And they believe that the symbol of the grass is like a god. It can bless them as well as you can have many cows because the grass bless you. You can sleep in the forest and the grass can guard you. You can wake up when you are safe. And it can help them when you go to war you can kill a bull for Grass. When you go to war you can have victory over that war. It can bless your daughter to marry with many cows and you have wealth. That is how the symbol of the grass they believe.

And if Beny-Byth want to build another man called Makuer Gol, he has a big church for his god. They called church in Dinka “Luok.” is called “Luok.” If you want to renew the Luok roof, the person who can come and take out the first grass is our tribe. They believe that they have a good spirit, they have a strong spirit. When they remove that one another clan will come and remove that and they put on the new grass.

And our clan also believes that when you burn the white grass you can have eye infection. It is because you have burned the white grass. Like maybe if you have that one, you take it and you burn it, the new one, not the old like that (pointing to fresh grass as opposed to old, dry grass) you can get eye infection. Then they can call the Beny-Byth and he can perform some rituals, they can slaughter the goat If they discover it is because you have burned the white grass they can call Beny-Byth. Beny-Byth can bring water and then he can wash your eyes and he can kill a goat so that you can get healed.

(The name of your clan again was?)

Pabuut. Yes

(There were two other names?)

Yes. The first name wasTiak.

(What does that mean?)

I don’t know about Thiak. Just name. And the name Fabute is just name

(Who told you that story?)

Yes, My uncle 

The Mark
A Novel of Dinka in the Time of War
Reviews very favorable and I appreciate all of the comments.
Please share this link with as many people as possible.
Jeff Deal
http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Novel-Dinka-Time-War-ebook/dp/B00H8X877K/ref=la_B00HB9TZRW_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390529064&sr=1-1

The Worst Dog I Ever Owned

Rumbi is the yellow lab in the foreground.
You can barely tells that her right cheek is swollen from the tumor.

Returning home from a church backpacking trip with three other fellow hikers in the truck with me, I told them of what likely was the worst day of my life. I hesitate to call it “sharing” because my intent, as ashamed of it as I may be, was not simply to share. It was, oddly enough, to brag.

While on this trip with Christian men, we prayed together, read the Bible together, and some of the men began to talk of the trials of their lives. One particularly burly young man cried for three straight nights about the fact that he was not kind to his wife and continually used harsh words and criticisms to denigrate her. He told us, often for quite long periods, many details of their personal lives and his own shortcomings. I listened in silent confusion. Why did he not simply stop being mean to his wife? Why is this a source of pain if he holds the key to his own relief? He did not know real pain, I thought but did not say—until the ride home. It was then that I told the story of my very bad day in Sudan three years earlier.

She appeared to be around nine years old. When her mother brought her to me she was sick and burning up with fever—big spleen and liver, pale and anemic conjunctiva—a classic case of malaria. I had been working in the squalid clinic for around a month straight with no breaks. Each day, parents brought their children to us stricken with malaria, convulsing with febrile seizures, and often taking their last breaths by the time we got to them. Two or three times per day we drew a small cross into our log book to indicate another death. The drugs the missionary provided us had long since stopped being effective and were even illegal to use in Kenya where he bought them. I had raised funds for the next generation medicines including some that were injectable for the children unable to swallow. The way these medicines turned some of the children around from the edge of death seemed nothing short of miraculous. This girl was very sick, but she was able to stand, talked a little, and even took a few sips of water. I gave her some of the medicines which she prompt vomited on the ground. At that time, the missionary would not let us keep the intravenous medicines in the clinic and I had used up the supplies I carried in my backpack. I decided to hike back the tent compound to get the medicines this girl needed.

As I started the seven kilometer hike back to the compound the midday sun scorched every inch of exposed skin on my body. Even by Sudanese standards, it was hot. By the time I arrived at the compound I was dehydrated and feeling weak. My wife told me to drink a bottle of water and lie down for a few minutes and I took her advice. The tent was sweltering, however, and I only stayed for half an hour or so. By that time, she also told me she had some food prepared and I ate with her and some of the other team members.
Almost two hours passed before I started the return trek to the clinic. By the time I arrived, I was hot and weak again.

The girl was dead.

Her mother had already wrapped the small body in a blanket and sat under a Shea nut tree with her daughter in her lap. She did not cry, but looked straight ahead as if she could see at a distance some important landscape or person. When I asked her if she wanted me to help her carry her daughter back to her home for burial she shook her head, no. That was the last time I took a midday break in Sudan. My lunch that day likely cost a mother her daughter's life. Even today as I write this story I feel that same old pain returning, stirring around that a part of my heart that is now almost as dead as that girl.

This was the story that I told the three men riding back to Charleston with me after the camping trip. I knew real pain, I told them. I ate and drank while a mother’s daughter died of a disease that I should have been able to cure. I told them of how I struggled to take seriously the proclamations of pain that the young man described in dealing with his wife. Mine was pain and guilt that really needed expression and healing. Then God taught me a lesson in pain, at least I think it was God.

Our children had named our yellow Labrador, Rumbi—a Shona word which means “Praise.” Three days after I returned from the camping trip, I found myself at the veterinarian’s office holding her sweet, warm face while they put her down for an incurable cancer. I grew up in rural Georgia and had owned many great dogs. She was not one of them. Sadly, I didn’t even liked her very much—smelly, willful, and a terrible retriever. She always found ways of making dog piles at just the wrong time and place and was an expert at embarrassing me, including running away from birds in the dove field in full view of the other hunters.

However, on the day we decided to end her pain I mourned for that dog like she was a child and cried as I stood in the rain in our back yard digging her grave. I broke a water pipe two feet underground and spent another hour repairing it all the while thinking of how, even after death, she had gotten me one last time.

Had my dog died before the camping trip, I likely would have broken down and shared my grief over her and my guilt for not liking her any more than I did. I may have even cried in front of the other men. Likely also, someone would have looked at me and wonder how I could weep so for a mere dog when he was experiencing real pain, pain that threatened to tear apart his marriage or alienate a child. Likely, one of the men would have driven home from the trip telling their friends that he could not identify with my pain over the death of a fourteen-year old dog that had lived a pampered life and died peacefully in my arms.

I have long since abandoned any claim to understand what God is doing and why He is doing it, but I learned a lesson during the day I spent in the rain digging a grave for my dog. We all experience pain on a sliding scale and what may appear to someone else as a lightweight burden may be just the type of thing that causes us heartache, may hit us in our most vulnerable spot, and may be a source of pain that seems unbearable when carried alone.

In Galatians chapter six, Paul admonishes us to “bear each other’s burdens.” Some burdens may appear light to our brethren, others much heavier. But they are burdens nonetheless. A strong and robust body is no guarantee of the strength to bear emotional burdens any more than a small, frail body indicates emotional weakness. I don’t like to think that God may have taken my dog’s life in order to teach me that lesson. Like all of us, I don’t like to think that God does anything bad to me at all. But the timing of my dog’s death could not have been any more precise to teach me about pain and the experience could not have been more humbling.

I know I will never hear about another person’s pain without thinking of Rumbi, the worst dog I ever owned.

Jeff Deal

Interview on the myth related to the origins of the Dinka Agaar. Recorded and transcribed in December, 2006

.

It was like this, our clan was originated from Rumbek. They were the people who were inhabitants of Rumbek and they were called “Tiak”. And the other name was called “Pabuut.” Those people they were very strong. They can defeat every tribe around them.  If they go to war the symbol can bless them and they will be the victor of the war.  So there was another man who was beny-byth from another tribe called Manchan Awout. That man, he had a hatred of these people because they are strong, they defeated even the tribe. So he killed a red cow. He removed the tongue of the cow. He cut the tongue of the cow into pieces. He removed the heart of the cow. He cut the heart into pieces. He mixed that one with a certain (?). I don’t know how to call that one, but he mixed it with it. Then he threw the pieces of the tongue and the heart into different directions saying that “this tribe can be scattered everywhere.” And that time, the people got started what the Beny-Bith did. Other people moved up to Pakom. Other people moved up to Raie. Other people moved to this area, like my grandfather came up to this area and he married from here. So the people they scattered all over the state of Lake State. And now they have peer people in this area. They have peer people in Pakom area. They have people in other area because they were casts by this Beny-Bith to scatter. And they have two symbols. One of the symbols is crocodile. We call it “Nyang”. And they believe that if you eat a crocodile by mistake, you can get leprosy. Or what your uncles can get cracks. When you see someone with cracks, you might say that he may have eaten a crocodile by mistake or you have stepped on the crocodile’s bones which is dead. That is how they believe.

And they believe that the symbol of the grass is like a god. It can bless them as well as you can have many cows because the grass bless you. You can sleep in the forest and the grass can guard you. You can wake up when you are safe. And it can help them when you go to war you can kill a bull for Grass. When you go to war you can have victory over that war. It can bless your daughter to marry with many cows and you have wealth. That is how the symbol of the grass they believe.

And if Beny-Byth want to build another man called Makuer Gol, he has a big church for his god. They called church in Dinka “Luok.” is called “Luok.” If you want to renew the Luok roof, the person who can come and take out the first grass is our tribe. They believe that they have a good spirit, they have a strong spirit. When they remove that one another clan will come and remove that and they put on the new grass.

And our clan also believes that when you burn the white grass you can have eye infection. It is because you have burned the white grass. Like maybe if you have that one, you take it and you burn it, the new one, not the old like that (pointing to fresh grass as opposed to old, dry grass) you can get eye infection. Then they can call the Beny-Byth and he can perform some rituals, they can slaughter the goat If they discover it is because you have burned the white grass they can call Beny-Byth. Beny-Byth can bring water and then he can wash your eyes and he can kill a goat so that you can get healed.

(The name of your clan again was?)

Pabuut. Yes

(There were two other names?)

Yes. The first name wasTiak.

(What does that mean?)

I don’t know about Thiak. Just name. And the name Fabute is just name

(Who told you that story?)

Yes, My uncle 

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Below is an unedited copy of my notes on my first try to understand the ongoing war between the Atuot and Agaar around Akot, South Sudan.

Akot War Notes

1978 a group of Atuot girls were attacked in the woods and had their ears cut off. This triggered a retaliatory strike from the Atuot against the Agar. Eventually, the perpetrator(s) was caught and served time in prison. He now serves as a police officer in the town of Akot.

Traditionally, the price (fine) for killing another Atuot or Agar is 31 cows. There is no such fine if an Atuot kills an Agar or vice versa. That was tried before and for some reason not accomplished.

In 2004, an old woman was attacked and shot by Atuot robbers who had been stealing in the area. The Agar struck back with a raid, even before the police determined he perpetrators. The Atuot then performed a raid, with the use of a NPA vehicle. This use of the vehicle prompted the Agar to retaliate again, this time by also raiding the NPA compound that is at the Atuot/Agar border. Numerous items were looted. SPLA sent in troops to restore, and supposedly disarm the people. The guns collected were by and large old and not workable. Some were taken and later sold back to the Agar. Atuot were not disarmed in a similar manner.

Later, as the guns returned to area, militias rearmed.

I really did forget my pants.

It was September, 2005.

My friend, +John Thiel, and I had flown in a small plane to a place on the Sabot River, a tributary of the White Nile. Because of some recent rain, we landed on the opposite side of the river from where we would see patients, then took a canoe across. We had to wade through marsh grass for the last hundred meters or so.

The plane was so small we could only take about thirty pounds of materials for ourselves. I had only two shirts and one pair of shorts for the trip.

We saw patients all day long, then in the evenings, we went to the river to rinse and cool off. As we ate, we hung our wet clothes on a bamboo fence to dry.

Late one evening, the commander of the SPLA forces sent word to us that their was to be a celebration of the fortieth day of John Garang's life and that we should not fear the sounds of gun fire and mortars. He then asked if we wanted to attend.

Of course, we did.

We sat in a circle while the soldiers danced and sang praised to the SPLA and their fallen leader. My Arabic was barely sufficient to understand a few words. They fired guns and mortars and we all sang.

John used a night vision feature of his video camera to capture some of it. 

An hour or so into  the celebration, the commander stood and spoke. Toward the end of his speach he looked at us and stated:

"We would like to thank our American friends for coming to treat our sick. Please now, Dr. Deal. Stand and say a few words."

I started to rise. It was then that I realized that I had forgotten to put on my pants!

Yep. I am the one who actually lived that common nightmare. To make it worse, I kept having to wave of John as he tried to film the incident.

"No thank you," I replied while keeping my seat.

"Please, Dr. Deal," the commander replied. "Just a few words."

We bantered back and forth until he noticed my state of dress.

"It is just fine, Dr. Deal," keep your seat.

Needless to say, I was relieved.

Click here to go to a YouTube video of that night. Dark, but you can see what it was like.

The Mark is now available on paperback.

Jeffery Deal

http://www.amazon.com/Mark-Novel-Dinka-Time-War/dp/149521155X/ref=la_B00HB9TZRW_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390141457&sr=1-2