The Observer (Kampala)
Martyn Drakard
25 November 2009
Book: I will go the distance
Author: Jacob Akol
Publisher: Paulines Publications Africa
Volume: 288 pages
Cost: Shs 10,500
Reviewer: Martyn Drakard
Available from St Paul Book & Media Centre
The Dinka are proud people, and journalist/aid worker Jacob Akol is proud to be a Dinka. Just in case we're not convinced why, he explains the protective effect of the Dinka upbringing on the famous 30,000 Lost Boys of Ethiopia, 12,000 of whom found their way to Kakuma refugee camp after the mayhem of Mengistu, and seemed none the worse for wear. Why? Because of the values and principles that had formed their identity from a tender age.
Nearly thirty years earlier he had been in similar circumstances. This is his story, with occasional digressions to Dinka culture and customs. For him it all began with the mutiny in the Southern town of Torit, four months before Sudan's Independence. Northern troops were sent to quell the uprising; not a propitious start for a new country.
When Independence did come in January 1956, only 8 of the 800 administrative posts of the new national government went to Southerners, out of all proportion to their numbers. Battle lines were drawn; Southerners became survivors, and many boys were recruited into the SPLA as child soldiers. Ethiopian Marxism and the Christian denominations fought for the souls of the refugees; the Bible, however, triumphed over the Kalashnikov, at least for those who escaped to Kenya.
The first part also explains clan divinities and clan guardians among the Dinka, and the importance of names. Each male is known by the colour of an ox. His own name, Arunyyiep, means the white patch on the side of a brown ox, like the sheen of an axe reflecting the sun's rays.
Part Two is The Schoolboy. One of the highlights of his elementary school years was the Easter visit of the Bishop of Bahr al Ghazal, who, after the ceremonies and as part of the festivity, would entrust a priest with shooting a hippo and kill it with one shot. In the incident he describes, he also bagged a huge crocodile that had been causing havoc.
In The Refugee, the final part, he recounts his own flight through Central Africa in 1963, as Southern Sudan was being rapidly Islamized, and the Christian missionaries expelled and their schools left to deteriorate. In the middle of a wave of school strikes he and a friend, Antiok, made off for the Congo border, only to jump from the frying pan into the fire. Lumumba had been assassinated; the situation in north-east Congo was explosive. No one, it seems, wanted them around.
Their destination became Tanganyika (as mainland Tanzania was called). This meant traveling through Rwanda and Burundi, still smouldering with post-Independence ethnic fighting, and across Lake Tanganyika, where immigration officials arrested them and threatened to send them back.
Instead they were moved to Zambia, then Northern Rhodesia and still under British rule. Immigration caught up with them again, and, thanks to a friendly, helpful Irish priest, they were flown to Dublin for further studies. Akol's books have substance and style. His freshness and sincerity make him a joy to read.
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