I did not like those guards. There were too many guns, and the men looked reckless and unkind. My mood, which had been euphoric with the songs and cheering, clouded over. I told Isaac, the other boy called Gone Far, of my feelings.
— They are here to protect Garang, Gone Far. Relax.
— From who? From us? This is wrong, the men with guns everywhere.
— Without the guards someone would kill him. You know that. Finally the leadership entered: Deputy Commander William Nyuon Bany, Commander Lual Ding Wol, and then Chairman Garang himself.
He was indeed a large man, broad chested and with a strange grey beard, unkempt and wayward. He had a great round forehead, small bright eyes, and a prominent jaw. His presence was commanding; from any distance it would be obvious that he was a leader of men.
— That is a great man, Moses whispered.
— That man is God, Isaac said.
Garang raised his hands triumphantly and the adults, the women in particular, whipped themselves into a furor. The women ululated and raised their arms and closed their eyes. We turned and the adults and trainees were dancing, waving their arms wildly. More songs were sung for his approval.
We'll adjust the Sudan flag
We'll alter the Sudan flag
For Sudan is confused herself
Sadiq El Mahdi is corrupted
Wol Wol is corrupted
SPLA has a knife-fixed at the barrel tip of an AK-47
Courageous men who fear nothing
These are the men that will liberate us through bloodshed
Red Armies-soldiers of the Doctor
We'll struggle till we liberate Sudan
The man who suffers from mosquito bites, thirst, and hunger?
He is a genuine liberator
We'll liberate Sudan by bloodshed
Then John Garang began.
— I seize the opportunity to extend my revolutionary greetings and appreciation to each and every SPLA soldier in the field of combat who, under very difficult conditions, has been and is scoring giant, convincing victories one after the other against the various governments of exploiters and oppressors.
A roar came up through the forty thousand.
— Half-naked, barefooted, hungry, thirsty, and confronted by a swarm of many other due hardships, the SPLA soldier has proved to the whole world that the trappings of life can never sway him from the cause of the people and the justice of their struggle. The SPLA soldier has once again validated the age-old human experience concerning the infiniteness of the human capacity for resilience and resolve against challenges to dignity and justice.
He was a brilliant speaker, I thought, the best I had ever heard.
I listened to Dr. John Garang while carefully watching the soldiers surrounding him. Their eyes roamed over the crowd. Garang spoke of the birth of the SPLA, of injustices, of oil, land, racial discrimination, sharia, the arrogance of the government of Sudan, their scorched earth policy toward southern Sudan, the murahaleen. Then he spoke of how Khartoum had underestimated the Dinka. How the SPLA was winning this war. He spoke for hours, and finally, as the afternoon gave way to evening, he seemed to wind down.
— To the SPLA soldier, he boomed, — wherever you are, whatever you are doing now, whether you are in action or in camouflage, however you are challenged, however you feel, whatever your present condition, I salute and congratulate you, the SPLA soldier, for your heroic sacrifices and steadfastness in pursuit of your single-minded objective to build a new Sudan. Look at us! We will build a new Sudan!
The roar was like the earth ripping open. The women ululated again and the men yelled. I threw my hands to my ears to block out the sound but Moses slapped my hands away.
— But there is much work to do, Garang continued. We have a long road ahead of us. You boys-and here Garang indicated the sixteen thousand of us boys sitting before him-you will fight tomorrow's battle. You will fight it on the battlefield and you will fight it in the classrooms. Things will change at Pinyudo from here on after. We must get serious now. This is not just a camp for waiting. We cannot wait. You young boys are the seeds. You are the seeds of the new Sudan.
That was the first time we were called Seeds, and from that point forward, this is how we were known. After the speech, everything at Pinyudo changed. Hundreds of boys immediately departed to begin military training at Bonga, the SPLA camp not far away. Teachers left to train, most of the men between fourteen and thirty had gone to Bonga, and the schools were reorganized around the missing students and teachers. Moses, too, thought it was time.
— I want to train.
— You're too young, I said.
I was too young, I believed, and thus Moses was too young, too.
— I asked one of the soldiers and he said I was big enough.
— But you'll leave me here?
— You can come. You should come, Achak. Why are we here, anyway?
I didn't want to train. There were so many aggressive young boys at Pinyudo, but I have never had this aggression in my blood. When boys wanted to wrestle, to fist-fight to pass the time or prove their worth-and at Pinyudo, once we had all gotten our strength up, boys would want to spar for no reason at all-I couldn't find the inspiration within me. If the wrestling wasn't done among friends and out of affection, I couldn't bring myself to care about such contests. I wanted to be in school, wanted only to see the Royal Girls and eat lunches cooked by their mother and find things hidden under their clothes.
— Who will fight the war if not men like us? Moses said.
He thought we were men; he had lost his mind. We were no more than eighty pounds, our arms like bamboo shoots. But nothing I said could dissuade Moses, and that week he went off down the road. He joined the SPLA, and that was the last I saw of him for some time.
The summer was awash in work and upheaval. Shortly after the departure of John Garang, another charismatic young SPLA commander came to Pinyudo, and he came to stay. His name was Mayen Ngor, and he was on a mission. Like Garang, he was an expert in agricultural techniques, and made it his task to irrigate the land that abutted the river. We watched him one day, tall and swan-like in a white shirt and pants, trailed by four smaller, duller ducklings-his assistants, in tan uniforms, who busily demarcated vast swaths of uncultivated land. The next day he returned, with Ethiopians and tractors in tow, and with incredible speed they turned over the soil and created dozens of neat rectangles extending from the water. Mayen Ngor was a man of great efficiency, and he liked very much to talk about about his knack for efficiency.
— Do you see how quickly this is happening? he asked us. He had assembled about three hundred of us by the river to explain his plans and our role in them.
— All of this land you see before you is potential food, all of it. If we can work this land wisely, all the food we'll ever need can be provided by this land, by this river and the care we invest in it.
We thought this was a fine idea, but of course we knew that the most difficult aspects of working the land would be left to the unaccompanied minors, and indeed they were. For weeks, Mayen Ngor instructed us in the use of hoes, spades, wheelbarrows, axes, and sickles, and we went about doing the manual labor after the large Ethiopian machinery was long gone. While we worked and eventually planted seeds for tomatoes, beans, corn, onions, groundnuts, and sorghum, Mayen Ngor, his eyes alight with visions of the bounty of the land, walked among us, proselytizing.