FIGHTING HAD BECOME WIDESPREAD AND unpredictable during the wet season that year. One morning in July or August, as I brought the cattle out to graze on the fecund, almost neon, verdant grasses, a man dressed in laawË or kuir, a traditional piece of clothing tied across the body with a knot at one shoulder, approached. I had my favorite cow with me, which stopped its grazing to instead study the stranger with wide-set eyes.
STRANGE MAN: Are you a son of Thabach Duany?
I knew better than to just give up my identity to someone whose intentions I did not know or trust.
ME: I am a farmer and I am minding my business.
STRANGE MAN: You do resemble him. You have a lot of teeth.
By his reply, I knew he had been sent by my father with news of some kind: maybe a warning, maybe instructions, maybe word about a loved one. I would come to dread, in the ensuing years, the sight of a straight-faced man scarified with six lines across his forehead, floating across the horizon toward us, because it would often portend a deadly outcome.
This time, however, his sudden appearance was far more benign.
STRANGE MAN: Your mother is to take you, the twins, and Nyakuar to Diror Village in West Akobo. Your half brothers and sisters and their mums will not be far away, in Buong Village. Your father wants all four of his wives and his brother’s wife, his seventeen children, and their cousins safe.
Without hesitation or debate, within two days we’d prepared maize, sorghum flour, and cashews, packed them up with not much else, and were on foot on the road to Diror, twenty miles away.
My father was very resourceful in finding ways and people to pass along messages and communicate with us. At the start of the dry season in 1986, he sent word with a different man that last year’s camp, Luääl, was no longer safe because Anya Anya II was expected to attack.
The man found his way to our well-organized hut in Diror, which was made of mud and wood and had a grass roof. My uncle Reat had built it alongside a huge cattle hut. My mother was taking out Nyakuar’s hair so she could wash and rebraid it, and the smell of butter and milk from the wal wal and kööb in our outside kitchen hit my nose, causing my stomach to blurt out its approval.
There was a knock at the door, and Nyakuar and I raced to answer it, while the twins rolled around on the floor.
I beat Nyakuar to the door, but she pushed me back and opened it, revealing this new stranger on the other side. He didn’t actually stop to speak to us, just strode right in, like he was a long-lost relative home in time for supper. He addressed my mother, Nyathak, who was called Nyamuon as a term of endearment.
NEW STRANGER: Mama Nyamuon? It is time. Your husband has summoned you to Bukteng. He is in the barracks of the temporary SPLA headquarters there. The whole family will reunite.
MUM: That is wonderful news! Did you hear, Ger? We finally get to be together again!
The energy on this trek was different from that of years past. I was buzzing on the outside, and inside my own head. What would it be like to be a family of twenty-plus people? We’d been separated for months, but now there’d be no end of children to play with—maybe even less responsibility since, among my father’s four wives, there would be at least one free parent available to watch over the youngest kids. Even though I found the twins amusing, I’d be delighted to hand them off to somebody else to look after. Sometimes—not always, but sometimes—I just wanted time to be a kid myself.
Along the way, we ran into members of our extended family. Coming from the east and west, their herds of cattle joining with ours, they all walked north with us. We kids shouted, played, and ran like crazy through dry, cracked mudflats, brittle brown scrub grass, and, as we finally approached Bukteng, head-high green grasses that bent to and fro in the wind, like fingers beckoning us. As much as possible, we kept clear of dangerous jungles and confusing swamps, enjoying the safety of our numbers, yet always keeping our eyes out for lions and other carnivores that wouldn’t hesitate to eat a human.
Gradually, the Duany extended-family group became complete as we trekked the hundred or more miles across Akobo into Upper Nile. The twins, Both and Nyandit, took turns riding on my back, and Nyakuar clambered along at my heels as I urged our sixty to seventy cattle ever forward. Our herd was rather ostentatious in its size, but my father was wealthy. And with all these kids, he would need that many cattle to successfully marry us all off.
ME: Wunbil! Come help! Kuach-Taar is so lazy, it’s slowing us down!
My cousin ran over with his staff and poked at the lazy beast, which huffed and voiced its extreme disapproval at being forced to take a single step more.
As we entered camp, I noticed it looked well protected by plenty of SPLA soldiers. There was room enough for huts for all of us in a clearing beside the Nile. With the river running shallow at this time of year, I was hoping Nyandit would be less terrified of getting her bath, and I was looking forward to learning to spearfish. More than anything, I hoped I’d get another chance to kill an antelope out in the bush. This time, I felt sure I wouldn’t be frightened.
The camp was partitioned into three sections—one for cattle, one for the SPLA, and a space for us, the families of SPLA fighters. The first order of business was to build the grass-thatched houses we’d stay in for three to four months.
Feeling like a grown-up, I immediately headed off to gather the longest, strongest blades of grass.
AUNT NYANTEK: Look at Ger! He’s such a good boy, so reliable. Help Ger burn cow dung to repel flies and mosquitoes, Wunbil. You’d do well to follow his example.
Mum beamed: I was being recognized by another wife. I was happy to show Mum and everyone else that I was responsible and lovable—that I took care of my family. The best part about it, though? The quicker we set up, the sooner we’d be freed up to get into mischief.
Before we finished the last of the huts, built in a line parallel to the bank of the Nile, and before I could make my way toward the great river’s shore to meet up with my siblings to play, I noticed Dad’s dark brown eyes trained on me from the edge of the village. I took a deep breath and headed toward him, excited to see him but also full of trepidation.
My father seemed to approve of me, but I could never quite tell since worry always clouded his face. Back in Liet, Dad used to worry about business matters in addition to the war, but here, in this SPLA camp, his brow looked even more furrowed and his AK-47 never left his shoulder, not even while he slept.
I waited for him to speak first, as that was the polite way of greeting one’s elders.
DAD: Ger, you are bigger than I remember.
Did he mean taller or fatter? Maybe a bit of both.
DAD: Have you been taking care of your mother?
ME: Yes, Dad. I am a man in our house and I help Mum with the chores and the twins.
DAD: You are still a boy, Ger, but you are growing up well.
ME: I have killed my first antelope.
Dad let out a noise that sounded like he was both gasping and sucking his teeth. I believe that was his way of telling me he was glad about my progress, but that I would have to kill more than a single antelope to be the kind of man he expected his sons to become. I eyed his AK-47 and wondered when I could shoot a gun like that. For then I surely could take down anything or anyone. Like my brother Oder, I would then have earned my dad’s undying respect.