WE WALKED TOWARD ETHIOPIA, EVERYONE growing frail. I couldn’t keep count of the days and nights we traveled through villages and across unsettled, untamed lands. There was little to eat, but we survived on the sheer generosity of villagers through whose territory we passed.

We came upon one such village, called Macbany, on the outskirts of historical Thiayjak Town. We were famished, tired, and dirty. But the amazing thing was, we were not treated like the unwanted homeless people you often come across in Western countries. We were not shunned or ignored. No one pretended we didn’t exist. Instead, it was like we were marathoners huffing and puffing through the seventeenth mile. People lined up along the bank of the beautiful White Nile River, and they offered us cow’s milk, handfuls of catfish, and, sometimes, a place to rest our heads at night. There was a strange man in his sixties, with a few teeth missing, who went by the name Gatnoor Kombör.

GATNOOR: Where are you headed? Why have you walked so long your feet are both raw and callused?

MUM: We were caught in the battle at Bukteng.

GATNOOR: Oh, yes, I heard many civilians lost their livestock.

MUM: And we were run out of our summer camps.

GATNOOR: There was an intense fight here in Thiayjak too. Some of us were able to come back, but I sent many of my children to the Ethiopian refugee camp in Itang.

MUM: We are headed that way ourselves.

GATNOOR: You might no longer have a village, but you are not without a home. As long as you have family, home can never be far away, and my doors are open to you.

My Nuer people lived on both sides of the Sudan-Ethiopia border, which made it safe for us to cross into Ethiopia, despite the 1894 colonial demarcation that split communities and gave them different nationalities. Older folk had always spoken about the camp at Itang, where the United Nations helped people, where there was food and no gunshots, and—the most fascinating part—where kids could enroll in school and receive an education and—get this—not be taught in Arabic, as they were in Sudan. But I did not believe such a place existed, given the realities of my childhood.

Word was that the soldiers from Anya Anya II were pursuing us from a distance, seeking out SPLA soldiers suspected of hiding within the civilian population. Some of the soldiers who had managed to escape the attack at Bukteng hid within the herds of cattle with which we were walking, so there was an ever-present risk of infiltration, a permanent fear of the enemy within.

At one point, I did what I knew I shouldn’t and asked my mum about Oder.

ME: Mum, do you believe Oder is alive?

MUM: Shh, Ger. You are never to speak of those we are missing. We will eventually hear one way or another. Do not tempt fate. And do not open wounds.

In order to survive psychologically, you had to either push the people out of your mind or assume they were dead if you hadn’t seen them for a long time. Imagine having to believe your loved one was dead in order to live yourself.

Once on Ethiopian territory, we got to a place called Bilpam, which was a famous SPLA training ground set up with the Ethiopian Communist Party under Mengistu Haile Mariam, who was a strong supporter of the southern Sudanese liberation struggle. Civilians passing by the huge encampment waved at the soldiers. The SPLA at Bilpam was in effect our people’s government-in-waiting, and the sense of respect for it was palpable.

This area of Ethiopia was seen as part of Sudan, separated by a porous border. Bilpam was predominantly occupied by people from southern Sudan, who moved fluidly between the two nations. To some, changing nationality was like swapping clothes, and I too felt like an Ethiopian once I crossed the border, since there was no physical difference between myself and the people I met there. They were tall and dark like those of us coming from Sudan.

Everyone around the SPLA, including little kids like me, knew that Bilpam was the place where the guns came from. Anyone who joined the SPLA rebellion had to go to Bilpam for training. The irony was that Anya Anya II was the originator of the Bilpam operation in 1978, but they had been kicked out by the SPLA under Dr. Garang through what some considered unsavory means.

We passed Bilpam just after the crack of dawn, and we arrived at midday at another significant location in the history of my people’s struggle: the Itang refugee camp.

The sun was hot over our heads. To my probing eyes, the place was uncharacteristically green and beautiful, located on the banks of the Baro River, which flowed into the White Nile. Even when people fled in times of war, we tried to move along the banks of rivers, since our lives were dependent on water for ourselves and our cattle.

For the first time in my life, I saw in one area a large, diverse group of people with different languages. Some came from as far as central Sudan—the Nuba Mountains, the Blue Nile, and Darfur. The fact that all of them were from Sudan made me realize how huge my country was, and how different its inhabitants were from one another, even though, united in our crisis, we all spoke Arabic.

I was tempted to make a new friend among the thousands of people crowded together in our new surroundings. But it was just so overwhelming. There were so many stranded kids to choose from, and besides, my mother kept me and my siblings close to her side. She’d “lost” sons and her husband to war thus far. She was not about to lose another child, least of all in a crowd.