CHILD SOLDIERS BROUGHT INTO THE army wouldn’t really have a first day on the job, since by the time they started, they would already know how to march in a military parade, handle guns, keep secrets, and sing SPLA war songs. They would be deployed to fetch firewood and make meals, getting instructed not to venture too far out of camp. Boys who were joining the army ranks had already been indoctrinated to believe nothing but the SPLA’s narrative.
I began my time in the SPLA stationed in Baliet, within two subsections of Dinka Ngok and Eastern Nuer territory led by Dr. Machar. I initially was a gun cleaner, doing now for the military what I’d once done for my father as a domestic chore.
My specific posting was as part bodyguard and part assistant to SPLA First Lieutenant Peter Gatdor, the man from Itang who had developed a fondness for me through my karate training. Other than taking care of the wounded, I would do personal chores for him and his associates, like rolling their tobacco and running small errands that were not necessarily military-related.
It wasn’t glamorous work, but it kept me close enough to the senior officers such that they too grew to like me and grant me special favors, like the ability to access portions of military food and pass it on to my starving family. Normally, food supplies were taken to a central storage facility. From there they would get distributed to different SPLA camps. But I’d found a way to use my position and friendships to my and my family’s benefit. I neither regretted nor felt any shame for this.
Each week, when food was transported to the Nasir side and delivered to the satellite military camps, I managed to get on the truck by buttering up the senior SPLA guys.
ME: Bol Mel, Tank 55! How are things on the front lines?
BOL MEL: We are holding up strong. But I suggest you leave Baliet for Nasir Town, young Ger!
ME: I am better off in Baliet because famine will finish me in Nasir Town.
BOL MEL: Know where your brother Chuol is? He’s in Ketbek Town with Dr. Riek Machar.
ME: Bol Mel, I hate to ask, but my mother and my sisters and brothers are starving in Nasir Town, I swear to God. I want to visit them sometime, but I can’t go empty-handed.
BOL MEL: Okay, I will speak with John Noor. He’ll help you get there with a sack of maize, but make sure not to come back to Baliet.
ME: Shukran, my brother!
BOL MEL: Say hello to Chuol Thabach, my brother!
But I was not going to Ketbek. Having already secured a little maize for my mother before securing a spot on the truck, I’d sometimes sleep underneath it to ensure I’d be nearby when it was set to depart. I’d mark my bag using charcoal so that no one else picked it up once we got to Nasir, then I’d sneak over IED-strewn roads to get this food to my mother.
We didn’t have adequate supplies due to the split in the SPLA. This meant the majority of soldiers didn’t wear proper military gear. Some wore flip-flops, others worn-out, hand-me-down uniforms. We were starting to look more like a ragtag militia than an army, and the line between who was SPLA and who wasn’t grew thinner by the day, since everyone around us owned a gun to protect himself. There was a growing need for soldiers, and the only qualifications were loyalty and the ability to operate a gun. While some Dinkas were loyal to Dr. Machar, and some Nuers to Dr. Garang, for the most part, their fellow soldiers did not trust them and saw them as spies for the other side.
It was in the early days of combat that I was unexpectedly reunited with Peter Gatkuoth, my old friend from Itang, who was now sixteen to my thirteen. We hugged like long-lost brothers, which we essentially were: the boys of Sudan. He still loved a good joke and entertained us with little stand-up comedy routines about our predicament.
PETER: Once upon a time, a skeleton man bumped into a human cannibal in the forest. The human cannibal exclaimed, “Skeleton man!”
“Yes, sir,” the skeleton said.
“Where were you heading? And where were you coming from with such long, skinny legs?”
The skeleton man replied, “I went to visit a friend, but I am going to Bentui Town.”
“Well, I want to eat you now, but you look so skinny, like you could poison me,” said the human cannibal.
“I’d definitely poison you,” said the skeleton man, “because I have no fat on my body.”
Said the cannibal, “What if I kill you and mix your meat with a fat man’s meat? Don’t you think you’ll taste better?”
“No, I won’t taste like anything in your mouth. In fact, I will spoil your good stuff,” the skeleton man replied.
The human cannibal shot back, “You are right. I’ve never seen a man as thin as you. Please get out of my sight before I change my mind.”
The skeleton man bid the cannibal farewell: “Good-bye, and if you have any ideas, catch up with me.”
“Before I let you go,” the cannibal said, “here’s what I think: What if I kill you today and dry your meat for next season? Do you think it will taste better?”
The skeleton man said, “You’ll be wasting your time. My entire body is made of veins like a camel’s.”
And with that, the cannibal had had enough: “You’re so honest with me. Please go to Bentui Town and keep your mouth shut!”
Together we formed a tight group, along with a small, fierce seventeen-year-old we called Airborne Boy, who was a celebrity in the army for his skilled storytelling and the bloody battles he’d survived, often using counterinsurgency strategies.
AIRBORNE BOY: My close friend Waad got caught up in a dreadful Antonov An-225 aircraft attack. I survived the bombardment because I stayed in my trench, but Waad got chopped up into little pieces.
I listened, rapt, just as I had when my mother told me tales under the cover of night when I was a little boy. Though she’d meant for the stories to put me to sleep, they instead excited me. Airborne Boy always had a cheekful of chewing tobacco and spat the brown juice out as punctuation. The three of us laughed together, slept side by side, and were nearly inseparable.