Discovering the S.Sudanese

SUDANESE COMMUNITY: Uganda has become a second home to them, but even then they are trying to hold onto their culture.

Samsoni Maliong is 61 years old and a business man in Makerere Kikoni, a Kampala suburb. The father of six came to Uganda in 1987 following insecurity in South Sudan at the height of the John Garang led liberation war. “I came here with my family and I have since become a grandfather and I will be buried here,” the old man with an unmistakable Dinka accent says.

The determination and solemnity in his statement is unmistakable, just like the gap in his cream teeth, created by a culture that plucks them out. All his children and grandchildren have these gaps in their teeth and when they switch from English to their dialect, one can only imagine how much they feel at home. “They cannot trace their roots in South Sudan, they are now Ugandans 100 per cent and they think Ugandans and Sudanese are the same,” Maliong explains as his peers, fellow Sudanese recognisable from afar, raise their hands in a symbolic wave of greeting.

A people joined at the hip
“They have a rare sense of patriotism and love for one another. You cannot say or do something bad to one Sudanese and expect to battle him alone,” one resident whispers, as droves of the tall, dark skinned and fairly slim men and women go about their business, with the solidarity she is alluding to evident. Maliong explains that this solidarity is not unique to Kampala where areas like Rubaga, Namuwongo, Arua Park and Kisenyi are hubs for Sudanese.

This cohesion, he says, you will find in West Nile, almost considered the capital of Sudanese in Uganda where you will bump into Sudanese residences in the districts of Moyo, Adjumani, Arua, Hoima, Masindi and Koboko.
“We work and live together. That is the only way we can keep in touch in a foreign country, Maliong says before quickly adding, “Sorry, Uganda is not a foreign country.” That perhaps is what stirs stereotypes in some sections of the Ugandan community that associate them with, “low standards of hygiene, overcrowded homes, anti-social nature and predictability.”

Sieving fact from fiction
Maliong’s neighbour, a Ugandan, says of all the foreign communities in Uganda, the Sudanese come off “as the fiercest but may be that is their nature. If you learn to cope with them, they are quite nice but hard to understand.”

Listening to me paint a graphic picture of a Sudanese student who was notorious for beating up fellow students and school guards, that speaks volumes about the perceived violent character of Sudanese, Maliong calculatedly says, “Those are only examples of one person who cannot taint the image of all of us. We are not as aggressive as Ugandans have been made to believe. About being dirty and weird people, again, that is unfair generalisation.”

That however, is only a microcosmic version of a people that have become so ingrained in the Ugandan social and economic set up that some of them have been ‘Ugandanised.’ As Maliong notes, a number of Sudanese living in Uganda of his age bracket have a grim history full of frustration. “Many of us are here because of trouble at home though some, especially those in West Nile came for business and other social factors,” he says. Around 2005, following the signing of the Peace agreement, facilitated by the Ugandan government in Nairobi between the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army and the Omar-el-Bashir regime, there has been a sizeable number of them returning home to set up business and start life anew.

Uganda is home to an estimated 173, 650 Sudanese refugees since 1988 according to a report in the Refugee Law Project Working Papers series. 100,000 of these are estimated to be students dotted across Uganda’s education institutions.

A new generation rises
By and large, that has led to the emergence of an almost new generation of Sudanese in Uganda. There is a cross-section of a young and ambitious people, a people hungry for skills and knowledge to transform their lives.

The Maliong generation, especially in Kampala, is slowly but surely disappearing. Chances are high that majority of Sudanese you bump into in Kampala or surrounding towns are here as students or business persons. And of course, that has had its own effect on matters of culture and others, as Life found out during a visit to one home in Rubaga.

Samuel Gai, whose family came to Uganda in 1993, is a student at Kampala International University and the elected chairman of the Nuer community (the Nuer is one of the tribes). The dark-skinned, middle aged lad speaks of Uganda with such passion, but quickly points out that he is only here to study. He says, “Uganda offers the best education in the region and it is affordable. Most of us came here to study and we hope to return and apply the skills to contribute to the development of our country.”

Observably, Sudanese make a big proportion of foreign students in all levels of education in Uganda. However, at university, you will be sure to find them in droves at Uganda’s youngest private universities like Kampala International University, Cavendish University and St. Lawrence University where the current Guild President is Sudanese.

On why they choose this specific category of tertiary institutions, Gai says, “they are cheaper than the other universities. Some people think they also have more freedom than the rest, but I don’t think that is the reason.” To touch base with their cultural roots, Gai mobilises his community, which number about 6370 in Makerere Kikoni, for social events that reward excellent Sudanese in areas of leadership, business and academics.

Holding onto their roots
The Presbyterian Church in Kikoni where a service every Sunday is dedicated to the Sudanese community is the ultimate place to see a display of Sudanese cultural aspects and fashion trends. Men and women dressed in multi-coloured scarves, T-shirts with portraits of John Garanga and African wear pace up and about, dropping a greeting in the different languages of the land. This, according to the community leader, who works closely with the South Sudanese embassy in Kampala, is, “a sure way to foster and uphold culture and unity in our community.”

On the day he met me at the embassy, he was briefing the Coordinator for community and social affairs at the same delegation of a dispute involving his members. Interestingly, when such in-house rows emerge, the first place to seek intervention from is the community leadership structures and not necessarily the Uganda Police Force.