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.

However, even as the marks stand out on his cylindrical face, Gai concedes some aspects of the Sudanese culture may in the near future suffer a blow. The face marks, called Gar in his mother tongue, he reveals, were not initially part of Sudanese culture.

“They were introduced by the colonialists to separate and identify Sudanese and our great grannies picked it up,” he says. Just like circumcision among Uganda’s Bagisu, gar are a pivotal induction of a boy into adulthood. At about 14 years of age, a boy’s face is ritually prepared for the cuttings that cross the face, only done by an expert. To cry is to bring shame to self and family. However, the advent of HIV/Aids, coupled with Westernisation, has dealt a blow to this norm so much so that even back home in Sudan, only pockets of traditionalists still cling to it. In Uganda however, as Gai notes, it is unheard of for a family to practice the culture of face marks, or plucking off teeth from a child.

A land of different tribes
Valentino Okwero, a student at St. Lawrence University in Kampala and also the community leader of the Luo community came to Uganda five years ago. With a typical West Nile like accent uniquely different from majority of Sudanese, Okwero speaks with passion about Uganda and Sudan. “There is no home like Uganda for me. The South Sudan- Uganda relations are historical right from the days of the Anyanya 1 rebellion of 1955,” he explains with clarity of his voice and polished articulation compelling me to inquire twice, if he is purely Sudanese.

The Luo in Sudan, he says, are not so different from those in Uganda just like the Iteso, Bagisu and Basamia in Kenya and Uganda. “The SPLA, which liberated us, was conceived in Ethiopia, born in Kenya and fathered and nurtured in Uganda. Uganda is actually the father of South Sudan. In our culture, if a girl was up for marriage, Uganda would be the first priority,” Okwero asserts, emphasising over and over again, how much he feels at home and heaping praise on the Ugandan people for being warm and receptive.

As a community leader who organises cultural events for his members, he stresses that Ugandan culture is not any different from that of Sudan, again, another reason for many Sudanese to view Uganda as home away from home. For example, the Acholi traditional dance, the Lararaka, women kneeling while greeting is only but part of a host of cultural practices that Uganda and Sudan share.

At the mercy of modernisation
He notes however, that the Sudanese are losing grip of some aspects of their culture, either succumbing to the storm of modernisation or socio-economic influence in the Ugandan set up. Maliong, with conspicuous sadness in his face cites the ajugo, a piece of cloth tied on the waist and accompanied with beads on the forehead, which Sudanese in Uganda proudly wore, but is slowly but surely fading in Uganda. It appears to him as if the only mark of a Sudanese in Uganda is the accent, face marks for the Dinka and Nuer that have them and the dark skin colour.

Another case in point is the traditional dances that usually get displayed only during official community functions. The fadhla, for instance, where one dances while moving their legs forward and the dany, in which ladies vigorously shake their buttoms while holding fingers in unison in the air. These, Okwero and Maliong agree, ought to be re-vived passionately. They are not as common place as they were a few decades ago.
“May be that is because Idi Amin had a soft spot for Sudanese and promoted their interests. I don’t know but we need to do something,” the old man notes.

Ironically, Okwero and Gai say, even at Hi-Table, a popular bar in the heart of the city, which usually hosts theme nights for different nationalities, the Sudanese night was scrapped off.

Taking pride in food
Arek Majak, a woman in her 30s, insists Sudanese still have their culture intact though the visibility remains debatable. When Life visited her home in Rubaga, the sight of dried meat in sizeable pieces tied on window panes could never be more eye catching.

This, the team was enlightened, is called kombo. Rather than dry meat by smoking using a charcoal stove or hang it in the roof of a sooty and hot kitchen as the Iteso of Eastern Uganda do, the Sudanese slice the meat into pieces, add salt and like small pieces of cloth, tie it on the window frames. “After two days, it will have dried enough and be ready for cooking with any flavours like okra,” Majak explained. In a number of restaurants in town, she observes, Sudanese are proud to eat food they easily associate with.

For instance, meals like their staple food, kisira (maize or wheat flour mixed with water into chappati like meal), kumunia and tajalia are available at Hi-Table restaurant and bar and Ebony in Nsambya. Ngor Lual, a student at St. Joseph Technical Institute Kisubi and a member of the family believes “it is a question of modernity. I would have loved to wear my traditional clothes from Sudan, but I cannot because I will feel out of place- blame it on modernity not being in Uganda.”

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