Hussein El Ahmar Koko
This is an open letter which I wrote to my old friend Hussein El Ahamar Koko who I went with to the intermmediate school in Kadugli. He wrote to me suggesting that I might have forgot him because of the long years and the fact that I now live in Europe and leading what he suggested "a successful life" there. This reply contains some of memories which might be usefull for others to sea, particularly those from the younger generation. They may represent a reflection to what life was like for a teenage school boy growing up in seventies in the Nuba Mountains.
Yes my friend. It has been over three decades ago since we last met, sat together and had a chat. That time is not only long enough for a lot of water to pass under the bridge, but, perhaps sufficient for the bridge itself to age and collapse. However, it would take more than that for me to forget your friendship and the five years during which we were class mates. We ate, drank, struggled, suffered and went through the learning and growing up stages together. When I went to Katcha (a village to the South of Kadugli, where all primary schools used to gather to sit for the final exams for admittance to intermediate schooling) to sit for my Intermediate school entrance exams, I was scarred and wasn’t able to eat for many days before. The fear for us was then not only to fail exams but, for the prospects of loosing our grades to a Jalaba boy. As it was then rumoured, in Katcha, grades could be swapped over by the powerful Jalaba traders of Kadugli in favour of their own sons. That was probably an indicative of the inherent vulnerability on the part of our communities rather than validity of existence of such practice in reality. After all, there were no many locals involved in the administration of the process. To allow the local community the feeling of being part of the process. The state of total disempowerment was not only confined to education but, was endemic in all aspects of public life in the mountains. Even at that level there was a limited presentation for locals on such administrative and civil service processes. That year, after making my way to Katcha along with other local boys, only a handful of us progressed. I, in despair, went to Talodi taking refuge with my grandfather. I did manage to pass but, that wasn’t enough to secure a rare and highly competitive place in the single Intermediate in Kadugli. In the whole of Southern Nuba Mountains, there was only the Amiriya Intermediate in kadugli which accepts a maximum number of forty pupils. There was an industrial apprentice training school in Sama (just outside Kadugli), but, that one had a national rather than local intake. Just imagine how many of us were lost in process and slipped through the net. I nearly faced the same fate.
When I came back from Talodi just before the start of the rainy season, to my surprise, a new intermediate school has just opened in Kadugli in the old Youth Club next to our old Western Primary School. To my even greater surprises, my name was listed and were been called every day as I was there in Talodi. It was Musalam Ballah, a boy from North Kordofan, who was stranger in town who came over to me questioning my wisdom in refusing schooling at the time when I was accepted in the new school. My answer was that I didn’t know about the new school and certainly knew nothing about me been accepted in it. I went with him the next day to check out the reality of his claims only to come back with my hand full of books after been allowed in straight away. That would certainly be the day we met for the first time Hussein.
That Intermediate school was not a typical one. It did not belong to the Ministry of Education. It did belong to the Ministry of Religious Affairs. The ruling political parties had decided then to combat nakedness in that part of Sudan. They perceived the tradition as backward and primitive. The Nuba people were then still retaining the tradition of going naked. People were then still descend from the mountains naked and free. They didn’t care and no body else did in the locality. The political parties of the North saw it as an embarrassment and a dent on the national pride. They wanted the Nuba to be poor but, clothed. The method through which they could be helped to get clothed and be “typical” “respected” citizens, was the spread of the word of Islam among them. So, instead of opening more schools to cover the shortage, they opened this one which they named "Institute". The purpose was to get us through a religious education and get us to graduate as Islamic preachers to help the Nuba into becoming Muslims and hence get dressed. In that first year we were allowed to dress in Jalabias rather than the usual shorts of the other intermediate pupils. The certificates issued to us that year, and I still keep them, were from the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
However, Sudan politics, been as we all know and expect it to be, had soon dramatically changed and made a shift in direction. Political parties, with their preceived ideas on the Nuba and Islam were soon thrown out. Young military officers with socialist and communist tendencies had taken over. Political parties had gone and along with them went the Institute. We were soon allowed into main stream education. The name was changed to Intermediate, and we were allowed, to our delight, to get our shirts and shorts.
Later the phasing out of the educational system was changed. Primary school education was extended to six years instead of the four we had. The higher secondary was reduced to three and we at Intermediate stage were also reduced to three years. But, we had to make the transition. That was why we stayed for five years at that school.
Hussein, I remember very much your hunger and zeal for knowledge. I particularly, remember your love for English. You had always scored top marks in English. I remember vividly that I and you had once tried to issue wall-display English language magazine. We wrote some articles and started to put it together only to be frustrated by one of the teachers who thought it was premature action on our part.
I remember you had always kept your discipline, despite your eagerness to have a good laugh at Mohammed Abdalla Diriya’s jokes. You rarely ventured into Hay Al Ushar, the way the likes of Ali Abum or Iz Eldin Jadalla would do. You had always kept your humour to the cheekiness and intrigue of teen-agers.
Our class included Mamoon Aradaib, who I never met since leaving that school. Telefoon Koko I met once when he was with the Soil Conservation Department in Kadugli. Years later, I knew about his plight when he was imprisoned by his own SPLA forces during the years of the struggle. I did campaign on his behalf here from London to get him released without him knowing until this moment. I spoke to his commanders and human right organisations when I became aware that he was kept under bad conditions for too long. I knew that he took a tactical military decision to withdraw from a certain area, based on an assumption to lessen human suffering at that particular time. The decision was not favoured by his superiors and he got into trouble. I did know years later that the situation was rectified and he was out of that horrible situation and was reinstated into position. Mahjoob Salim was playing his beloved football in Obied. Later went to university in Egypt. To Egypt went Mohammed El Fatih Batta who is currently teaching in Arabia. I am still in touch with his family. Iz Aldin Jadalla I was in touch with him until the last day I left Sudan and he passed away soon after, leaving a child behind. Lovely man he was, and we learned a lot from him. He was years ahead of us in his knowledge of Khartoum and football. The way he dressed and spoke was all but that of a local boy, much more urbanised than the rest of us. No wonder he was much more successful when it came to girls and adventures we used to have with the girls from the school nearby. Last year when I visited Sudan after a sixteen-year absence from Sudan, I nearly met Abashar Adam Hamid in Obied. He carried on with his love for art and now has a studio in Obied. I spoke to him on the phone but, not quite made it up to him. Kamal Salam, neither him nor his Kawaleeb relative Yagoob Arees I met ever since, but, years ago I knew that he was living in Al Fetehab. Ishaq Mohammed Ibrahim, I met last year on my visit to Sudan. He is currently a construction engineer working for government in Kadugli. Awad Jabir who was a good footballer was a police man in Kadugli. Saeed Abuna, I met briefly some twenty five years ago. Yousif Kakidla, I met last year and knew that he had stroke recently but, on his way to recovery. Our goal keeper Ahmed Al Die was an officer in the army the last I heard of him. . Jibreel Kori might have gone into the military as far as I can remember. His village is not far from yours you would probably know of him. Mahmood Nasr is another one who I can’t remember meeting after that. I hardly remember Ibrahim Ramadan, a man of few words.
My friend, our school was basic and had a bare minimum of facilities. The teachers we had were all compulsorily transferred from the North. Some of them never managed to overcome the initial shock of having arrived into such an alien environment to them and they never stayed for long. Conditions were harsh and the area used to go through total isolation if they were to be caught there during the rainy season. My father used to travel to Obied in fourteen days and would only make it after having to secure sufficient provisions of Sharmoot Waika and Dageeg on which my mother used to work days and days to prepare. Later in the seventy when the long awaited asphalt into the Nuba Mountains partially finished, we made the same journey in less than five ours. The story of that road into the Nuba is the one that I intend to document one day and would encourage others to do so.
Going back, to the school, services available to us were rudimentary to say the least. Leave alone books, labs, teachers and food for the school dormitory, other basic means of life are non-existence. We rarely saw a newspaper. There was not a single student who has a radio to listen to the news. I remember that I used to borrow my father’s radio to bring it round every Friday for the boys to listen songs played to request from listeners. Television never heard of. The first time I had the privilege of watching TV had eventually occurred when I visited Khartoum years after in 1976 for the first time. Despite of that, we somehow kept ourselves informed with events in the world and debated them and wrote about them. At one time I even managed to argue against government policies of forcing the Nuba into wearing clothes. The idea was that government priority shouldn't have focussed on that by sending clothes as did through its local representatives. Instead they should have worked on real development by providing employment, agricultural development, better pricing for cotton, schooling and health facilities. If that had happened, the clothing or lack of it which they see as a problem would have been automatically resolved. However, to many of Nuba communities, clothing wasn't a problem. Nakedness was part of the culture that sees the beauty of the human body and many of other socio-cultural and spiritual practices revolving round it. So, even at what was indeed a short time of the lifetime of the school which was opened as part of the campaign against the Nuba nakedness problem, some of the student the school produced had started to argue for and not against local cultural practices. What a turn of events! Some of us actually carried on the rebellion to its ultimate form by joining the rebellion against the whole state at later stages of life.
I am sure you, I and most of those who had been to that school were the product of chances, as it were. We happened to have had the chance because all those circumstances had all combined and brewed up allowing us the opportunity. How come the school did open that particular year? I was the first among my family to get that far and I am sure the same goes to you and many others who went the same journey with us. When we were preparing to sit for exams into the higher school, we were asked to get our parents to sign to say that they agreed to our choices of either academic or other non-academic schooling. If the choice was for academic studies, then they were required to agree on the choice of either humanitarian or scientific studies. None of us had parents who would understand all that. So, we just made it up and did the signatures our selves, saving ourselves the embarrassment of having to say that our parents would never understand that.
Hussein my friend, I never consider this a success. I never ever consider those of us (our generation) who made it to higher education and subsequently high jobs or residence in the First World, to be reflective of something different they personally did which others didn’t do. It is all down to brewing up of factors, moments of history and circumstances, which were in many cases completely out of our control. To our people we all owe it.
Thank you Hussein
I hoping to see you soon
Gaafer Abbakar Ali, November, 2005
This is an open letter which I wrote to my old friend Hussein El Ahamar Koko who I went with to the intermmediate school in Kadugli. He wrote to me suggesting that I might have forgot him because of the long years and the fact that I now live in Europe and leading what he suggested "a successful life" there. This reply contains some of memories which might be usefull for others to sea, particularly those from the younger generation. They may represent a reflection to what life was like for a teenage school boy growing up in seventies in the Nuba Mountains.
Yes my friend. It has been over three decades ago since we last met, sat together and had a chat. That time is not only long enough for a lot of water to pass under the bridge, but, perhaps sufficient for the bridge itself to age and collapse. However, it would take more than that for me to forget your friendship and the five years during which we were class mates. We ate, drank, struggled, suffered and went through the learning and growing up stages together. When I went to Katcha (a village to the South of Kadugli, where all primary schools used to gather to sit for the final exams for admittance to intermediate schooling) to sit for my Intermediate school entrance exams, I was scarred and wasn’t able to eat for many days before. The fear for us was then not only to fail exams but, for the prospects of loosing our grades to a Jalaba boy. As it was then rumoured, in Katcha, grades could be swapped over by the powerful Jalaba traders of Kadugli in favour of their own sons. That was probably an indicative of the inherent vulnerability on the part of our communities rather than validity of existence of such practice in reality. After all, there were no many locals involved in the administration of the process. To allow the local community the feeling of being part of the process. The state of total disempowerment was not only confined to education but, was endemic in all aspects of public life in the mountains. Even at that level there was a limited presentation for locals on such administrative and civil service processes. That year, after making my way to Katcha along with other local boys, only a handful of us progressed. I, in despair, went to Talodi taking refuge with my grandfather. I did manage to pass but, that wasn’t enough to secure a rare and highly competitive place in the single Intermediate in Kadugli. In the whole of Southern Nuba Mountains, there was only the Amiriya Intermediate in kadugli which accepts a maximum number of forty pupils. There was an industrial apprentice training school in Sama (just outside Kadugli), but, that one had a national rather than local intake. Just imagine how many of us were lost in process and slipped through the net. I nearly faced the same fate.
When I came back from Talodi just before the start of the rainy season, to my surprise, a new intermediate school has just opened in Kadugli in the old Youth Club next to our old Western Primary School. To my even greater surprises, my name was listed and were been called every day as I was there in Talodi. It was Musalam Ballah, a boy from North Kordofan, who was stranger in town who came over to me questioning my wisdom in refusing schooling at the time when I was accepted in the new school. My answer was that I didn’t know about the new school and certainly knew nothing about me been accepted in it. I went with him the next day to check out the reality of his claims only to come back with my hand full of books after been allowed in straight away. That would certainly be the day we met for the first time Hussein.
That Intermediate school was not a typical one. It did not belong to the Ministry of Education. It did belong to the Ministry of Religious Affairs. The ruling political parties had decided then to combat nakedness in that part of Sudan. They perceived the tradition as backward and primitive. The Nuba people were then still retaining the tradition of going naked. People were then still descend from the mountains naked and free. They didn’t care and no body else did in the locality. The political parties of the North saw it as an embarrassment and a dent on the national pride. They wanted the Nuba to be poor but, clothed. The method through which they could be helped to get clothed and be “typical” “respected” citizens, was the spread of the word of Islam among them. So, instead of opening more schools to cover the shortage, they opened this one which they named "Institute". The purpose was to get us through a religious education and get us to graduate as Islamic preachers to help the Nuba into becoming Muslims and hence get dressed. In that first year we were allowed to dress in Jalabias rather than the usual shorts of the other intermediate pupils. The certificates issued to us that year, and I still keep them, were from the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
However, Sudan politics, been as we all know and expect it to be, had soon dramatically changed and made a shift in direction. Political parties, with their preceived ideas on the Nuba and Islam were soon thrown out. Young military officers with socialist and communist tendencies had taken over. Political parties had gone and along with them went the Institute. We were soon allowed into main stream education. The name was changed to Intermediate, and we were allowed, to our delight, to get our shirts and shorts.
Later the phasing out of the educational system was changed. Primary school education was extended to six years instead of the four we had. The higher secondary was reduced to three and we at Intermediate stage were also reduced to three years. But, we had to make the transition. That was why we stayed for five years at that school.
Hussein, I remember very much your hunger and zeal for knowledge. I particularly, remember your love for English. You had always scored top marks in English. I remember vividly that I and you had once tried to issue wall-display English language magazine. We wrote some articles and started to put it together only to be frustrated by one of the teachers who thought it was premature action on our part.
I remember you had always kept your discipline, despite your eagerness to have a good laugh at Mohammed Abdalla Diriya’s jokes. You rarely ventured into Hay Al Ushar, the way the likes of Ali Abum or Iz Eldin Jadalla would do. You had always kept your humour to the cheekiness and intrigue of teen-agers.
Our class included Mamoon Aradaib, who I never met since leaving that school. Telefoon Koko I met once when he was with the Soil Conservation Department in Kadugli. Years later, I knew about his plight when he was imprisoned by his own SPLA forces during the years of the struggle. I did campaign on his behalf here from London to get him released without him knowing until this moment. I spoke to his commanders and human right organisations when I became aware that he was kept under bad conditions for too long. I knew that he took a tactical military decision to withdraw from a certain area, based on an assumption to lessen human suffering at that particular time. The decision was not favoured by his superiors and he got into trouble. I did know years later that the situation was rectified and he was out of that horrible situation and was reinstated into position. Mahjoob Salim was playing his beloved football in Obied. Later went to university in Egypt. To Egypt went Mohammed El Fatih Batta who is currently teaching in Arabia. I am still in touch with his family. Iz Aldin Jadalla I was in touch with him until the last day I left Sudan and he passed away soon after, leaving a child behind. Lovely man he was, and we learned a lot from him. He was years ahead of us in his knowledge of Khartoum and football. The way he dressed and spoke was all but that of a local boy, much more urbanised than the rest of us. No wonder he was much more successful when it came to girls and adventures we used to have with the girls from the school nearby. Last year when I visited Sudan after a sixteen-year absence from Sudan, I nearly met Abashar Adam Hamid in Obied. He carried on with his love for art and now has a studio in Obied. I spoke to him on the phone but, not quite made it up to him. Kamal Salam, neither him nor his Kawaleeb relative Yagoob Arees I met ever since, but, years ago I knew that he was living in Al Fetehab. Ishaq Mohammed Ibrahim, I met last year on my visit to Sudan. He is currently a construction engineer working for government in Kadugli. Awad Jabir who was a good footballer was a police man in Kadugli. Saeed Abuna, I met briefly some twenty five years ago. Yousif Kakidla, I met last year and knew that he had stroke recently but, on his way to recovery. Our goal keeper Ahmed Al Die was an officer in the army the last I heard of him. . Jibreel Kori might have gone into the military as far as I can remember. His village is not far from yours you would probably know of him. Mahmood Nasr is another one who I can’t remember meeting after that. I hardly remember Ibrahim Ramadan, a man of few words.
My friend, our school was basic and had a bare minimum of facilities. The teachers we had were all compulsorily transferred from the North. Some of them never managed to overcome the initial shock of having arrived into such an alien environment to them and they never stayed for long. Conditions were harsh and the area used to go through total isolation if they were to be caught there during the rainy season. My father used to travel to Obied in fourteen days and would only make it after having to secure sufficient provisions of Sharmoot Waika and Dageeg on which my mother used to work days and days to prepare. Later in the seventy when the long awaited asphalt into the Nuba Mountains partially finished, we made the same journey in less than five ours. The story of that road into the Nuba is the one that I intend to document one day and would encourage others to do so.
Going back, to the school, services available to us were rudimentary to say the least. Leave alone books, labs, teachers and food for the school dormitory, other basic means of life are non-existence. We rarely saw a newspaper. There was not a single student who has a radio to listen to the news. I remember that I used to borrow my father’s radio to bring it round every Friday for the boys to listen songs played to request from listeners. Television never heard of. The first time I had the privilege of watching TV had eventually occurred when I visited Khartoum years after in 1976 for the first time. Despite of that, we somehow kept ourselves informed with events in the world and debated them and wrote about them. At one time I even managed to argue against government policies of forcing the Nuba into wearing clothes. The idea was that government priority shouldn't have focussed on that by sending clothes as did through its local representatives. Instead they should have worked on real development by providing employment, agricultural development, better pricing for cotton, schooling and health facilities. If that had happened, the clothing or lack of it which they see as a problem would have been automatically resolved. However, to many of Nuba communities, clothing wasn't a problem. Nakedness was part of the culture that sees the beauty of the human body and many of other socio-cultural and spiritual practices revolving round it. So, even at what was indeed a short time of the lifetime of the school which was opened as part of the campaign against the Nuba nakedness problem, some of the student the school produced had started to argue for and not against local cultural practices. What a turn of events! Some of us actually carried on the rebellion to its ultimate form by joining the rebellion against the whole state at later stages of life.
I am sure you, I and most of those who had been to that school were the product of chances, as it were. We happened to have had the chance because all those circumstances had all combined and brewed up allowing us the opportunity. How come the school did open that particular year? I was the first among my family to get that far and I am sure the same goes to you and many others who went the same journey with us. When we were preparing to sit for exams into the higher school, we were asked to get our parents to sign to say that they agreed to our choices of either academic or other non-academic schooling. If the choice was for academic studies, then they were required to agree on the choice of either humanitarian or scientific studies. None of us had parents who would understand all that. So, we just made it up and did the signatures our selves, saving ourselves the embarrassment of having to say that our parents would never understand that.
Hussein my friend, I never consider this a success. I never ever consider those of us (our generation) who made it to higher education and subsequently high jobs or residence in the First World, to be reflective of something different they personally did which others didn’t do. It is all down to brewing up of factors, moments of history and circumstances, which were in many cases completely out of our control. To our people we all owe it.
Thank you Hussein
I hoping to see you soon
Gaafer Abbakar Ali, November, 2005
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