A modern tale of slavery, survival, and escape

Driving the goats and sheep back home one evening, I decided that it was time to get some answers from Giemma. I had lived with him and his family for more than a month. I walked straight up to Giemma, and for the first time, I talked to my master in his language: "Why does no one love me?" Giemma stared at me as if one of the goats had suddenly spoken. I tried another question. "Why do you make me sleep with animals?" "Where did you learn that!" Giemma yelled and hit me again and again. I said no more. [Two days later] Giemma said, "You want to know why no one loves you and why you must sleep with the animals?" I could only nod. "I make you sleep with the animals," Giemma announced to me, "because you are an animal!" Satisfied with his answer and certain he had put a little black slave in his place, he walked away. Even for a 7-year-old boy without any schooling, the consequences of Giemma's pronouncement could not have been any clearer: I now knew that life would never get any better for me with these people. That was the moment when I began planning my escape.

* * *

To live with his family, Giemma said I had to become a Muslim. If I did not pray with him, I was kafir - an infidel. Muslims could not touch an infidel, never mind eat with them. I did not want to say those prayers or complain. I had seen what happened to the boys who complained. So I said their prayers, but in my heart I was still a Christian.

* * *

I turned 15 and then 16 and then 17. I was now taller than Giemma. To this family, I was their black slave, the lowest of the low. To Giemma, I was his most reliable workhorse.

Three years had passed since I had been caught [trying to escape]. I had now been with Giemma for a total of 10 rainy and 10 dry seasons. "It's time to try and leave again," I said to myself.

The next morning I headed out with the cows as usual, bringing them to a familiar area near the Mutari road. As soon as they started grazing, I ran as fast as I could for as long as I could through the wood along the road toward [the town] Mutari.

Within a matters of hours I had put 10 years behind me. I was walking in this new town, the streets lined with one-story buildings made of mud with straw roofs and no one knew what I had done. I saw other Dinkas working with their masters, and no one seemed to suspect I had escaped from mine. I was so happy, I was free!

* * *

I have learned that no one gives a people oppressed for generations their freedom and equality without a struggle. You have to fight for it. But a poor people like the southern Sudanese cannot do it alone. They need help. And that is why my work with the American Anti-Slavery Group has become so important to me. I am in a position to ask the Americans to help us in our struggle for freedom and equality. And when we achieve those goals, I will go back to Sudan to retrieve what I lost growing up in the north as a slave: the culture and traditions of my people.

For me that will be proof of my freedom. Certainly, here in America I am free. But I am still a guest. For me, real freedom is the ability to go back home.

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