Of Nostalgia and Reality

By Alfred Sebit Lokuji* 

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Only a dreamer, some might hastily point out, can write of such—and even dare to squander the precious moments in life to do so. I almost had the folly to yield to the temptation of titling these thoughts “nostalgia versus reality”! As if they were not part and parcel of the same thing; two sides to a coin so to speak. But what has provoked these near contradictory thoughts to flow through my mind?

Beginning this past November (2008) I had begun to make a series of assaults on my memory through visits to my ancestral village: Morsak! The last time I had been there, in the Morsak along the Juba Lo’bonok road was 1957! I say “the Morsak along the Juba Lo’bonok road” because there had been countless re-locations of the Morsak people by a series of life-jolting events from Anyanya One to the SPLA war. And as the people moved around in the various geographical locations, they were always called the Morsak people.

The journey on foot, as it used to be done, took two days with a night spent midway, somewhere / anywhere before or after the “Merya”—meaning the hills, some call Sindiru Hills, which severely test the resolve of travelers. On such pedestrian travels, the one waterhole is “Lankit” a long 24 kilometers away from Morsak. Lankit is a natural water spring that requires a silent approach, lest the water dries up on hearing human sound! If you can believe that Moses struck a rock with his walking stick and water sprung up you will have no justification for disbelief here.

Being one of the few lucky ones and a sixtish.commer, I made my trip in a four wheel drive minivan. It took two and a half hours to get from Juba to Morsak—a distance of about 61 kilometers! Somewhere in the wishful-thinking chambers in my head (which cover more space than the reality department) I had thoughts of commuting daily to work in dusty, cranky, nerve-testing rat-race obscene wealth Juba—while sleeping in breezy starry-starry nights Morsak! The journey, including subsequent ones, embarrassed my Wishes Department.

Indications of what Morsak might be like after all these long years were obvious to the critical eye all the way from Morkunon Stream, after Rejaf Church! The tell-tale long grass and savannah bushes growing on sandy soils, in places rocky, covered the entire distance. One clear sign that things were not the same was the disturbing absence of people busily moving about in grass-thatched-tukul villages along the way. The people of Kolye Nadit (small Kolye) right after Rejaf were no longer there. Time had sucked them into the pit of the past and mercilessly took along my friends Lopanjula, Lurwo and other nameless faces that I shall never see again! The story of rich, thick bushes with hidden savannah treasures and missing villages was repeated all along the way to Kolye na Kit, Ko Banso, Loggo, Ko Loduka, Sindiru, Nyarjwa, Kogi, right into Morsak.

When I left in 1957 there had been voices and sounds galore! Bye bye Sebit lo Gwonga! Get all the knowledge in school and come back! Here I was, returning back in their absence, with a PhD from school, a title of no material value to them 51 years on! Were they too naïve to expect much of me? Was I a no-good cheat, a miniature Don Quixote out to conquer the world of ignorance for my own benefit? Ha, and what benefit is that? I am dreaming again!

When I arrived after the grueling 2 and half hours drive, it was to an old, vaguely familiar, but strange place. There were very few families who had just recently returned, no children running in the dusty road, no sounds of cockerels declaring their domain, no promiscuously smelly he-goats irritatingly blaring to wear down the pretentious resistance of she-goats! Alas, no smoke billowing out of the huts to indicate the dedication of mothers to work back smiles and laughter into their households.

Morsak was strange in many other ways. In the old days, one could see as far as Lojore, across the Kamedo stream into Somba! Now, it was incredibly wooded! There were big trees everywhere! I could not see the old sausage tree in my uncle’s compound! The fig tree that had marked the junction of the trek from the local Bush School to the main road to Tombur was no more—the classic from dust to dust! Without this childhood landmarks I was like a jet pilot without his navigation instruments. Lost in that wilderness wrought by time, I detected drops attempting to force their way through the wrinkles in the corners of my eyes! A quick slap with the back of the hand saved me the embarrassment of having to explain what a phd-holding man-about-town in the sunset of his life was crying about!

I had come in the company of two Ugandan young men who had accompanied me in pursuit of the ever illusive dollar—for I had promised them good wages for assisting me in making good my claims to a corner of Morsak. We hastily set up my tent and all around, a thunderstorm was gathering. As the sun faded westwards across the Nile towards Barilulyong, a very heavy rain, unusual for this time of year, began to fall and lasted into the late night. It was resoundingly obvious that the ancestors approved! And who says that the spirits do not send signs any more? Far from it!

I spent only a couple of nights during that first November visit. I had this irrepressible urge to venture into the woods in search of fishing pools along the bed of the Kamedo stream; Kolonsuk and Kirgwo with its majestic rocks were calling, very loudly and persistently. I needed to relieve history by walking along the footpath from Urkiteng to my uncle’s at Malakan, on down to Yanga Gwodot’s and the Bush School, pass by the Head and only teacher Sereno Rombek’s compound; proceed down the path to Kamedo and cross over to Somba Village, greeted by Tombe Jembek’s family on entry. From here the foot path would take me on to Igari where another uncle, husband to my Mom’s sister lived. There I would run into my friends Agapita Lunyara, and into my cousin Loro Sogon. Perhaps they might share a secret about a new beehive they had found and we would plan to rob the honey one cool sunset evening. Igari was also memorable as it was the setting of a song about a man whose index finger was broken by a girl! I have never figured out what he had been poking at in the first place! In the end, the song said the man had no interest in marrying the girl, anyway, as her steps were somewhat graceless even when the accompanying rhythmic dancing was quite graceful!

As one left Igari, it was only a stone’s throw before one reached Lojore, a long settlement along the Juba Tombur road after it had left Urkiteng heading East and then making a bend by turning South, and then South-West to reach Lojore on its way to Tombur. The footpath I followed in memory lane was a short-cut. Lojore was populous, largely populated by the Nyori Clan, makers of rain, their totem, the majestic boastful bullfrog. My imagination covered all these footage in seconds. Neither the villages nor the connecting footpaths existed any more!

One unpleasant memory of Lojore is that it was the abode of my uncle Pasi, short for “Pasiente”—I suppose it must be Italian for “patience.” The missionaries at Rejaf were Italian, the Sons and Daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. They gave funny names at Baptism and then they would sometimes tell us what the names meant—expecting us to join them in laughter. We did not know how to make enemies then, so we joined them in their laughter at our innocence.

Pasi was far from patient! He was the terror of kids under his care! We were once there, no less than four or five cousins. Ironically, I do not remember any beatings from him. All he needed do was stare at you in a way that seems to say “I will grind you into paste if I get a hold on you!” Only that and one would wish the ground would open up and swallow one up—fortunately all one did was piss; after all, there was nothing on to wet.

I returned from Morsak convinced that life was little more than a grand illusion. Now here, and then no more! There would be no more story telling around a fireplace at the feet of an old woman for a token small price of a few ounces of tobacco! It would not be the same even if one tried to recapture that past. Not with books and papers, radio and TV sets all visible, taped music blaring, and everyone dressed like creatures from space.

The best one could perhaps do is to escape into these empty bushes, and intensely dream, undisturbed by modern metallic sounds cruelly replacing the soothing sounds of the eagle, the turtle dove, and the bleating of sheep! I would later get my revenge by going on fishing trips—with rod and reel, maybe with fishing spear had my name been Akol or Jok! I will dream with any weapon necessary. It is the reliving of that elusive past that matters, not the surroundings of the present. And with those thoughts, I realize that the biggest joke god has concocted is the mind that takes you back to a past that melts in the mind when you try to put flesh to it, not the threat of hell—not for me anyway!

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Publisher: Gurtong Trust

(January 18, 2009)

*Copy Right: Dr. Alfred Sebit Lokuji