Yeah. Yeah. Mhm.
Uh huh. Mhm. Mhm. Uh huh.
Mhm. Mhm. Yeah.
So it's very good for you. Okay great. So I'm James by the way. James
Garcia good with it. Yeah. Boat. So let's just start off with just some
background about you. Um So start out first if you could just say your
name and you and during the interview you can just look at me, you don't
worry about the camera. Um So just say a full name and if you can spell
your full name from me. Yeah well my name is needed. M. A. D. I. T. Dang E.
N. G. Rain R. I. N. G. E. L. Y. L. So my full name would be dangling.
Okay great and how old are you? 25. 25. Okay great. Um And where are you
from? Originally?
I'm from a town. It's a small town in northern part of South Sudan. It's
called one rock on W. Our. Okay. Okay it's a small town. It's a small town.
Yeah it's current it's currently part of treat state. So there's a state
called to preach in northern part of South Sudan. It's as part of the
disputed region of B. A. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And uh you were born there. I
was born there. And did you grow up there? Most of your life grew up there
until I was about 5 to 6 years old. Five or six years old. Six years old.
And then the civil war was going on
in the area around us. Eventually our village came under attack. Yeah my
family and I had to from there, you have to flee from there. So so first
tell me uh so you were about five or six years old, you lived there? Um
And and so what was what was life like in this village that you were in?
43 years? What did you guys do? What did your family do? It was a pastoral
, you know agriculturalists community. So my parents are subsistence
farmers, they take care of the farm, but we also have life stocks, so
that's cattle and goats and sheep that family members take care of. And I
remember growing up but always help with set shore's
so fetch water for cattle or gold help in the farm when it's farming.
Susan okay pretty much that was substance assistance and it was livestock
farming and livestock. Yeah. Okay. Where did they grow? They grew corn,
They grew sorghum. Mhm. We also brew pumpkin, indigenous vegetables and
fruits. And was your family large? How many siblings did you have? Did you
have siblings? I have four siblings, four siblings. And what? All boys,
girls, three boys and one girl. Three boys and girls. And and did everyone
helped with the farm and just a work that needs to be done. It's correct,
correct. I mean there wasn't much focus on school because they were in
schools there anyway, there was no schools. Right where you are the
schools, right, where I was born, that's how kids would grow up helping
parents. Did you? Was there a school nearby or was their school? I know
that I heard of it wasn't really a priority for the lack of it. So I think
there were schools in some other towns but you'll have to travel probably
move. Okay.
So it wasn't as if anyone in your village uh walk to school or travel to
pretty much no one, no one now in your in terms of your home uh where you
actually physically lived? Was this a house? What I mean, describe your
home like where was you? Actually? It's hot. So what you would call TPS
here? The native emergency. Yeah. Our hearts, they're a little bit bigger.
It was hot. So it wasn't like a mud brick home or something you like. And
how large was it? Because you had four siblings and you that's 567. That
would be different. So basically think of it as a room itself. Okay. So I
think we had about four shots in a compound. Your family, your own four
hunts in the compound. Okay. I got you. And do you remember much about
them because you said you were young, five or six. I mean what do you
remember about your life at that time? Just your life there and in living
in the huts there in that village? Remember much of it? I do I do vividly
remember playing with my
childhood friends in the rain because it rains a lot in South Sudan. Okay
you know helping on the farm picking up fruits or the produce of the farm
, it also helped me with the livestock.
You know most of the people that have livestocks there were depending on
the season, whether it's dry season, wet season when it's right now,
Children are take care of the cattle, they take them to where the water is
, where the pastor is. That's always a force. You walk a few miles away,
you go spend your day and then you come back in the evening when the
catalog we have had some water to drink. So I was involved in that. I
wasn't old enough. So I would always be the guy who was just following,
you know, I think your brother or just tagging along. Yeah, but actually
it's a practice you do you know as you grow up, you take such
responsibilities right now. Did your, did your family or your father or
mother, did they make money from this or was it all about just literally
feeding yourself, feeding ourselves? It's different now in South Sudan is
an independent country. We have a national currency and a lot of people
are trading but I remember back then there wasn't a lot, there were money
but yeah living the village far away from the major towns ah you know it
takes a while driven, see a currency or a banjo and so you can imagine
most of the trade even though subsistence, most of the trade isn't, you
know, it's uses border system. So if you, if you have a brain and you want
to buy a goat or a cow, there's always an amount you can exchange. Okay,
so so that that was kind of the routine routine. Okay, so you were there
until about five or six. Oh and before I forget, what did you do for just
just for fun in that village? I mean everything, everything around it was
fun. It's
when you're in the countryside, most of it is just outdoor activities.
It's the environment and the greenery is and pretty much as a child, every
Children was fun every until it was fun.
You know the days when you would go after the cattle,
you know, there are times when they will be grazing when they're grazing.
It's time that's time for boys. But just play along. Oh because you have
some time because you have to time and you don't have to worry about
cattle straying away because you found some green pasture and you know
they're going to be raising their four hours. There's specific games that
you remember we did, we played some type of what you would call baseball
here. So we didn't play, it's a form of baseball. Yeah, it was more of
like flat, we would carve it out of of tires and plastic type and we had
steaks carved out and we would just play along, hit it and if you were
near a river, you know, you go swimming. Uh,
what was this game called with, with tire car, we call it, we call it, you
know, that was like a local name for dealing, dealing. Yeah. How do you
spell that doing now? No, L I N. G. Been hearing and, and it was, it was
played with a stick and play with the state and there was a bullet was a
curve. There was flat, it was a round bowl, but flat. Okay. Almost like a
hockey puck. More like a hockey, yep. Almost like a hug. Yeah, just hit it
around. Okay. And how did you score? How did you win the object of the
game? I think there were like born Aries and if you fail to response, if
somebody throws it or hit it towards you, If you fail, if you fail to
respond, then that's a loss. So you're pitching and there's a guy.
Yeah. And you played it even that young. Yeah. Yeah. Did you watch older
Children play at home? I did. Yeah, measures for two was wrestling,
wrestling, wrestling. Okay. Now with these sports that only the boys
played or did girls play some of the girls played? It was mostly boys.
Boys, boys primarily boys sports. Yeah. Did, uh, just out of curiosity
villages play other villages or was it all just local? I've heard of the
stores were like, it wasn't more about an organized sports. It's something
that you guys getting together, we do, it wasn't like championships or
something like that, but they might play someone from another, it might
play. Yeah. Do you just do you miss that sport? It was a I do, I do, but
you know, I've, it's been a while. I was young and I've had some other
sports to do whatever yourself. Yeah, it's like a fun substitutes. Like I
remember reading history of uh, I don't know if it was the Mayan indians
had a sport that was a little bit like basketball and they were concrete
rings that came out of the walls and, and you would have a ball that was,
I think made of heavy rubber or wood, but it was heavy, heavy and the
object was to somehow get it through the ring. Um, but it strikes me that
it must have been a dangerous sport because the ball was so heavy, it must
have injured. It
wasn't a net, it was a concrete ring. So somehow you were supposed to get
it through that, you know, and, and you know, this is only scant
historical references to the archaeologist kind of surmising that this is
because obviously no one has any record, you know, visual record. So no
one knows what they actually did, but they surmised that it was a game.
And so I wonder if it's like that sport be popular now, you know, it could
be brought back. I don't know. I don't know maybe. But so so anyway so
then you you were five or six or something and so what made you leave then
? That village? What happened? It would have been 20 years ago because
you're 25. Yeah. Yeah. Civil War was going on somewhere else but
eventually came to where we were okay. Village was attacked and everyone
else had including my family and I uh. Mhm.