he has a little like make it too hot. I think it might make it to
imprison something. Unless he's got L. E. G. S. He does. If he does we can
use it. Yeah. Why don't you do that? And you go ahead and yeah start doing
Excuse me. Okay. Mhm. Okay. Ready is it going Ok? Ok. Hello max tomorrow.
Okay. Um Thank you for doing this. The oral history. So if you can please
state your name and its spelling into our Ajax. M A. T. O. R. Last night A.
J. K. And is this the name you were given at birth? Uhh Yes. And do you
know when you were born and where? Uh huh. I would want sometimes around
98. I'm not sure. Okay, hater, january 1st wrap my birthday. Okay. And
that morning young Lady state
few miles from Watertown, which is capital with the villages they want
land. Okay. And and can you give me the name of your parents and where
they were born? Uh My dad's name is Jack. Okay. And maybe I'll. The second
was A J. K. Okay. Mother, if you have th of all the oil, they were born in
a long way. And how many brothers and sisters do you have on my mother's
side?
Eight siblings. So it was six boys and two girls. Ok. And then half
siblings. I cannot even even keep track of those. Okay. Okay. Uhh now
there's there's many tribes in Sudan. Which tribe do you belong to? Um
from the Dinka tribe? Dinka is too vast. Soviet. So finger has it on
subsections So be considered. Uh So if you come to jump lady, you call it
bore. I'm in war in the body in Japan different sections to actually
belong to Two keys. Okay two years section one. Thank you. So we're going
to talk now about just growing up in your native land and every day and
what you remember, can you tell me about growing up in your village, what
it was like in your village and what you remember? Uh some of your
earliest memories and what school was like if you were in school, growing
up in the village was actually fun. What people seem to think on me. Uh
growing up live with around cattle, goats, sheep cow and then the family
farms. So everything we did was all around them. We didn't have too many
schools or very few. I don't remember myself going to school in the
village except later when they came to an energy camps when I went to to
school because I was probably 12 at the time. So starting first grade 12.
So in the village there wasn't too much education going on. What we
learned from each other uh week is find out the cattle's built the ship,
helping parents in the box. Would you stay out with the cattle cattle
camps and camp out, would you think, would you consider it? Like almost
like camping the way americans camp but with watching animals but you just
go and stay there for months and didn't come back later. Oh yes.
Throughout the season, the seasons change. So that that period like that
sometimes you would say here and then leave the village and go and the
water is take all the candles we stayed there for life, two months, three
months, four months when you come back to the village. Okay. Okay. Can you
tell me about what your food was like? Give us an idea of what you ate. Is
it breakfast? How is it different from here? We used to eat twice a day.
And again, this is not, I'm not giving you a refugee version of the story.
This is the village before the war started everything that we eat in the
morning and in the evening. Uh and again our parents grow their crops. So
we were not yeah, hoping somebody would handle something. None of that.
There were always two meals, one in the morning, one the and what would
you eat, what would be in that meal in the morning? We'll always comprise
of some sort of milk, some diary product
and then the some vegetables too. Uh, watermelons, will they? Uh you know
, really we didn't have too much of a banana or a lime mango. You can find
a different part of Sudan. But it might really, we didn't know that. Uh
but there was uh, seat sitting with it. There was uh date you can eat. I
know there were several of them trees that I don't know the family, the
grow wheat from there and then there was also the main thing was soon like
a, like a million a girl there and you can tend Milligan to wheat flour
along with that goes on it. And then the student, the fish. So the bottoms
don't let me say it was natural to, we didn't have no fertilizers or all
these cables, no artificial preservatives. We don't have canned food, None
of that. Everything has to grow fresh. So we need, you know, you eat it
real deal. Do you miss that? Of course. Yeah. Do you have a garden at home
? You know, I wish I can, yeah, that would be good. Can you tell me about
how things differed from the boys and the girls and the villages? Um, the
way the building was set up was you have a house here and then maybe
another mile you have somebody else's house until we were not too close.
There was too much open space. So sometimes we get our chances to mix
with other kids when you go and run out of the cattle's as when you're
gonna mix up and play and then it's time to go home. Then you separate go
back to, there was no sleeping about us. Just like they do over here now
you do, your kids do that. No. Okay.
What kind of interactions for people who want from your same tribe where
there are a lot of it because you know in America we have a lot of, you
know like, like racism and that kind of stuff. Was there a lot of
interaction or was it because you were on one village, maybe you didn't
have a lot of interaction. The village was comprised of one more the same
, speak the same language better rare where you would see somebody from a
different tribe. They may just pass there and say, oh yeah, this is so and
so from wherever they just may be passing by. But the interaction was
always with the same people like in our area was dominantly dink. So we'll
only you the, at the time we just heard of the noise, we heard of the
moral, eh No, I put all this in real life until later in life that I get
to see someone maybe the new and we were very close, they would come
around, they go back, they were the ones that they look like us and we
didn't even thought of any difference.
Do you have a favorite memory when you think back of your village, Is
there a memory that you think of that you want to share with us back home
?
The simplicity of life over there. You know, I feel like my life is too
complicated here, whatever there everything was so simple. It just felt
like maybe as a kid, you don't never think of stress. But I kind of
thought of it with a stress free environment when you just run around to
enjoy being with your uncles, your cousins. So we were always fascinated
by that. When I look back, I'm kind of fascinated how simple that life yet
we were contact. Yes. Yeah. It sounds like it, it sounds like it. So we're
going to start going into like war interrupted this contentment. Right, So
can you tell me about where you were when you first heard about the war or
we were in the village and around that time I would rainy season, that was
the area was flooded a lot. We live in a low land environment close to the
river now. So when the river is full the water wouldn't come with
everything. So and I was very young. So when I'm walking around the water
is just right up to you. So when the war started was really bad. Yeah, we
went through it, but later we found a little, did you know it was coming?
Did you see like bombs? Uh It's your people, we heard it was coming with
the people who have no direction where you want to go? So he just came
until he hit the village, started taking our house. All the houses, were
you there when they started burning and started us? So I start running,
was it late at night or was it? I remember it was sometime around like a
mile nine a.m. In the morning. Yeah. Where did we don't uh so that's what
we took off a kid. Sometimes you don't think too much of it, you just kind
of feel like it's an opportunity for you to go and see another filling
that people got to see until you look back later when your family members
get killed. Now you understand the death that, but I think then you start
to understand the gravity of it, but has the kid proof we'll go into
another minute. We might, we knew we were going to come back. Yeah, and
never came back. Right. Yeah. So, so when you uh so were you there when
they were ransacking the village and catching it on fire? Uh so that was,
that was there. But you did think you were kind of able to come back?
Right, okay. Tell me, how long did you guys march? How long did you escape
with your parents at first? Right. Yeah, okay. And then, well at the time
we didn't know how to like cow. We kind of felt okay, we've been away
three months, six months until all that up 27 years later, you haven't
gone back. Yeah, so took a while, I mean it's months, three months at a
time because I think, and now the time they start learning really was
sometime in august now I get to go back to the, it was sometime in all of
us, we didn't read to like someplace we call little safe until like
december. So we walked around three months and a half and you told me a
story about how your dad had to go to the hospital for a bit and then you
came out, can you remember that story you told me and?