WEBVTT 00:00:01.139 --> 00:00:05.226 he has a little like make it too hot. I think it might make it to 00:00:05.259 --> 00:00:10.617 imprison something. Unless he's got L. E. G. S. He does. If he does we can 00:00:10.650 --> 00:00:15.187 use it. Yeah. Why don't you do that? And you go ahead and yeah start doing 00:00:15.220 --> 00:00:23.220 Excuse me. Okay. Mhm. Okay. Ready is it going Ok? Ok. Hello max tomorrow. 00:00:23.670 --> 00:00:29.236 Okay. Um Thank you for doing this. The oral history. So if you can please 00:00:29.269 --> 00:00:37.269 state your name and its spelling into our Ajax. M A. T. O. R. Last night A. 00:00:38.659 --> 00:00:46.597 J. K. And is this the name you were given at birth? Uhh Yes. And do you 00:00:46.630 --> 00:00:52.896 know when you were born and where? Uh huh. I would want sometimes around 00:00:52.929 --> 00:01:00.929 98. I'm not sure. Okay, hater, january 1st wrap my birthday. Okay. And 00:01:02.789 --> 00:01:07.507 that morning young Lady state 00:01:07.540 --> 00:01:14.917 few miles from Watertown, which is capital with the villages they want 00:01:14.950 --> 00:01:19.796 land. Okay. And and can you give me the name of your parents and where 00:01:19.829 --> 00:01:27.829 they were born? Uh My dad's name is Jack. Okay. And maybe I'll. The second 00:01:27.950 --> 00:01:35.950 was A J. K. Okay. Mother, if you have th of all the oil, they were born in 00:01:37.010 --> 00:01:44.307 a long way. And how many brothers and sisters do you have on my mother's 00:01:44.340 --> 00:01:46.417 side? 00:01:46.450 --> 00:01:52.576 Eight siblings. So it was six boys and two girls. Ok. And then half 00:01:52.609 --> 00:02:00.609 siblings. I cannot even even keep track of those. Okay. Okay. Uhh now 00:02:01.049 --> 00:02:05.706 there's there's many tribes in Sudan. Which tribe do you belong to? Um 00:02:05.739 --> 00:02:13.427 from the Dinka tribe? Dinka is too vast. Soviet. So finger has it on 00:02:13.460 --> 00:02:20.827 subsections So be considered. Uh So if you come to jump lady, you call it 00:02:20.860 --> 00:02:26.786 bore. I'm in war in the body in Japan different sections to actually 00:02:26.819 --> 00:02:33.316 belong to Two keys. Okay two years section one. Thank you. So we're going 00:02:33.349 --> 00:02:36.856 to talk now about just growing up in your native land and every day and 00:02:36.889 --> 00:02:40.897 what you remember, can you tell me about growing up in your village, what 00:02:40.930 --> 00:02:44.987 it was like in your village and what you remember? Uh some of your 00:02:45.020 --> 00:02:51.066 earliest memories and what school was like if you were in school, growing 00:02:51.099 --> 00:02:57.177 up in the village was actually fun. What people seem to think on me. Uh 00:02:57.210 --> 00:03:05.210 growing up live with around cattle, goats, sheep cow and then the family 00:03:06.240 --> 00:03:14.066 farms. So everything we did was all around them. We didn't have too many 00:03:14.099 --> 00:03:18.106 schools or very few. I don't remember myself going to school in the 00:03:18.139 --> 00:03:23.626 village except later when they came to an energy camps when I went to to 00:03:23.659 --> 00:03:28.386 school because I was probably 12 at the time. So starting first grade 12. 00:03:28.419 --> 00:03:33.136 So in the village there wasn't too much education going on. What we 00:03:33.169 --> 00:03:39.467 learned from each other uh week is find out the cattle's built the ship, 00:03:39.500 --> 00:03:43.446 helping parents in the box. Would you stay out with the cattle cattle 00:03:43.479 --> 00:03:48.577 camps and camp out, would you think, would you consider it? Like almost 00:03:48.610 --> 00:03:54.036 like camping the way americans camp but with watching animals but you just 00:03:54.069 --> 00:03:57.606 go and stay there for months and didn't come back later. Oh yes. 00:03:57.639 --> 00:04:02.386 Throughout the season, the seasons change. So that that period like that 00:04:02.419 --> 00:04:07.696 sometimes you would say here and then leave the village and go and the 00:04:07.729 --> 00:04:13.286 water is take all the candles we stayed there for life, two months, three 00:04:13.319 --> 00:04:17.726 months, four months when you come back to the village. Okay. Okay. Can you 00:04:17.759 --> 00:04:22.577 tell me about what your food was like? Give us an idea of what you ate. Is 00:04:22.610 --> 00:04:29.837 it breakfast? How is it different from here? We used to eat twice a day. 00:04:29.870 --> 00:04:34.687 And again, this is not, I'm not giving you a refugee version of the story. 00:04:34.720 --> 00:04:39.007 This is the village before the war started everything that we eat in the 00:04:39.040 --> 00:04:46.056 morning and in the evening. Uh and again our parents grow their crops. So 00:04:46.089 --> 00:04:51.426 we were not yeah, hoping somebody would handle something. None of that. 00:04:51.459 --> 00:04:56.616 There were always two meals, one in the morning, one the and what would 00:04:56.649 --> 00:04:59.507 you eat, what would be in that meal in the morning? We'll always comprise 00:04:59.540 --> 00:05:04.007 of some sort of milk, some diary product 00:05:04.040 --> 00:05:10.226 and then the some vegetables too. Uh, watermelons, will they? Uh you know 00:05:10.259 --> 00:05:14.577 , really we didn't have too much of a banana or a lime mango. You can find 00:05:14.610 --> 00:05:18.757 a different part of Sudan. But it might really, we didn't know that. Uh 00:05:18.790 --> 00:05:26.246 but there was uh, seat sitting with it. There was uh date you can eat. I 00:05:26.279 --> 00:05:30.887 know there were several of them trees that I don't know the family, the 00:05:30.920 --> 00:05:36.106 grow wheat from there and then there was also the main thing was soon like 00:05:36.139 --> 00:05:42.406 a, like a million a girl there and you can tend Milligan to wheat flour 00:05:42.439 --> 00:05:48.067 along with that goes on it. And then the student, the fish. So the bottoms 00:05:48.100 --> 00:05:53.317 don't let me say it was natural to, we didn't have no fertilizers or all 00:05:53.350 --> 00:05:59.846 these cables, no artificial preservatives. We don't have canned food, None 00:05:59.879 --> 00:06:04.277 of that. Everything has to grow fresh. So we need, you know, you eat it 00:06:04.310 --> 00:06:09.286 real deal. Do you miss that? Of course. Yeah. Do you have a garden at home 00:06:09.319 --> 00:06:14.736 ? You know, I wish I can, yeah, that would be good. Can you tell me about 00:06:14.769 --> 00:06:19.207 how things differed from the boys and the girls and the villages? Um, the 00:06:19.240 --> 00:06:24.976 way the building was set up was you have a house here and then maybe 00:06:25.009 --> 00:06:29.277 another mile you have somebody else's house until we were not too close. 00:06:29.310 --> 00:06:36.577 There was too much open space. So sometimes we get our chances to mix 00:06:36.610 --> 00:06:40.976 with other kids when you go and run out of the cattle's as when you're 00:06:41.009 --> 00:06:45.806 gonna mix up and play and then it's time to go home. Then you separate go 00:06:45.839 --> 00:06:51.106 back to, there was no sleeping about us. Just like they do over here now 00:06:51.139 --> 00:06:56.707 you do, your kids do that. No. Okay. 00:06:56.740 --> 00:06:59.957 What kind of interactions for people who want from your same tribe where 00:06:59.990 --> 00:07:03.046 there are a lot of it because you know in America we have a lot of, you 00:07:03.079 --> 00:07:06.717 know like, like racism and that kind of stuff. Was there a lot of 00:07:06.750 --> 00:07:10.176 interaction or was it because you were on one village, maybe you didn't 00:07:10.209 --> 00:07:13.786 have a lot of interaction. The village was comprised of one more the same 00:07:13.819 --> 00:07:19.947 , speak the same language better rare where you would see somebody from a 00:07:19.980 --> 00:07:24.106 different tribe. They may just pass there and say, oh yeah, this is so and 00:07:24.139 --> 00:07:30.687 so from wherever they just may be passing by. But the interaction was 00:07:30.720 --> 00:07:35.967 always with the same people like in our area was dominantly dink. So we'll 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:40.467 only you the, at the time we just heard of the noise, we heard of the 00:07:40.500 --> 00:07:47.856 moral, eh No, I put all this in real life until later in life that I get 00:07:47.889 --> 00:07:51.556 to see someone maybe the new and we were very close, they would come 00:07:51.589 --> 00:07:56.536 around, they go back, they were the ones that they look like us and we 00:07:56.569 --> 00:07:59.767 didn't even thought of any difference. 00:07:59.800 --> 00:08:03.426 Do you have a favorite memory when you think back of your village, Is 00:08:03.459 --> 00:08:08.127 there a memory that you think of that you want to share with us back home 00:08:08.160 --> 00:08:11.606 ? 00:08:11.639 --> 00:08:16.346 The simplicity of life over there. You know, I feel like my life is too 00:08:16.379 --> 00:08:21.866 complicated here, whatever there everything was so simple. It just felt 00:08:21.899 --> 00:08:26.786 like maybe as a kid, you don't never think of stress. But I kind of 00:08:26.819 --> 00:08:32.476 thought of it with a stress free environment when you just run around to 00:08:32.509 --> 00:08:39.917 enjoy being with your uncles, your cousins. So we were always fascinated 00:08:39.950 --> 00:08:43.746 by that. When I look back, I'm kind of fascinated how simple that life yet 00:08:43.779 --> 00:08:49.526 we were contact. Yes. Yeah. It sounds like it, it sounds like it. So we're 00:08:49.559 --> 00:08:54.967 going to start going into like war interrupted this contentment. Right, So 00:08:55.000 --> 00:09:00.177 can you tell me about where you were when you first heard about the war or 00:09:00.210 --> 00:09:08.210 we were in the village and around that time I would rainy season, that was 00:09:09.259 --> 00:09:13.917 the area was flooded a lot. We live in a low land environment close to the 00:09:13.950 --> 00:09:19.596 river now. So when the river is full the water wouldn't come with 00:09:19.629 --> 00:09:24.687 everything. So and I was very young. So when I'm walking around the water 00:09:24.720 --> 00:09:31.496 is just right up to you. So when the war started was really bad. Yeah, we 00:09:31.529 --> 00:09:37.726 went through it, but later we found a little, did you know it was coming? 00:09:37.759 --> 00:09:42.856 Did you see like bombs? Uh It's your people, we heard it was coming with 00:09:42.889 --> 00:09:47.457 the people who have no direction where you want to go? So he just came 00:09:47.490 --> 00:09:53.297 until he hit the village, started taking our house. All the houses, were 00:09:53.330 --> 00:09:58.207 you there when they started burning and started us? So I start running, 00:09:58.240 --> 00:10:04.707 was it late at night or was it? I remember it was sometime around like a 00:10:04.740 --> 00:10:11.457 mile nine a.m. In the morning. Yeah. Where did we don't uh so that's what 00:10:11.490 --> 00:10:16.396 we took off a kid. Sometimes you don't think too much of it, you just kind 00:10:16.429 --> 00:10:19.677 of feel like it's an opportunity for you to go and see another filling 00:10:19.710 --> 00:10:23.947 that people got to see until you look back later when your family members 00:10:23.980 --> 00:10:30.126 get killed. Now you understand the death that, but I think then you start 00:10:30.159 --> 00:10:34.646 to understand the gravity of it, but has the kid proof we'll go into 00:10:34.679 --> 00:10:39.766 another minute. We might, we knew we were going to come back. Yeah, and 00:10:39.799 --> 00:10:47.226 never came back. Right. Yeah. So, so when you uh so were you there when 00:10:47.259 --> 00:10:52.067 they were ransacking the village and catching it on fire? Uh so that was, 00:10:52.100 --> 00:10:55.297 that was there. But you did think you were kind of able to come back? 00:10:55.330 --> 00:11:01.506 Right, okay. Tell me, how long did you guys march? How long did you escape 00:11:01.539 --> 00:11:07.636 with your parents at first? Right. Yeah, okay. And then, well at the time 00:11:07.669 --> 00:11:13.646 we didn't know how to like cow. We kind of felt okay, we've been away 00:11:13.679 --> 00:11:18.516 three months, six months until all that up 27 years later, you haven't 00:11:18.549 --> 00:11:24.037 gone back. Yeah, so took a while, I mean it's months, three months at a 00:11:24.070 --> 00:11:29.346 time because I think, and now the time they start learning really was 00:11:29.379 --> 00:11:34.106 sometime in august now I get to go back to the, it was sometime in all of 00:11:34.139 --> 00:11:39.537 us, we didn't read to like someplace we call little safe until like 00:11:39.570 --> 00:11:46.496 december. So we walked around three months and a half and you told me a 00:11:46.529 --> 00:11:49.827 story about how your dad had to go to the hospital for a bit and then you 00:11:49.860 --> 00:11:54.159 came out, can you remember that story you told me and?