By Rebecca Apajook Lual Deng
“Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Dinka of Eastern Bank of the Nile River, from areas of Gok, Athoc, Twic, Hol and Nyarweng, who move to the big cities with in South Sudan or Western countries for a search of educational opportunities or a better life, find themselves facing difficult life challenges of adjusting to unfamiliar terrain; but the most difficult thing they have to deal with, is their identity, who they are. With realities of western life, in areas which require a sense of community and with none of communities, which constituted Dinka of Eastern Bank of the Nile River, has majority to have a self-contained and functioning community, the need to come together and be a community becomes a pressing one.
Although all members of aforementioned communities are convinced for a need to have a broad based community which includes Gok, Athoc, Twice, Hol and Nyarweng, the question of what to call it has sparked a debate and left these communities more fractured than ever before. This paper will address the traditional realities of, a conflict of identity among the members of and perhaps prescribe a solution or two to conflict of identity among, aforementioned communities. To avoid confusion, Dinka of Eastern Bank would be used to collectively refer to communities of Gok, Athoc, Twic, Nyarweng and Hol ; Block 1 is Gok and Athoc and Block 2 is Nyarweng, Twic and Hol
Traditional realities of communities of Dinka of Eastern Bank
How this communities got be sharing this geographical location on the Eastern Bank of the Nile , a place that came to be referred to as Bor , is a question this paper will not address ; how these communities of Gok, Athoc , Twic, Nyarweng and Hol relate to each other is a gist of this paper , however . These communities since time immemorial have established a good sense of neighborliness among themselves – one which have allowed for common judicial and similar administrative structures, common defense and intermarriages.
During invasion of external forces of Arabs, Turkish, Egyptians, and British, these communities under collective leadership rose and vehemently defended their territory; act of bravery which was ultimately sealed with blood of these communities’ leaders. Men like, Deng Biar , Athieu Madol , Deng Malual , under leadership of Ajang Duot were killed in 1967 by the orders of Prime Minister Said Al Mahadi as a revenge for an officer killed by Anya-Anya I. What this collective killing of these leaders attest to, is a common feature or fate that is so obvious for outsiders, such as Arabs, to recognize and willingness to die as leaders of a shared community without betraying one another.
In yet another common area of cooperation, these communities have allowed for administrative and judicial systems which recognized some leaders among these communities as higher authorities, paramount chiefs, to whom difficult issues were referred to; these covetous and prestigious positions were held by men like Mabior Ngueny, Ajang Duot, and Deng Malual, these leaders ruled with no prejudices, but with dignity and honor and were respected among these communities.
Finally, the communities of Dinka of Eastern Bank, of course, given good neighborliness and a common fair system of government and defense, asked each other’s hands in marriages which produced great men among these communities; For instance Malok Aleng, the former director of South Sudan Banks and author of ‘The Southern Sudan, Struggle for Liberty’, is an offspring of Athoc and Twic. Honorable Abel Alier, the former Vice President of the Republic of Sudan and two times President of south Sudan regional High Executive Council and author of ‘South Sudan, To Many Agreements Dishonoured’, is an offspring of Athoc and Gok. These are just few examples of great men who came out of these intermarriages among these communities of Dinka of Eastern Bank, but the list is very long as you could imagine centuries of intermarriages.
After seeing how these communities collectively defense, rule, marry themselves, one would think they might have a common name which they all cherish, pay allegiance to and proud to defense and which was, perhaps, used by their enemies to lump them together. Of course, these communities were conscious of their common threats and good, and as such quickly realized their territory was flooded during rainy season by the spillover from the Nile; and therefore decided to name the area on Eastern Bank of the Nile as Bor and the inhabitants as Boor. And since then the place become Bor and people came to proudly refer to themselves as Boor; and never had any of these communities question their allegiance to the community, Bor. However , the shift in attitude in use of Bor as collective name and subsequent need to look for a new identity from without among the members of Bor community in Diaspora is interestingly troubling to say the least .
Conflict of Identity between bocks of Dinka of Eastern Bank
The debate of identity ,of whether in rejecting or reaffirming the common historical name , Bor, which was proudly and without fail responded to and defended with blood , has polarized these five groupings , Hol , Gok , Twic , Nyarweng and Athoc , in to two major blocks ; Athoc and Gok as one block which reaffirms and takes ownership of Bor community and Nyarweng, Hol , and Twic , on the hand as other block, a force to reckon with in their rejection of a notion of belonging to Bor community and instead look for new sense of identity from without . Of course, between these two extreme blocks is moderate block, centripetal force sort to speak, comprises of members from both camps, which assumes a role of identity compasses and tends to redirect and normalize these two extreme views to original sense of one collective community Bor.
Block1 of Gok and Athoc over period of time became synonymous with name Bor as a community and Boor as people , a fact that is attributable to nothing other than their stalwart support and defense of the common name and reluctance, on the hand , from Block2 of trio , Hol , Nyarweng and Twic , to stand for what is historically their . In seeing how the name , Bor, and Boor , become inseparable with Gok and Athoc of Block 1 , Hol , Nyarweng and Twic resolved to oppose any attempt to use name Bor or Boor on them ,because, they argue, responding to a name identifiable with Block 1 is being appendage and therefore subservient .
To make matters worse , some members of Gok and Athoc , who gain God knows what from disintegration of original ,collective community ,Bor, lord it over members of Twic, Hol and Nyarweng who part with their ranks to join Athoc and Gok under the banner of Bor community; these members of Athoc and Gok have more often than not used phrases like ‘ Bor Asili, Smart one’ , just to mention few , to stake their ownership of Bor community and right to be Boor and to equally push to periphery those of Block 2 .
In spite of well displayed bravery by members of Block2, Twic, Hol and Nyarweng, in defending common interest of Boor, they are always dismissed as cowards , acclaimed use by Block 1 on top of being seen as not authentically Boor, not Asili , to push them [Block 2 ] off the rail of the history they helped to create . This grimy caricature of Block 2 ( Hol, Nyarweng and Twic) , which is always painted by their brothers from Block1 ( Gok and Athoc) , has constantly caused them to question their collective identity as Boor and delve in to forming their collective identity as Block 2 , Nyarweng , Hol and Twic , a task that has left a lot to be desired . It has also caused some moderate or politically opportunistic members of both Block1 and Block 2 to adopt, interesting and queer views to tone down this debate of taking oneself and dismissing other as not Bor.
In reacting to excessive arrogance and monopoly over the use of Bor and Boor from Block1 of Athoc and Gok, Block2 members of Hol, Nyarweng and Twic more often than not try to look within their Block 2 of trio for a common label to collectively describe themselves, but it is a task always met with insurmountable challenges which threaten their frail unity. In this quest of finding collective label for themselves (Block2) the obstacle that usually comes up is a tendency of one of this trio to project its idiosyncrasy over others. Twic, particularly Kongor, rejects any debate that would not recognize their numerical advantage, which understandably gives them upper hand in prescribing the name for the trio – a prescription that is nothing, but adoption of Kongor as collective label which proves to be a bitter tablet to be gobbled by the rest of trio . Any other name reflective of any one of the remaining trio members is not equally convincing , a frustration which has resulted in to changing trajectory , from that of inward to outward looking, in their search of identity.
Outward search for a label, for a collective description, has taken the trio, Hol, Nyarweng and Twic to explore their history and align themselves with supposedly distant cousins. For instance the trio called themselves Twic East as opposed to Twic West which is in Bhar el Gazal. The use of Twic East and Twic West to respectively refer to Twic Bor and Twic Bhar el Gazal is a recent phenomenon, whose genesis could be traced to the meeting of Greater Twic community which was held in Kansas City in United States. This meeting, which was attended by notable and self-appraised members of Twic Bor and Twic Bhar el Gazal, reaffirmed that these Twic communities on either sides of the Nile River were related; sharing the same ancestry and their common good was paramount and should be protected. In line with adopted agenda to further and promote their common good, they right then resolved that various attachments on Twic to distinguish them were misleading and diminutive and should be discarded and replaced with geographical locations. So, Twic Bor and Twic Bhar el Gazal respective became to be known as Twic East and Twic West. Indeed the newly acquired suffix is found to have no attachment with Bor, and dearly embraced by Twic community of Eastern Bank. However, to many in the Twic East community it is not convincing for its inception was hatched in a foreign soil by members who are not attuned with the community of Twic, but rather members motivated by their own interests. So, it is obvious that adoption and use of geographical description east is not a satisfactory remedy; thus making a need for satisfactory name stronger and perhaps illusive to say the least. However illusive the search for this identity might be, the trio are determined to bring it to successful end.
The other view that is worth looking at, are the views from elitists and politicians from both Block 1 and Block 2. This group’s adamant incessant calls for the unity of Bor community is rather utilitarian instead of organic embrace of the identity; their allegiance to Bor community is cosmetic when it is closely examined and their stake in the name of the community, Bor is pitched on different realities. They agree to be called Boor , but after taking away the creativity of the people of Bor area and accredited foreign element for calling the area as Bor and people as Boor. To be specific, Elijah Malok, in his “‘The Southern Sudan, Struggle for Liberty’, argues the land which stretches from Rumbek to Lotoko was named by Orthodox Christians as Boro, but due to Dinka‘s inability to use vowels at the end of their nouns, the ‘o’ at the end of Boro was dropped to suit local Dinka’s usage and the name became Bor. Malok also urges members of the Dinka of Eastern Bank to equally stake a right in the name Bor and that is outrageous for one group to feel authentically Boor and others as not . Malok’s argument as a pretext to get members of Eastern Bank Dinka to embrace their collective heritage could be welcomed by any one, but a notion of trying to deny the people of their creativity in the name is not well conceivable. Mr. Malok’s proposition could be convincing, but it is rather weakly supported. Dinka have had no any problem with ending their nouns with vowels. For instance nouns like ‘nya, mama, baba, just to mention few, end in vowel. So, uncle Malok’s argument in accrediting foreign element for the name is not good one for rallying Dinka of Eastern Block around the name Bor .
Other argument from this centripetal force of elitists and politicians, the most recent one is the idea of attaching some adjective to the name Bor in order to get the members of Bolck1 and Block2 to embrace their common identity. Name like Greater Bor have spontaneously emerged and surprisingly have been embraced by the members of Bock 2 , Nyarweng, Hol and Twic , who had broken ranks with their brothers of Block1 , Gok and Athoc , over the use of Dinka Bor as a collective name . The fact that Greater Bor has brought a strong sense of unity and purpose among the groupings of Eastern Bank worries the members of Block 1 , Gok and Athoc , the least . Instead Gok and Athoc are questioning this unity which could be easily ensured by addition of greater , why would not plain Bor accomplish the same and what has greater to do with Block 2 , Nyarweng, Hol and Twic . Of course, adoption and use of Greater Bor has raised more questions than answers.
Having seen the struggle and search for identity in the community of Dinka of Eastern Bank, one would think it is a time for solutions. However, given previous attempts and reactions, to add adjectives, crediting foreigners with naming of the community and reach in to the annals of history for identity, one would have to be cautious when prescribing any remedy. Of course, it is obvious any foreign prescription would not be welcomed. My words of advice to these groupings of Athoc, Nyarweng, Twic, Hol and Gok, are:
1. You are the ones who can find differences among yourselves, but the outsiders lump you together as Dinka Bor.
2. Your cosmetic additions to Bor are nothing, but dilution of authenticity of the historic creativity. If you cannot unite under banner of Bor, forget about this unity in cosmetics.
3. In your discussions of names, remember to respect common heritage; these communities have been through hell together and been slain by the same sword and will ever share the region regardless of alliances being forged for survival.
Rebecca Apajook Lual Deng is an anthropology student at Dar El Salaam University in Tanzania and could be reached by email at rebeccapajookdeng@gmail.com
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“To be Dinka Bor or not to be”, is a Question of Our time
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