When SPLA started fighting in the South 1983, the first thing I heard in the news that there is a military mutiny in Bor, they announced in the news as a normal news. Then in the next day Southerners were starting talking secretly about Anyanya movement in the South Sudan… The Government started arresting youth to do their military service and of course do some practical exercises in the South, the good thing that I was still student so didn’t arrest me because of the school uniform, at that time I see many lorries full of youth and they used to call it “Kasha” and people also talking about getting them back to their native areas… So this continued day and night, and Nimiri’s regime took them to military camps and trained them to be soldiers, I think that Nimiri was aware of the movement in the South and it’s not easy for his regime and that why you can see most of the SAF soldiers were from Darfur, in 1984 I was in Zalengi for a visit and I heard the soldiers talking about SPLA and how dangerous they are and they call them them devils because they can shoot you in total darkness if your watch reflect any tiny light. The people in the North at that time they have been deceived with media and everyone sees the movement in the South as a criminal act by some Southern soldiers.
The Southerners were laughing secretly on the government statements, and they started to have a regular lunch invitations, I have never attended one of this lunch meetings but I assume that they were talking about what is going on in the South, and after few months two of my Uncles left Khartoum, I thought they left for some other business but afterward I figure it out that they have joined SPLA, it was a shock for me, and I told my self what about if they got killed in the fighting, they were my best friends and I learned a lot of them and they always encouraging not to let people insult me and if somebody tried to do so be ready to defend your self, and also how to make bags from cement sacks and then sell it in the market for people to carry what they bought from the market, because of that I have been arrested by the police, the neighbours informed the police that we are stealing cement sacks from one the houses, it’s funny because these sacks were useless for them and we go there and collect them in front of their eyes and they allowed us to take them, me and a cousin of mine have been taking to the police station it was a real arresting procedure a police car came to our house in "Halfaya Almolook", and searched the house because I was hiding from them then my Uncle asked me to come out, then I showed my self and took on the back of a Landrover 110 to the police station we sat there for sometimes and then my mother showed and talked to the policemen, what? I didn’t know till today…then we’ve been released and no one said anything about the cement sacks.
So we were very venerable if anyone said anything against us he or she always right and people believe what they said and never believe you, that why our neighbours were so keen to threaten you with calling the police, and if we saw a policemen in the neighbourhood that’s indicating that a Southerner is going to be taken.
