12/08/2025
You must set forth at dawn: inspired by Wole Soyinka
The season's signs are on the sky, the grass, the winds, the smiles of the people and the rate at which the village's nostalgia for this season is developing is stunningly awe-inspiring. Winter is fast approaching and Deng is caught between the thoughts of exploring means to enter college and getting money to buy Chrismas clothes. In Nyandiar, young men his age are either preparing for harvest or the next nearby cattle camp to raid. Deng is an exceptional character in his circle. Having graduated high school at a remarkably young age of eighteen---which is extraordinarily young in contrast to many other high school graduates in his village who are in their mid or early twenties, he has since then been growing increasing reclusive and strange to the circle of and meals-mate. His thoughts always revolve around how to go to college and what to do should he graduate someday.
This winter, however, is markedly different. He has been spending his days since graduating from high school in the village--- a new experience for him, and is now approaching a year. What makes this winter particularly different is the fact that buying Christmas clothes here is more important than the celebration itself, and Deng's mother, who had always been the one doing all the things for him, had fallen sick two months earlier, and was not able to make the local wine out of which their living was afforded. When he was in boarding school in Dar-el-Salaam, his mother always bought him clothes two or three months before the Christmas, and the importance of having Christmas clothes wasn't something disturbing to him.
Here in Nyandiar, villagers make money from their harvest by selling sorghum or working with the local traders in carrying dry fish to and from the traders' designated places. It is a routine that when Christmas arrives young men who do not have farms gather in large numbers and provide manpower for those who have large farms in return for a sack of sorghum or a few pounds. The money from that work affords them their Christmas clothes and life goes on. After winter, young men's focus turn to cattle raiding. They meet frequently and discuss which village is weak to resist them and decide on when to raid it. These are normal life affairs in this part of the world, but for Deng, Nyandiar was as strange as the unexplored planets of the milky-way galaxy. The conversations, the routines, the meals, and the environment all are divergent to Deng's view of what a habitable world is.
Deng lives with his uncle, Gatluak. Gatluak has two children, a young boy of twelve and a girl of nine. He has been buying them Christmas clothes since they came to know of the name Christmas and what it means. This season might be as usual. But Deng, now approaching nineteen, thinks it bizarre to have his uncle buy him clothes when he's already of age, having read in books that by the age eighteen one ought to be responsible for themselves.
The Christmas is to kick of in three days and Deng has not yet bought himself clothes. Over the last few days, he has been largely alone in the riverside, either reading a novel or staring at the flow of the Nile, thoughts running at the speed of light in his devastated brain, hope hanging suspended in the air. His thoughts about college have been the most persistent since he realized that he was not going to celebrate this Christmas with new clothes.
"You're almost nineteen, man", Deng told himself.
"You don't have to worry about small things like Christmas clothes".
"Get to college, whatever mean, and buy yourself as many Christmas clothes as you want in the near five or six years".
When Deng sneezes in the cool 25th December morning before the birth of the sun and the death of the stars he approaches the wooden door and quietly slides it to the left side and stands and stretches and looks at the east where the earth shows signs of giving birth to a saviour. The night has been usually long and tiresome. After stretching, he goes back in and packs his few belongings in his small school bag and and opens and clothes the door again without any notice from his young cousin, Gatluak's son. He looks at the east again and smiles at the newborn son staring with its fierce rays at him.
The journey to the town is a risky gamble, especially when one is walking alone on the road. Thieves and killers are known for hiding in the bushes and killing or grabbing people's belongings. Deng, in his mind, only has the thoughts of college and escaping the burden of spending the Christmas day in the house. When he reaches the bush he consoles himself by an old wisdom used as means of assurance one when one anticipates an imminent danger: "when God plans something for you, nobody denies it". He journeys the long distance with courage, head never turning back.
Towards the dusk, the flickering lights of Malakal welcomes him with open arms and he enters the town of his heart. When he arrives at Bol's house he is welcomed with jubilation. His friend Bol likes him so much. They both sit at the gate with their usual small conversation chairs and talk politics, girls, the village and what awaits them.
"You'll not make it to High Jalaba tonight", Bol says.
"So we'll sleep here".
"As usual, no problem", Deng replies.
When they both coincidentally wake up at five in the morning they meet at the washroom door and glance at each other with wide smiles the kind you only see when a girl crushes on a man of a higher social class.
"You have adopted the village style, you lazy boy", Bol teases Deng.
"Things have changed, are changing, and will continue to change, you ideologue", Deng says.
"You know the government scholarship to China is out and we have to try our luck", Bol says.
"Crazy that's coming from you whose brother, Chuol, with an exceptional A+, failed ro secure a simple, always ignored Morocco scholarship", Deng replies.
"Has our government's nepotism changed? How do you expect an average B+ to secure a scholarship to China?".
"God is the greatest. When it's your chance, nobody can deny it. Remember that old saying?", Bol asks.
"Let's see", Deng replies.
"We will drop our application on the web tomorrow and return to our normal lamentations".
The next day by noon they had already dropped their documents in the website. Come sun or rain, China scholarship is out of my league, Deng told himself. His sick mother had a few days, three or two ago, recovered from her sickness and is now back to her normal local wine business. Life is now back to its tract after Deng left the village to the bad boys.
After three months, Deng's phone rings and it's Bol, whom he has not spoken to for like three weeks.
"The results are out and you have been shortlisted", Bol says.
"Which results?", Deng asks.
"The results for the scholarship".
"Congratulations! You're now to pursue a bachelor of medicine in Bijieng Institute of Health Sciences", Bol assuredly tells Deng.
Out of words, Deng closes the phone and wonders alone in his room. Is the news true? Am I dreaming? He goes to his mother and ask money for internet bundles and when he opens his phone he finds his name in a bottom of a list posted by Hot in Juba, a local media house. Fortunately, tickets to and fro, which would have made it difficult for him to travel, have been provided by the scholarship. When he goes back to his mother and breaks the news, his mother couldn't believe it.
"When and how did you apply for that", asks his mother.
"I left the village at dawn and arrived here at and dusk and slept at Bol's house", he says.
"In the morning Bol persuaded me to apply for this scholarship and these are now the results".
"Congratulations to us, ma", Deng emotionally says.
"I'll finally pursue my dream career and make your efforts worth it".
"SON, YOU MUST ALWAYS SET FORTH AT DAWN", was his mother's hyper-emotional reply.
~Gatreak Chiang Reath.
