Sharing Stories, Linking Lives: Literacy Practices Among ... - CPLS

Perry Sudanese Refugees
also systematically discriminated against non-Muslims; Chol described the experience of an
uncle who attended the university in Khartoum, and who failed all of his classes until he
pretended to convert to Islam and took on a more Arab-sounding name. Suddenly, Chol’s uncle
found himself at the top of his class.
Opportunities for schooling were relatively more plentiful before the beginning of the
current war. Ezra explained that many schools were established in the south prior to the war.
“After 1972, the Addis Ababa agreement 3 , there was a relative peace for a period of ten years, a
decade, before the war broke out in ’83. These schools were established either by the church, or
church mission, or by the government.” However, schools were still few and far between.
Francis Bok explains the situation in Escape from Slavery:
I did not go to school. No one in my family had any formal education; I don’t think I
knew what a school was or what happened there. I had heard the word “school,” but all it
meant to me was a place that some kids from the village had been sent to in Juba, the
capital city of southern Sudan (2003).
Not surprisingly, literacy levels among southern Sudanese were quite low, due to such
limited opportunities for schooling. For record-keeping, southern Sudanese rely on their
memory, according to the informants for this study. “When I was young,” Chol said, “I never
read anything. Whatever has been told to me, I have to keep in my mind.” He gave the following
example:
In Africa, when an old man or a woman needs to die, he can mention all the things for his
entire life since he was very young; “I need my children to remind this person . . . I have
this many cows.” He don’t forget the cows, all the things. . . . No paper written, but only
in his mind.
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