washingtonpost.com: A Language Barrier to Peace

[P. Kerim Friedman]

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A Language Barrier to Peace
Central Sudan City Eschews Arabic for English in Schools

By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 13, 2003; Page A12

KUDI, Sudan -- At dawn, the children began their hike down the bushy
hills of the Nuba Mountains. Some "went footing," as they call it here,
for 40 minutes, others for a good two hours. But all made the journey
because they wanted to get to school. Inside one of the dark mud huts,
they squatted on straw stools and were greeted with the word
"Ethnicity," written on the blackboard.

What was surprising was not the political nature of the lesson, which
used a textbook written by the country's main rebel group. It was the
language of instruction: English.

As the Sudan's Arabic-speaking northerners and black African
southerners come close to signing a peace accord after a long-running
civil war, what language to speak in the center of the country is one
of the obstacles to a deal.

The people of Nuba, through centuries of slave trading and forced
migration, speak Arabic, the official language of Sudan. But they say
they are closer ethnically and culturally to the south, where English
became commonly used when the region was under British control. Sudan
became independent in 1956.

So the community voted two years ago to make English the lingua franca
for the more than 25,000 students in areas of the Nuba Mountains held
by southern rebels, a golden, sun-swept and fertile region in central
Sudan.

"Is it risky? No. In Nuba, Sudan, you know that we are Africans, not
Arabs. This will be the new Sudan, and we will decide our fate," said
Simon Kalo, regional director of education for schools in the Nuba
Mountains. "All of the Nuba people really wanted this shift."

Few other areas of Sudan show as clearly how the largest country in
Africa sits uneasily between black sub-Saharan Africa and North
Africa's largely Arab and Muslim populations. Civil war has been a near
constant since independence. The current round began in 1983 when then
President Jaafar Nimeri decided to end the south's autonomous status
and enforce Islamic law.

An interim agreement signed in July 2002 in Machakos, Kenya, outlines a
plan for Sudan in which the south would vote for unity with the north
or independence after a six-year period under a transition government.

Talks were held last weekend in the Kenyan resort town of Naivasha
between John Garang, head of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, and
Ali Osman Taha, Sudan's vice president. Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell, who visited in October to reinforce U.S. desire for an
agreement, called these next few weeks "a moment of opportunity that
must not be lost." He called on the warring parties to conclude a deal
by the end of December.

But the last phase of negotiations contains some of the war's most
heated issues, including how to share the country' vast oil reserves,
which are mostly in the south but are under the control of the north.
Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese in south and central regions have
been moved off the land since 1999 in a government campaign to obtain
oil, according to local officials and a recent 754-page report by Human
Rights Watch.

Another obstacle is the status of three areas in the center of the
country -- the Nuba Mountains, a region called Blue Nile just east of
the Nuba Mountains, and Abyei, west of Nuba. People in the contested
regions want to vote on their future status. Under British rule they
were considered administratively part of the north, and the government
in Khartoum does not want to set a precedent for self-determination in
the territory it controls.

The Nuba Mountains are divided between a rebel-held side with a
population estimated at 400,000 and a government side with a population
of more than 1 million. Human rights groups say that the government
prevents people from leaving its territory.

"We want peace. But don't trust these people," said Abulaziz Adam
Alhilu, the governor of the rebel-held part of Nuba, referring to the
government in Khartoum. Posters on the wall of his office tallied the
number of displaced -- 30,000 -- in his region of central Sudan by
construction of an oil pipeline.

 From the straw-roofed tea and brew houses to the mud-walled classrooms,
Nuba's citizens said they see switching to English as the first step in
defining their new role in Sudan as separate from the north.

"Please, teacher?" called Sanwell Aliadalian, 16, an enthusiastic
student who wore a maroon suit vest over a torn T-shirt. "The words, I
want to know what they mean."

"I wake up too early and go to bed too late. I just keep reading my
English letters," boasted Amna Ismail, 18, looking down at her cracked
bare feet. She, like Sanwell, had recently journeyed home from
Khartoum, where they fled a decade ago to escape the fighting.

They survived the war, but they were forced to convert to Islam in one
of the many camps run by the government for southern refugees. In the
camps, Ismail was teased as an abed -- an Arabic word that can mean
black or slave.

"Myself, I love learning English too much," she said as she played with
a loose thread from a faded green dress. "It hurts to speak Arabic.
It's not my tongue."

"It's perfectly understandable that the change to English would happen
at this moment in their history," said Alex de Waal, director of
Justice Africa and author of the book, "Facing Genocide: The Nuba of
Sudan."

De Waal said the people of Nuba were victims of a program that "can
only be described as systematic ethnic cleansing. The whole experience
of jihad and particularly of mass relocation affected people in a
profoundly negative way and is seared into the consciousness."

An estimated 20 percent of the population in Nuba are Muslims. But they
oppose the strict form of Islam that Sudan's government pushed during
the 1990s.

Imam Adam Atrun said the north bombed his mosque in Kauda, a central
town in the Nuba Mountains. His claims have been documented by human
rights groups. "But we are black. So the north, they can oppress us,"
he said, adding his children will learn English for speaking and Arabic
for praying. "The North, they are not good Muslims. So now I want my
children to learn English."

A cease-fire in the Nuba Mountains has held since January 2002,
allowing health and food aid to arrive. But many said they were willing
to return to fighting if they did not get a chance to vote on whether
to join the north or the south.

At a military training camp in the central town of Chowery, 30 fresh
recruits for the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) jogged in a line
across the sweeping valley to join 300 other soldiers. "Nuba, SPLA.
Sudan is ours," they sang.

"Our fighters are strong like mountains," shouted the scores of sweaty
men and women as they rolled, jumped and practiced marching, wooden
sticks in their hands as practice weapons, flip-flops covering their
worn feet. "We are lions ready to fight and defend."

Stones laid out on the grassy entrance of the camp spelled out SPLA in
Arabic and English.

"We are here to defend our people," said Ashia Mahmoud, 24, who had
just returned from a Khartoum peace camp and joined the SPLA after one
day of rest. "We want a chance to vote, we want to speak English.
Otherwise we can go right back to war. We have been fighting so long
already."

But even without a vote, the switch to English is making a powerful
political statement. A print shop, the first ever in Nuba, is churning
out photocopies of books for science and civics in English. UNICEF is
handing out school supplies and funding a school to help teachers get
up to speed in English.

There are 60 teachers attending the school. All are enthusiastic. But
few know any English. So English-speaking teachers from Kenya and
Uganda are sent here to teach reading, health, math and civics.

"I feel like a missionary, teaching English," said Redento Laroko, a
retired Ugandan headmaster who came to help educate a new generation of
Nuba teachers. "But in every way, I think it's good. It's what people
want so much."

© 2003 The Washington Post Company