ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY

by Francis Bok with Edward Tivman

My father’s farm was full of family, friends and love. We had chickens and goats, sheep and
cows; we had beautiful green trees with yellow mangoes and coconuts as big as your head. My
father, it seemed to me, owned the best farm in our village of the Dinka people in Sudan, about
100 kilometers south of what the maps call the Bahr al-Arab River, the border between the north
and south of the country. We lived in two houses – one for men, the other for women – made from
mud and topped by straw roofs shaped like upside-down cones. I did not go to school. No one in my
family had any formal education. Like most boys, I spent my days playing games and running in the
fields. But what I liked to do most was follow my father around as he worked on the farm. I felt my
father’s love every day. One day he called me muycharko, which means “twelve men.” I asked
him, “Why do you call me muycharko?” He laughed and explained that out of all his children, I was
the one who worked the hardest, the one who would never give up. I felt my father’s words flow
into my body and fill me with happiness. I dreamed of being a great man with a great farm
and many cattle.
When my mother told me she had instructed some village kids to take me along on their trip
to the nearby market town, I saw it as the first step to becoming the important man my father
thought I could be. This would be my trip to town on my own, although I had been there with my
father when he went to trade animals and with my mother on market days. Our family also went to
the Catholic Church there. On market day the other kids turned up, and my mother warned me,
“When you sell something, give the money to the older children so you do not lose it.” I grabbed
the carrying pole with my goods: two tins of hard-boiled eggs and peanuts. We walked along a
dusty road and soon approached the market-place. People were already set up in the shade, and
the market smelled of fish, fruit and vegetables. The big kids picked a spot under the tree. I made
some sales and handed over the money, just as my mother had said. Then something changed.
People began walking faster, talking to each other. They seemed excited; some were pointing
towards the river. “Smoke,” I heard. “In the villages.” More people ran into town with news. “Maybe
the murahaliin came,” one said. “They came and burned the houses.” I had heard people in my
village talk of these dangerous men from the north who killed people and stole their cattle. But I
had never seen these murahaliin. The customers began to rush from the marketplace. The sellers
gathered their things. Then we heard bursts of loud noises. Everyone was running. “The murahaliin
are coming!” Wherever people scattered they ran into men with guns entering the town. First men
on horses, shooting people with bursts from their rifles. Then men on foot, shooting and slashing at
people with their long knives. They were not Dinka, but people with lighter skin than ours, in
headdresses and robes. They were shooting the Dinka men, slashing with their swords, chopping off
heads with a single swipe. I had never seen such violence and never heard so many screams.
“Run!” I heard. “Leave your things and run!” I raced from the marketplace, right into the huge
horse with a militiaman pointing a gun at me. I stopped; I could not move. Someone grabbed me
from behind – another murahaliin, yelling and waving his gun. I was sure he was going to kill me. All
around I saw people screaming and falling to the ground and not getting up. He pushed me back
into the marketplace with other boys and girls. Everyone was crying and screaming for their
parents. I looked around for help, but all I could see were the bodies of Dinka men, the blood
running from them like water in little rivers. I had never seen a dead body before, and now I saw
more than I could count. I wanted my mother; I wanted my father to pick me up onto his shoulders
and carry me away from this. My entire body and mind turned numb as I waited to be killed. With
no Dinka men standing, the killing seemed to be finished. While a few murahaliin guarded us,
others began collecting food and loading it into baskets. A man picked me up and set me on a
donkey. Some of the women ran to their children, but the militiamen beat them and pushed them
away. When the loading was completed, we headed out of town. Behind the horsemen, the soldiers
and our donkeys walked the older kids and the women, forced to carry the very things that we had
all been selling not long before.
We rode into darkness, my heart beating wildly, my head filled with questions. Why did
these men do this? Where are they taking me? Were my parents safe? In the night we
passed through a forest, then stopped in an open area. They sat us kids down and yelled at us in
their language. We were full of fear, and everyone kept quiet, except for two sisters who through
their tears said they had seen their father and mother shot and killed. A militiaman grabbed the
older girl, yelling at her, trying to shake her into silence. She could not stop crying. He pulled her to
the side, put his rifle to her head and shot her – one shot that rang through the forest. And when
that noise stopped so had the girl’s crying. Her little sister began crying even harder, but her body
twisted and pulsing with sobs. She was crazy with crying, and our silence made her crying seem
louder. One of the murahaliin struck her leg hard with his sword, cutting it off at the thigh. Blood
squirted all over her. I remember this, but I cannot remember if she stopped crying. The murahaliin
began dividing us between them. One man grabbed me and pushed me towards his horse. He sat
me behind his saddle and wrapped a leather belt around my waist. I begged him to let me down, let
me go home to my parents. But we just rode away, the silence of the night broken by my sobs.
As the sun came up I noticed the countryside was different. The trees were small, and the
people had lighter skin. I was sure we were now across the border into northern Sudan, where my
father said the Dinka did not live, only the Arabs. We kept riding until we came to a farm. The
murahaliin got off the horse, then set me on the ground. Three children ran out of the house, then
the mother, all coming up to hug him. The kids approached me, laughing and talking, and I noticed
the younger boy was about my age. Maybe he would be my friend. They seemed happy and began
singing, chanting the same word over and over: abeed, abeed, abeed. I didn’t notice they were
carrying sticks until they started beating me, including the boy I wanted to be my friend. I tried to
block the blows, but the sticks stung my arms as if they had fire on them. “Stop,” I yelled. “Help
me!” The parents did nothing but watch. My body buzzed from the blows. The militiaman finally led
me to a small mud shelter and pointed to a blanket on the ground. I was exhausted and lay down,
but I could not fall asleep. I told myself that my father would want me to stay strong. I kept thinking
how my family would be worried about me, and my father and big brother Buk would come and
save me from these people. I finally fell asleep. The sun woke me, and soon the militiaman and his
wife arrived, followed by the children. The kids started singing the abeed song again, pointing at
me and laughing. The man handed me a bowl of food. Even though it was bad, I ate because I was
hungry.

For days I kept expecting someone would arrive and tell me it was all a mistake. But no one
came except the militiaman and his sons. I soon figured out the man’s name was Giemma
Abdullah, and his oldest son was Hamid. I could see the family had goats and sheep, horses and
camels and cattle. One morning, when Giemma and Hamid let the animals out, Giemma handed me
a small whip. They herded the animals towards the forest, and I knew I had to follow. What was not
clear to me was that this was my first day of slavery – forced to work for no pay but the garbage
from the family’s dinner and an occasional beating from Giemma’s cattle whip. We drove the goats
towards the forest. Whenever one strayed from the herd, Giemma made me chase after it. This, I
quickly learned, was my job – to keep the goats from running away. It was not easy running
this way and that in the hot sun.
As we walked into the bush, I saw another black boy herding cows among the trees, and then
another. Hamid saw them too and knew what I was thinking. He yelled at me and shook his head. I
could not go near the other boys. Still, I realized I was not alone. I was sure they were Dinkas. After
a few hours we rounded up the animals and drove them to a nearby river. There were hundreds of
animals drinking, and hundreds more waiting their turn. There were also more black boys. Hamid
signaled I was to stay with the goats and away from the Dinka boys. But when I did get close to the
others, I was shocked to hear them speaking Arabic. I answered at least one question: what did
abeed mean? Hamid referred to the other boys as abeed, and I soon learned it meant both “black
people” and “slaves.” Every day I went with Hamid to continue my training as a goat herd. One
day Hamid showed up on his horse. He rode into the bush, and I followed on foot. Later, he rode
away. I worried how I would get the animals back to their pens by myself, but then he returned.
This became part of our routine. Hamid’s job was to spend the day with me and the animals, but
occasionally he would ride away, probably to visit friends. I never knew when he would leave or
return. His freedom taught me that I had none. I was given a wooden-framed bed covered by palm
leaves and a single thin blanket. It was an improvement over sleeping on the ground, but I hated
my life and hated taking care of Giemma’s animals. Some mornings I didn’t want to go. Giemma
would pull my legs from the blanket. “You don’t want to get up on your own two legs,” he’d
say, using gestures to make it clear. “Then maybe you don’t need two legs. I’ll chop one
off for you. Then you can stay here and lie on the ground all you want.” He said this so
often I took his words only as a way to scare little boys – until one day when Giemma and I were
returning from the grasslands, I spotted a Dinka. Then I saw one of his legs was missing. “What
happened to him?” I asked. Giemma smiled at me and said: “I told you that’s what happens to bad
boys. He tried to escape. They caught him and warned him. Then he tried again and…” Giemma
shrugged as if to say there was no alternative. I stared at the boy with one leg as Giemma kept
talking: “That’s what happens when you disobey.”
The routine was the same for several weeks: Hamid and I taking the goats to pasture, going
to the areas where the good grass was, heading to the river for water, and Hamid watching me run
after strays. The days were long, and I dreaded the hot sun and the chaos at the watering hole.
When the sun went down, we would head back, and I would eat my dinner alone and sleep in the
hut next to the goats. I hated not being able to understand what these people were saying. I had to
learn this language, which seemed a wall of strange sounds that made no sense. I listened carefully
to everything Giemma and his sons said to each other, and as the days and weeks went by, I began
to distinguish certain sounds as words. I found out that “hanim” was the word for “goats” and
“sahl” meant “grass.” I soon learned an important word that everyone kept repeating – it sounded
like hop. Did the goats hop the grass? Hamid would say he didn’t hop working with camels. So hop
meant “like” or “love,” and with that knowledge I could tell what Giemma liked and didn’t like.
Learning the language became one of my pleasures. I settled into my job as Hamid’s assistant. But
one day Giemma showed up alone. Today I would take the goats to pasture without Hamid.
I herded the goats out towards the grasslands. A few wandered out of line, but I shooed them
back in. If I lost any goats I knew Giemma would be furious. I got the goats to pasture without any
problems. I began thinking, maybe it will be good not to have Hamid always bossing me around.
But before I could get used to that idea, I saw Hamid on his horse at the end of the bush. He had
come to check on me. At the river I worked hard to make sure none of my goats wandered away,
and as the sun went down I rounded up the animals and headed back. Giemma was not happy,
“Some are missing,” he said. I couldn’t believe it. I had tried so hard. Giemma counted the goats,
then yelled at me and hit me with his whip.
Soon a neighbour arrived leading the two missing goats. Giemma’s anger had the desired
effect. I was scared about losing another goat that I watched them constantly, never permitting one
to stray too far. I got very good at the job, but the fear that something would go wrong and would
earn me a beating never left me. I had so many questions in my head that one evening I asked
Giemma a question in his language. “Why does no one hop me?” He stared at me as if one of his
goats had suddenly spoken. “And why do you make me sleep with the animals?” I asked. “Where
did you learn that?” Giemma yelled, his face puffed up with anger. He hit me, then walked away.
Two days later he appeared and said, “You want to know why no one loves you and why you
must sleep with the animals? Because you are an animal.” That left me dazed. But it
explained why he let his kids hit me, why he fed me garbage, why he left me to sleep in a hut no
better than an animal pen. I now knew that life would never get better for me with these people.
That was the moment I began planning my escape. Later in the day, with the goats fed and
watered, I could rest in the shade and make my plans. I was learning the language. That would help
me find help among these Arab people. But I also had to learn the area. I decided that each day
when I went out with the animals I would look around, investigate the roads, and remember where
the men rode on horseback checking on their slaves. For the first few weeks I had cried every day.
But I realized my crying did not bring anyone to help me, so I decided to replace my crying with
praying. I didn’t know much about religion, but my parents had told me, “God is always with
you.” Alone at night sitting in my hut, I remembered my father once said to me, “Even when you
are one, you are two.” I prayed to God almost every day: “Please help me. I love my
parents, and I want to have a future. I don’t want to die.” In Sudan there are two seasons,
the rainy one and the dry one. I arrived at Giemma’s in the dry time, in April or May. Then the rains
came, occasionally leaking through the roof of my hut. By February it was dry again, and the grass
began to get scarce. “We are going,” Giemma announced one day, explaining that the animals
needed to eat, and the grasslands in our area had been picked clean. Several times a year I helped
the family pack up all their things to take the animals to a “cattle camp” where the grass was more
plentiful.

As we waited our turn at the watering place in the cattle camp, an Arab boy greeted Hamid.
Next to Hamid’s friend was a Dinka boy. He smiled at me and said in Arabic, “Peace be with you.” A
few days later I saw him again, and this time he was on his own, and so was I. “Are things OK for
you?” he asked me in Arabic. My real answer would have taken a day to say. Instead I said in
Dinka, “I’m OK.” He looked around to make sure no one was listening. Then, in Dinka, he asked
me where I was from. I was happy to hear my own language, and it turned out we were from the
same area. “This is a very dangerous place,” he said. He told me to do my job, that when kids
complained they “got hurt.” I told him my master and his kids had already beaten me. He shook his
head. “They will really hurt you.” He told me a lot of kids had been hurt and even shot trying to
escape. He returned to speaking Arabic. “Don’t talk to me in Dinka,” he warned. “It will get me in
trouble. They’ll think we’re planning to do something wrong.” I assured him I would talk only in their
language. “I must go and do my work,” he said. “Be careful,” he repeated and left me alone with
my thoughts, which included the image of the boy I had already seen with the missing leg.
I was well aware of how much worse things could be for me, and I believed that God was
looking after me, just as my parents had promised. They probably would not have recognized me
now, for when I looked into the water where I took the sheep and goats, an older boy looked back. I
was now almost as big as Giemma and taller than Hamid. I told myself that my parents would be
proud of me. I was a good worker and smart enough to stay out of trouble. Then Giemma
complicated my life again. “Tomorrow, you will work with the cows,” he announced. I
protested that they were too big for me to handle. But Giemma had made his decision, and the next
morning we were driving cattle to pasture. The job was not much different from handling the goats
and sheep, except when goats got in a fight you could tear them apart. But the cattle could tear a
grown man apart. Later, Giemma added the camels to my duties as well. When I complained,
Giemma told me to shut up. “You do not want to work, I can shoot you. Or maybe I just cut
off your legs, and you can stay at home.” The days were always the same: in the morning take
the cows to eat, stand in the blazing sun to get water, go back to the grasslands, and then head
home as the sun went down. By my seventh summer, I had learned a lot. I knew there were roads
not far from the grasslands where I had been going for years, and I was now fluent in my master’s
language.
I understood that even if I stayed seven more years, my life would not get better. My body
hated the work and the beatings; my mind hated the isolation. Finally I decided it was time to act .
“Tomorrow,” I announced to myself, “I will head out with the cows as usual, but I will
not return.” Before the sun came up I took the cows into the forest. The cattle began grazing, and
I left them there. I ran to nearby road and kept running. After seven years I had finally done what I
had dreamed of doing. Suddenly, up ahead, I saw some cows – and a man on a horse. My stomach
swirled: If he saw me, it was over. I turned around and began moving in the opposite direction,
hoping to make it into the forest. Within seconds, I heard the horse at my back. “Where are you
going?” the man asked. My escape had failed. The man took me to Giemma’s house, and when he
saw me a look of surprise crossed his face. The man on the horse explained what had happened.
Giemma grabbed a cattle whip and started beating me. I did not protest. When he stopped hitting,
he warned: “If you try this again, you’re going to be like those kids we saw. I will hurt
you.”
The next morning Giemma took the herd to the grasslands himself. The following morning I
told Giemma I would take them. He stared at me. “Do not try to escape,” he warned. I assured him I
would not do that again. I headed off with the cows and spent the day in my usual routine. But
when the sun began to go down, instead of herding the cows back to Giemma’s, I headed to the
road again. This time I went in the other direction, staying in the woods, following the road, which I
could see through the trees. About an hour later, I saw a little river where some people were
washing up. There were also some slaves around. I decided I could risk a short rest. Everyone would
assume I was working. I knelt down, scooping some water to my face. It felt cool. “I am on my way,”
I said to myself. But then another feeling took over, one of danger. I turned, and there was
Giemma! He was tying his horse to a cart. Was my mind fooling me? Was it a bad dream? But it was
no dream. The sight of him was like a punch in the stomach. He saw me and asked, “What are
you doing here?” “I was just getting a drink. The cows are here.” “Where?” Giemma
looked around, seeing no evidence of his cows. “Not far,” I said, lying again. “Let’s go
get the cows,” said Giemma. So we went looking for the cattle. I think at first Giemma actually
believed me – he did not think I was crazy enough to try to escape two days after I had been caught
and beaten – but we kept walking and there were no cows. Giemma became upset. “You tried to
escape again.” I said nothing. I waited for him to hit me, but all he said was, “Let’s go home.”
When we arrived at his place, he cursed me and smacked me several times. Then he led me
into a room and pushed me to the floor. “Tonight will be your last!” he shouted, and tied my hands
behind me with a piece of rawhide, then my legs. I sat there, filled with anger about my own
stupidity. Soon my hands and feet began to hurt. No matter how hard I tried to loosen the rawhide,
it seemed only to get tighter. Giemma returned, carrying his cattle whip, and gun. He pointed the
gun at me and said, “Tomorrow I will kill you.” I wondered if it would hurt as I waited for the
bullet. He lowered the rifle and left the room. I cried with relief, then cried over the fact that this
would be my last night on earth. I don’t remember sleeping that night, only the anger and the fear
and the prayers. It was still dark outside when Giemma returned. I noticed he did not have his gun.
He began untying me and said, “If you do this again, I will kill you. I promise.” I said, “I will
not do it again.” “I do not want to kill you. You take good care of my cows.” I sat in my hut
hoping that Giemma would not change his mind. I was no longer thinking of escaping. So much fear
had filled me that night. Giemma would show up, and my heart would race. “You will not try again?”
“No,” I promised. And I was not lying now. I was not thinking about escaping. To do so was to be
reminded how close I had come to dying. Three days after my escape attempt, Giemma told me to
go back to work. I realized that Giemma might consider me an “animal,” but he liked his animals. I
would make sure I was the hardest working animal on the property. My job became lifeline. I did not
lie to Giemma when I told him I would never escape again. But I eventually realized that, while the
pain and fear came and went, the one thing that never went away was the ache of wanting to leave
this place where I was forced to work and live like an animal. Wasn’t living with these people a
kind of death? My new plan was to wait another three years before I tried to escape again. I’m not
sure why I picked three years. But I would have to regain Giemma’s trust. And also in three years I
would be 17, and I would be stronger, smarter and better prepared to get away. So I tried to do the
best job I could, and as the months passed Giemma seemed happy with me.

His wife would ask, “Why are you keeping him? Why don’t you kill him?” And Giemma
would answer, “He takes care of my cows. He does a good job.” I turned 15 and 16 and then 17. I
was taller than Giemma. I could walk and run for hours. My body was strong and so was my mind. I
was sure I had finally become the man my father dreamed I would be: I was muycharko. My plan
was to leave first thing in the morning and stay out of sight in the forest until I got to the market
town of Mutari. I knew which road to follow. I promised myself that this time I would not give up. If
someone caught me, I would fight. I refused to live as a slave any longer. That morning I headed
out with the cows as usual. As soon as they started grazing, I ran as fast as I could for as long as I
could through the woods along the road towards Mutari. No-one stopped me.
I was farther away from Giemma’s than I had been in ten years. I was hot and tired and dirty,
but I felt relief and a kind of excitement. Before the sun went down I arrived in Mutari. I walked into
town and saw other Dinka with their masters, but no-one seemed to suspect that I had escaped
from mine. I allowed myself to enjoy this new feeling of being on my own. I was free! I decided to
go to the police and made my way to a one-storey mud building. A policeman was sitting at the
desk. “I need help,” I said. He took me to another man, and I told him I had escaped and wanted to
find some people from the south. He sent me to a waiting area, where I sat for several hours. Finally
another policeman took me to a kitchen area. “Clean up,” he said. For the next two months, I
worked for the Mutari police as a kitchen boy. They fed me, and I worked, and I slept in the
kitchen. When I finally realized they were not going to help me, I left the police station on market
day and disappeared into the crowd. The trucks loaded their goods on the edge of the market area.
I hoped one of them would be my ride out of Mutari. A man named Abdah allowed me to climb in
his truck and hide me behind his cargo. He would take me to his hometown, but he warned me that
it was dangerous for me there. He invited me to come home with him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I
want you to be safe.” For two months I lived with Abdah, his wife and two boys. His wife fed me the
same food she prepared for her husband and children. She treated me as if I were a visiting friend
or relative. Abdah and his wife believed that no Muslim had the right to enslave other human
beings. Abdah asked some friends whether they could get me a ride to the capital, Khartoum, but
no one was willing to take the chance of driving an escaped slave. Finally Abdah said I must take
the bus. “I will buy you the ticket.”
I arrived in Khartoum late in the afternoon. I met a Dinka in the bus station and told him I
hoped to find someone who could take me to where people from the south live. “I’m going there
now,” he said. “Come with me.” My prayers had finally been answered. I was alive, free, and for
the first time since I was a small child, I felt safe. I went to the refugee camps outside Khartoum,
where I looked for my parents. I had no idea whether they were dead, enslaved, or living in a
refugee camp in Kenya or here in the capital. I told people what had happened to me, how I had
been enslaved for ten years. Before long, two men came to see me. ”People have told us that you
are saying things against the government,” they said and took me to the local police station. The
government denied that there was slavery in Sudan, and they were not about to let a 17–year-old
Dinka boy tell everyone he had been a slave for ten years. I was arrested and held for seven
months. Then I was released. I was never sure why. But I vowed to do everything I could to escape
from the country. With the help of friends from the south, I got the necessary papers on the black
market. I took a train north, changed to a boat that took me up the Nile across the Egyptian border,
then switched to another train to Cairo. 
There I was accepted as a UN-sanctioned refugee, and in August 1999 I was allowed to go to
America. I eventually learned that my parents and two sisters had been killed, but my
older brother Buk survived and, after 13 years, I talked with him by phone. TODAY I WORK
for the American Anti-Slavery Group (AASG), which speaks out against slavery in Sudan and
throughout the world. (Our website is iAbolish.com). My job is to tell people how I was kidnapped,
beaten, treated like an animal and forced to work for ten years, until I escaped. And I call on the
American people to stand up and help my people. I’ve spoken to church and school groups, and
even testified before the US Senate. We finally got the Sudan Peace Act passed in Washington. It
recognizes the problem of slavery, provides aid for southern Sudan and imposes sanctions on the
government if it’s determined that Khartoum does not negotiate for peace in good faith. Someday I
hope to return to Sudan, but in the meantime I continue to work with the AASG and for my people,
as well as continue my education. It’s hard work, but I am still in my twenties and have plenty of
time and energy. Whenever life gets tough I think of my father, who told me I would grow
up to do important things “You are my muycharko,” he said. “Twelve men.”

Reader’s Digest April 2005