Why Were They Interested In Our Ages?
By Aluel Bol Kuanyin, 2021
In this audio piece, Aluel’s father, Bol Kuanyin Agoth, is sharing memories of home, his relationship with his father and his entry into formal education in colonial Sudan.
The Paramount Chiefs of Gogrial area taken shortly after the death of my grandfather Kuanyin Agoth (d. May 1957). His eldest son, Wek Kuanyin (third from right) became chief and is standing in the back row wearing a white shirt and a light-colored tie. Giir Thiik (far left) who is briefly mentioned in this piece is seated wearing a black suit and white hat. My maternal grandfather, Benjamin Lang is also pictured, standing behind Giir Thiik, wearing a sash over his black suit. Photo courtesy of my mother Abuk Lang.
TRANSCRIPT:
[When]I was bitten by the snake and I was brought from the cattle camp, I found my father to be the acting administrator of Gogrial and people would come with letters. He had a clerk who reads his letters. Then when he would reply, the clerk would write it. Then he has ivory as a kind of seal which he would put on an ink pad
After six months, then he goes back to his house Malek. GIIR THIIK would come and stay in his house and do the same administration. So, the British were stretched. They didn’t have many administrators.
By the time I went to school in 1952 it was an Assistant District Commissioner which they could manage to bring to Gogrial, not a complete District Commissioner. So, they brought this Assistant District Commissioner whose name was called Ronald Boyle, and he was the one who tried to assess our ages by looking at our lower teeth.
We were all brought in the morning at about six, and now we were lined up in front of the office of the District Commissioner—came out and would look and grab our jaw and look at our teeth, and the guy after him would just record the age. He would turn and would say, his age is so and so, his age is so and so. We were surprised. Why were they interested in our ages? And we were told to get onto the trucks and were sent to school. We were just like some recruits… Of course, the recruitment was something that was a common thing the government does.
I was all the time crying, that my father didn’t like me… brought to school…had some hardships with the rough boys. I would cry all the time
Now we were given a vacation, we jumped off the lorry—the truck—and I wanted to know where my father was because sometimes he could stay some place far away from Gogrial. They said “yeah, he’s there, sitting under a tree there. He was on the way to Madol.”
embraced him while he was sitting on this deck chair. You know a deck chair?
mmhmm
And It is so rickety and…the most…. uhh
unstable?
Unstable kind of chair
(laughs, softly)
While I was there, he didn’t even greet me like “how are you?” or talk to me. He just looked at me and started looking for a paper in his pocket. It was a letter. Pulled it out and said, “Read this to me.” So, my father would again every now and again, every time he would see me he would say “Bol, come on”and then he would give me a letter to read. Then I began to understand now, that yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what he wanted me to do. To be able to read him his letters privately rather than to use the—what do you call—the court clerk—So, he would always tell me, tomorrow you come and write some letters. And also, I liked doing this job because every now and then there will be tea, there will be crackers [chuckles] so it was very nice, well paid job.
mmnhmm