Life at the pump
El Fatih, often comes to the pump to picnic and enjoy the different crowds coming from all the villages around. It’s a change for the teenagers who do not dare go much further. They all remember their two friends who had gone to find work in the capital and are now dead. To adventure into the big cities means they can be forcibly enlisted into the army for the adventures of war. As with most men in the village, Mohamed Khamis does not want his sons to go to the city and the boys do not want to go either. Adam and Harron were allowed out of the village only if they looked for work on farms and far away from towns.
He cannot explain why the war
Their country has been more than over 30 years in civil war. North Sudan where Khartoum the capital and government are located are fighting over Southern Sudan. After so many years the reasons for the war have varied and multiplied and now Mohamed Khamis cannot explain clearly why it keeps on for so long. He knows that in his country there are more than 600 tribes and many have always been in war with each other.
But their Iwamaa tribe, he explains has never been in war with anyone.They have never had a nomadic life that brings contacts with other tribes and more reasons to get into conflicts. They have kept to villages of their ancestors working the land their chief has given them in the center of the country. And even now that the desert is coming in on the village and that the earth is getting drier every year, they do not want to go away from their land.
