A letter to the Elders of South Sudan - By Godfrey Lado

A letter to the Elders

What will and can you tell us children?

A lot to explain and little time to explain it…

What will and can you tell us children about our fight for freedom? Extended again,

What will and can you tell us children about our role in history, how we survived to this point?

When people say we were rebels

When people say we were slaves

What will and can you tell us children, about our rebellion and slavery in particular and rebellion and slavery in general?

What will and can you tell us children, so we can stop turning our faces away or want to crawl all under the table, when they mention our condition in the world today, we want to stop blaming ourselves

You have not explained it to us because you have not explained it to yourself, somebody told me.

You have to know your oppressor and the nature of his oppression and what you did about it, somebody told me.

At what point do we sit down and not argue about TV, at what time do we sit down and tell simple stories, about our revolutionary heritage and get it across to our children, somebody told me.

We have the longest revolutionary heritage of any people on the face of the earth; we have fought longer and harder and against greater odds than any people on the face of the earth, somebody told me.

Why do we children not know this?

Because if we knew this we may have loved ourselves more,

Because if we knew this, none of us would put poison in their veins,

if we knew this, we would know, that a code of conduct is expected of us, we cannot afford to live selfishly, our conduct must reflect the best in a whole people and when someone try to lead us in ways not of our liking,

we should have enough sense of our own selves on this earth to say, we are not a people who engage in things of that nature, we are not a people who demean ourselves in that way, but for us to know this, we have to know what kind of society produced us

So, why do we children not know this?

Godfrey Lado

Inspired by Dr. John Hendrik Clarke
The Forgotten Stones

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