Jumping the gun

The plane flew so high that it was just a tiny silver cross twinkling in the afternoon sky. As the drone of its engines reached the people in the fields around the village of Turalei, they looked up. It was an Antonov; a feared name in southern Sudan. 'If the sound of the engine changes, it means it has turned around,' said Acuil Banggol. 'Then watch what people do. You should just hit the ground.' But the aircraft receded into the distance. The people resumed their work. There would be no bombing today.

The Sudanese civil war has been going on for so long that the bombers are part of daily life; worth a glimpse into the sky and nothing more. But Acuil had a special reason to be glad the Antonov had ignored Turalei. The Twic Olympics were in town. There was a volleyball final to be played, football teams to support, athletes to cheer and medals to be won. There were hopes to be realised, and ambitions to be pursued. And one of the world's longest-running wars was not going to get in the way.

It started as a dream, but is now a reality. An Olympic Games for southern Sudan. Currently, only the people of Twic County, one of the border regions that lie adjacent to the Arab lands of the North, compete. But a beginning has been made. The concept is simple and the seven-foot-tall figure of Acuil is the brains behind it. Twic is divided into six payams, or districts, and in January a team of athletes from each payam gather in Turalei to compete at football, volleyball, athletics and tug-of-war. They also throw the javelin, using hunting spears that are flung huge distances through the bush. At the end of the competition the payam with the most medals will be declared the winner. This year is the second Olympics and for the winner the prize will be a mechanised flour-grinding mill. In a country with few roads, or even brick buildings, that is worth competing for.

For people used to the extravagance of the modern Olympic Games, Twic offered an at times surreal parallel. At the opening ceremony, each payam had a flag bearer at its head, carrying a homemade banner with stars, or leopards or bulls crayoned on. Behind them marched the athletes. An effort was made to keep colours uniform within each payam, but few in Sudan can afford to choose their clothes with care. The effect was of a rag-tag, shoeless army. For Acuil, watching the ceremony unfold, these young men and women are the future. Last year he cried at the first opening ceremony. This year he is just proud. 'The adults have been lost already to the war. But just give me the children and I'll change them forever,' he said.

A few hours later, Acuil watched as hundreds of people celebrated on a dusty football pitch. It was the last of the qualifying games and Turalei had beaten Akoc 3-0. The teams had marched out together and saluted the crowd as they held hands. Acuil, clutching a handheld video camera, had panned down the line of each team, behaving as if it was a World Cup final, and not the middle of a war zone. The result had never been in doubt. Turalei, backed by a fanatic home crowd, had looked smaller than their opponents. But after the first goal - a comically fumbled free kick - they never looked back. After each goal the Turalei players flung themselves onto the ground in what should have been a bone-breaking experience, but instead they rolled, jumped and hugged in the dust as if it were a swimming pool. In the crowd someone was tuned to the BBC World Service, but no one was listening. Usually people would gather around the set, eager for their one point of reliable contact with the outside world. Not this time. For once, there was something more compelling going on in front of their own eyes.

It began on a Christmas Eve three years ago. Acuil, who was a successful basketball player, was spending the evening with his old sports master 'Coach' Akel in the town of Ajip, deep in southern Sudan. As they ate, he noticed two teams of refugees playing volleyball in the street. They were from different clans, more used to fighting each other than playing sport. Yet they were laughing and joking as they played. 'I thought that I could do this in Twic,' Acuil said. A year later he did. Now the 2002 games has brought thousands of people to Turalei. An old dirt runway cut from the bush for aid flights in the 1998 famine has been converted to a football pitch. Cut logs and two planks nailed together for a crossbar make up the goal posts but from somewhere proper football nets have been found. Around the pitch a five-lane running track has been scored into the earth. As theatres of sporting glory go, it is probably one of the world's most humble. But in terms of spirit, it is up there with the best. Each payam has fielded a squad of 147 athletes and built 'Olympic villages' where they can stay and practise. These are just dusty compounds, or converted village mud huts. Inside them athletes sleep on the ground. Most have only blankets. A lucky few have mosquito nets and under each of them huddle several athletes. They wake at sunrise and the female athletes cook for the whole team. At least they do if they have food. If not, they go hungry. An athlete's life is not glamorous here. But in each 'village' the mood is the same. John Ajac is a cherub-faced 12-year-old from Pannyok payam who has composed his own hunting song for the youngsters' volleyball team. He thought he was good until his team lost. But he was still smiling. 'Back in my payam I thought that I played volleyball very well, but now that I found out that Turalei play better than us,' he said. Martin Areic, 18, has a more sober assessment. As captain of Aweng's football team, there is pride and honour at stake in securing a victory. He insisted on being interviewed in his payam's Olympic compound to explain how proud his father was of his onfield exploits. As he spoke flies fed on a cut on his feet. He did not bother to brush them away. 'What I am doing here is just as important as looking after the cattle,' he said.

Each team has to arrive by 15 January, then they face elimination rounds in each event, building up to a three-day series of finals. Presiding over it all is Coach Akel, a jovial man who cuts a fine figure in his black tracksuit with a bright green stopwatch hanging around his neck. He faced problems that the judges at Salt Lake City could never dream of. There was, after all, always the danger of sparking an inter-payam clan war. As an outsider to Twic, he is seen as impartial, but last year he still needed heavy security to prevent accusations of bias. This year just one armed guard sufficed. And the Uzi strapped under his shoulder was enough to ensure Akel's decisions were final. 'People often ask me why I don't support their payam. I tell them this is the way of sport. They have to learn these things,' he said.

People did seem keen to take up the sporting ideal, perhaps at times too keen. Sitting in Acuil's headquarters, Coach Akel recounted a story from the qualifying rounds that would leave most Western observers sceptical. 'We had some girls who were too pleased to be here and they just fainted with happiness when they arrived,' he claimed 'Then, when they won through their rounds, they fainted again. We had to take them to the doctors. You can have too much happiness, you know.' It sounded improbable. Or a foolish boast. But then again things are different in southern Sudan.

Flying into Turalei the land stretched flat and featureless to the horizons. It is a hard place to eke out a living at the best of times. In the dry season it is arid, in the wet season it is an unpassable swamp. And these are far from the best of times. Since independence from Britain in 1956 there has been almost constant war between the Arab North and the black African South, home to the Dinka tribe and various other groups. It is war of race, culture and religion. There is no end in sight. Only between 1972 and 1983 was there peace. It is not a period that seems likely to be repeated soon. This is a war of medieval barbarity. Frontlines are rare. Instead there are 'raiding seasons' where government columns will move down south to loot and pillage. Government territory in the South is limited to a string of garrison towns in a permanent state of siege. The countryside is controlled by the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA), which has set up its own administration. But, without the towns, the liberated South is just mud hut villages and endless bush; bereft of industry, infrastructure and development. It is like a return to the Iron Age. The only sign of the modern world is the guns. And they are not in short supply.

Many of the athletes are war veterans with years of fighting behind them, yet most are still in their teens. These are the child soldiers and they are here in their scores. James Mahol Ajang, 17, had just watched the football finals being played; fast, furious and barefoot on the stony ground. The game ended with a penalty shoot-out and James's payam of Aweng won. It sparked a wild celebration. But James is a quiet young man. Distant-looking and sad-faced. Sitting at the edge of the athletics track, he told his story. Drafted into the army at the age of 11, he fought with the SPLA for four years. It was a hard life. He had to collect food for the adult soldiers. If he misbehaved he was beaten or denied food. He saw action countless times. He stared at the ground as he spoke. He did not smile. He does not know if he has ever killed a man, but believed it is likely that he has. 'There was one morning when we attacked the Arabs and we were pushed back and defeated. Lots of people were killed. I was firing but I could not tell if I shot anyone. You don't know where every bullet hits,' he said.

As he practises for the 400 metres final, James knows that his childhood has not been like that of other children. His bare feet and fifth-hand clothes should be enough to tell him that. 'Even though we are playing sports, things are still difficult for us. Nothing is normal for us,' he said.

When he was a soldier James spent a few months fighting the Nuer, a black tribe whose leaders have occasionally allied themselves with the government. But, with the changing fortunes of the war, Nuer refugees have now started to flow into Twic. They have not settled easily. But the Olympics are changing that. Nearly all the payams have Nuer athletes on their teams. Though marked out by the distinctive tribal scars slashed across their faces, they are cheered and supported as much as any Dinka. Zacariah Markwa, 19, is a Nuer. He is running the 200 metres for Turalei. His family was killed in a government attack on his village four years ago. He still has trouble speaking Dinka but the Olympics have given him a chance to win the support of his hosts. After all, he has nothing to go back to in his own homeland. 'Last year they would not know me. This year I am running and they all know me. We are all just Sudanese now,' he said.

Oil is the reason the Nuer have become displaced. It is the last thing southern Sudan needed. Oil means the North will never give up the South, not while there are black riches to be wrested from the soil and lucrative contracts to be wrung from multinational energy firms queuing up to invest in the budding industry. The list of such firms is impressive; Canada's Talisman Energy, Malaysia's Petronas and Sweden's Lundin Oil are all involved. There is little that can stand in the way of the oil firms, certainly not local rebels. In one area of Eastern Upper Nile province where a consortium began prospecting last March, 48 villages have been burnt out and 55,000 people displaced. It is a government policy that humanitarian groups term 'scorched earth'. 'Before any oil can be exploited, there has to be peace,' said Hannah Williams, a field worker with British-based charity Christian Aid, which has worked to expose the oil violence and is the main backer of the Twic Olympics. But it is a forlorn hope. The SPLA targets the oil pipelines. The government burns out the locals. The war goes on.

But there are things in southern Sudan even worse than the oil wars and the child soldiers. Each dry season columns of horsemen, made up of the nomadic Arab tribes of the Bagara and Mussiriya, descend through the bush in search of human captives. They burn villages, kill the men and take the women and children back north as slaves. It sounds very Genghis Khan. More thirteenth century than twenty-first. David Deng was captured in the village of Maper. 'They took me and my parents and my brothers and sisters. They threw me over the back of a camel and told me they would kill me if I cried,' he said, sitting quietly under a thorn tree on the outskirts of Turalei. Deng is just 12. He spent two years in captivity herding cattle for an Arab farmer called Ali Jaffa. His foot still bears the scar of having a nail driven through it as punishment for trying to escape. But he was lucky. He did run away and made it home. His brother and sister were killed in the raid. His parents are still missing. But Deng can play football. He's in the youngsters' tournament, alongside other ex-child slaves. Slaves like Mowien Akway whose 15 years of life include four spent captive in the North. He was branded with a hot iron across the leg. His crime was to complain of long days spent herding his master's cattle. He is playing volleyball for Wunroc payam. Or Aguek Athie, who was taken from her home by mounted raiders and will not speak of what her Arab master did to her when they were alone in his house.

Critics would say the Twic Olympics cannot make up for such wounds. But would they be right? 'The whole of life for these people has been struggle,' says Coach Akel. 'Are we going to be burned? Are we going to be killed? But these games are something positive. It gives hope.' Perhaps Aguek, who talks softly but firmly, as she draws her finger absent-mindedly through the dust, can answer the cynics for herself. She plays volleyball for her payam. 'It takes my mind off it. I have something new in my heart,' she said.

Even at the Olympics there is no escape from the war. On the last day two MiG-29s, newly bought by the Khartoum government, buzzed through the sky. A few hours later another Antonov followed, lazily flying overhead before again heading south. The guns too are everywhere. At each corner of the football pitch, SPLA soldiers slouched in the sun with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers casually slung over their shoulders. When each local dignitary arrived to survey the pitch, the bodyguards boasted a 'Mad Max'-style array of weaponry. The war is not going away. But progress should never be dismissed. James fought the Nuer as a child soldier. Now as a teenage athlete, he races with and against them. 'I have no bad feeling for them. They are just like me now there is peace between Dinka and Nuer,' he said.

The sun was still blazing as the volleyball finals began. Due to the heat the competitions are held early in the morning, or late in the afternoon, but even now, as the clock ticked past five, it was still crushingly hot. Being in the centre of a dusty runway with no cover did not help either. Not that it bothered Riak Bol, captain of Turalei's women's volleyball side. They were the home team. This was her moment.

The men's volleyball had just been decided. Amid celebrations and war-like chants, the men's teams had left, but the crowds had gathered now to watch the women. Suddenly, those who normally resign themselves to a life of cooking, cleaning and motherhood have become the focus of attention. It is a chance to become heroines and male-dominated Sudan has few of them. Riak knows it. She is a mother of three young girls. She was forced to leave school as an infant. Her husband has disappeared to Kenya. She has survived by brewing beer for the village for the past 12 years. 'When I play well, my team plays well,' she said before the game. 'When my team plays well, my community is happy. And, then, that is when I am happy.'

She marshalled her players before the game against Pannyok, speaking sternly, grasping each by the shoulder. She cut a dramatic figure, tall and elegant in the home-made green and yellow kit that her team fashioned and bought themselves from the local market. Supporters set up chants in opposition to each other to the rhythm of drums. The game began. Riak returned a powerful serve to take the first point of an opening game that proved easy for her team. The cardboard scoreboard, marked with chalk, told of a 15-4 rout. The second game was less straightforward. Pannyok headed into a 7-2 lead. But then it changed. There was a single rally where only Riak touched the ball for her side. Five times the ball crossed the net and five times she hit it back as her teammates watched. She won the point. Turalei did not concede another. They won the second game 15-7. For a few seconds, as the Turalei players fell to the dusty ground, Riak stood aloof. Then as the crowd converged in on her, she put her hand to her mouth and let out a high-pitched ululation. Two women - celebrating wildly in the crowd - fainted. Maybe from too much happiness. Coach Akel had not been lying. Or boasting. They collapsed onto the ground, to be picked up and borne away in victory by the crowd. Later, they could be seen dancing anew as the team ran through the streets, and collapsing again as if in a trance-like state. No one was trying to tell them that volleyball was just a game.

In a society as conservative as the Dinka's such triumphs for women are rare. It is a stereotype - though one with some truth - that cattle are prized more highly than daughters in southern Sudan. It is a place where education for women is rare, where emerging beyond rearing children and cooking meals is a dream, not an ambition. Riak's elder brothers had removed her from school to look after their ageing mother. Now, she says, she is making sure her daughters will get an education. They will play volleyball too. 'They are proud of me for my volleyball. Even if there is nothing I can do for my education now, my daughters will all stay in school,' she said.

There are other heroines at the Twic Olympics. Achel Chol, 15, won three athletics golds last year. This time she had to settle for just one, retaining her title in the 100 metres, and two silvers. But she is already a local celebrity. And, for a girl who spends her mornings at school and her afternoons pounding maize meal at her family hut, her horizons have suddenly become very broad. 'I am going to practise running until I have mastered it and am a proper Olympic champion and have beaten international people. I want to go and run in another country and know the origin of the international Olympics and how it all started,' she said. Herparents, concerned at her mixing with boys in the payam Olympic villages, had tried to ban her from attending. She defied them. 'I stuck up for myself. I am a girl and want to set an example of what I can do and what I want,' she said. In southern Sudan that is itself a victory.

But then there were many victories at the Twic Olympics. Not all of them involved medal-winning. When athletes pound 1,500 metres around a concrete-hard track, dotted with stones in just their bare feet, it is impossible to criticise the runner who comes in last. Their bleeding feet, slashed from the sharp rocks, and missing toenails tell you everything about their commitment. When three women in the same race collapse over the finishing line and have to be carried away because it is hot and they haven't eaten all day, you cannot knock their fitness. Just marvel at their spirit. When a footballer dislocates his toe and instead of writhing in agony, simply asks his teammate to snap it back into place, you praise his bravery. Sporting standards are not what is at stake here. Justin Angelo Akwei coaches Ajak Kuac payam,which borders the river dividing north from south. It literally sits on the front line. 'Anything bad that happens, happens to Ajak Kuac first,' he explained. But, surrounded by 20 of his athlete, he is proud of his team. 'Children are unhappy because they are always worried about what might happen. But the Olympics open them up. -We realise we can do things together,'

The Twic Olympics are not about sublime skills, ruthless tactics or setting records. It is more school sports day than serious international competition. This Olympics is simply about the event taking place at all. 'I have forgotten that we are in a war situation when we are here. But when we go back the pressure will be on us again. The dry season is coming,' Akwei said. A look of pain crossed his face.

But for the moment, everyone's thoughts are on the prize of the grinding mill. Not that politicians do not try to jump on the bandwagon. Nothing happens in southern Sudan without the SPLA knowing about it. Movement of foreigners is dependent on them or SPLA-sanctioned charities and the SPLA presence at the Olympics goes beyond the soldiers standing by the sides of the track. At the opening and closing ceremonies SPLA songs were sung. But it seemed just a veneer of politics. During the football final - for want of anything better to put on - the car battery-operated PA system began to blast out the dreary monotone of John Garang, the SPLA leader who lives a comfortable existence in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. It was a speech from 1988, praising some long-forgotten ceasefire initiative. In Sudan's endless war it could have come from 1958 or 1998. But as the tape wore on, it began to slow down, Garang's voice sounding strangled, until it faded into garbled nothingness. No one noticed. Nor did they pay attention to the fevered and doomed attempts by SPLA officials to start it again. There was a football match being played. That was far more important.

The final day dawned. James was in the 400 metres. He was not afraid. He has been a warrior, he has fired a gun in anger. Seen his friends die. This was just a race on an old bush airstrip, run with no shoes over hard ground. Just a race. Hundreds of people gathered to watch. The whistle blew and James began to sprint. He never lost the lead. Taking the final curve he was 10 metres ahead and, though the runner in second place began to close the gap, James flew through. He punched the air in triumph. He was not talking about it being just a race now. He was not thinking about his terrible past, nor his father's herd. Nor the years of school he had missed for ever. Nor the lack of shoes on his battered feet. Nor the world that has ignored him and thousands like him. 'Next year I will be back. Every morning I will get up and run. Faster and better next year. Even if we had run on forever I would still have won today,' James said. In that moment of victory, as he breasted the white tape, the child soldier won far more than a race.

For more information on Sudan, visit christian-aid.org.uk