The Hare's Vision
May 6, 2008 (Trail, BC, CA) - Walking along the Columbia River [last week], it was peaceful save for a few lone cars roaring away at a distance and a few tired-looking girls passing by. It began to pour rain and I ran home cursing the gods that let the water loose from the sky. Nonetheless, the Hare’s Vision was born. Sitting on my couch in an old apartment that has been home for the last four months, I began to count how much longer I would stay here. Five days is the number. I wonder if I will not miss this river that has been a reliable friend in this far away somewhat lonely countryside.
When a baby has breastfed for close to two years, she begins to realize that she can bite. If she has breastfed to her satisfaction, she bites the nipples of her mother’s breasts. When this happens, the mother knows, the baby is ready for solid food. So the baby has been successfully weaned from “Carrying Knowledge up a Palm Tree: My Take” to “The Hare’s Vision”.
In the Dinka of the Sudan folktales, the hyena is ridiculed, the lion and the elephant are mighty, the fox and the wolf are clever but cunning while the little hare is humbly clever. In one of the stories, the fox and the hare are guests in a far away land. In that land, every guest is expected to have carried his/her own spoon but on the way there, the fox tricks the hare to throw away his spoon on grounds that gentlemen should not walk with spoons in their pockets! Seated and waiting for food, the fox secretly passes information to the hosts that they (guests) like their food served hot. The hosts obey his request.
The food is set before them. The fox removes his hidden spoon and instructs the hare to run back and get his spoon. The hare agrees but he magically plugs out one of his eyes and plants it in the ceiling while he runs off to get his spoon. Every time, the fox tries to eat the food in hare’s absence, the hidden eye shouts, “Hey, don’t do it!” The fox does this unsuccessfully a few times until the hare gets back. They begin to eat together but the fox is a disturbed man.
There are wolves and foxes masquerading as business executives, religious kingpins, humanitarian activists, people’s representatives in National Assemblies, foreign missions, experts on other countries and interestingly, as brothers and sisters.
They are in Khartoum, Juba, Toronto, Dubai, Mumbai, Nairobi, Washington DC, etc; they are everywhere. The Hare’s telescopic eye can see them and he catches them hands down. Today, the hare is only putting a sharp focus on those masquerading as brothers and sisters.
You call me brother because we speak the same language. What if I tell you I speak four languages and I am learning my fifth and sixth ones? Does that make me brother to anyone who speaks those languages?
You call me brother because we have the same skin colour. Or you consider me an enemy because we have different skin colours. Is there an automatic connection between a Sudanese and a Nigerian, an East Indian and a Chinese, or an Austrian and a Dutch?
Once in Victoria, three of us Sudanese boys had gone to church and chatted afterwards. One elderly woman saw us and brought along a kid she adopted from the Caribbean. She said something I didn’t bother to remember but my intuition was that she was thinking, “Here is black crowd, let’s add in one of their own.”
What if a Dinka think I am a brother, because that is my first language, and yet when we sit down, we cannot maintain a conversation for a minute? And so who is a brother? If you are stuck in the all concept of brotherhood, we will shake you down to your basic anatomy and prove you wrong.
In the flat world according to Thomas Friedman, [author of The World Is Flat], if a Sudanese can understand and work with a Japanese, a Kenyan, a Canadian, a German, a Chinese and an American then they are brothers and sisters. This new order is dictated by individual interests so there are no questions of superiority and inferiority. In this age someone may think that s/he controls anything while others may think they are denied something but both of them will soon realize that they are dreaming. Seriously. So I say: if you speak the same language as I and have the same skin colour as I, but do not share in my fears and excitements for the future then you are neither a brother nor a sister. But if you do, then I bet blood may be thicker than water!
Finally, I would like to thank my readers for all the encouragements and feedback. I have always felt the connection with you lovely people! I am back to school and may not be writing as frequently as I used to but I promise, you will be reading me occasionally.
*Jok Gai Anai is a columnist for The New Sudan Vision. He can be reached at jokgai@hotmail.com.
