• ‘What is the What’ book info
• The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation
• Sudan: a nation divided

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

JEB SHARP:  Two men, one from the U-S and one from Sudan, crossed paths six years ago.

Their lives remain intertwined to this day.  The American is Dave Eggers.  He was already a successful writer, whose books included one called “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.”  The Sudanese man is Valentino Achak Deng.  He had led a heartbreaking life of staggering sorrow.  Valentino had escaped his home village of Marial Bai in war-torn southern Sudan.  Eggers turned Valentino’s life-story into an only slightly fictionalized biography, called “What Is the What.”  Now, three years later, proceeds from the novel have gone back to Marial Bai to build a school.  It’s gratifying for both the author, Dave Eggers, and his subject, Valentino Achak Deng.  For all they’ve been through though, both men say they’ll never forget that first time they met.

VALENTINO ACHAK DENG:  Dave, you know, is this just cool guy, doesn’t talk too much, but we are just about a writer meeting a student and then they write a book, it would not have been possible.  We would have had to go through a lot of trust issues and we had trouble.  We took risks, actually.  Dave took risks, and went to Marial Bai with me when I reunited with my family.  And I was at Dave’s wedding, my first American wedding to attend.  You could imagine that.  Dave brought me to his life, and he also came to my life.

SHARP:  Dave Eggers?

DAVE EGGERS:  A lot of it has to do with Valentino, you know, and his bravery in sharing his story.  It wasn’t easy to get at some of the more difficult parts of the story and a lot of parts of it that weren’t easy to remember or to recount or to get published.  But his courage in revealing all of that was important, you know.

SHARP:  And now an awful lot has happened in Sudan in recent years.   I mean, there’s everything that happened in the years encompassed by the book, but even since then, the war that destroyed your village and caused your flight with the Lost Boys ended in 2005 with a peace agreement between north and south Sudan.  So southern Sudan where you’re from, Valentino, is supposed to be emerging from a crisis. You’ve used the proceeds from the book to start a foundation that’s built a school back in your home village.  Is this indeed a time of renewal and hope in southern Sudan?

DENG:  This is the time for me where people need to go back and help.  We went back to Marial Bai and realized that many multilateral organization and even the new autonomous government of southern Sudan was paying so much attention to primary education.  For example, in the area where we’ve built a second school now, this is going to be the only functioning secondary school the region has ever had.

SHARP: Dave Eggers, you’ve visited the new school in Marial Bai.  It opened this year.  What strikes you about it?

EGGERS:  The first thing that strikes me is that Valentino, with the help of one staff member here in the US, pretty much built this school on his own, with the help of the community there in Marial Bai. And it’s flabbergasting to a lot of organizations that have been trying to build similar facilities in southern Sudan, and Valentino did it in about a year, and it’s a 14 building complex with cafeteria and a library and ten classrooms and pretty soon, ideally, there’ll be a dormitory for girls and there’s about 100 students there right now, and a waiting list of almost 1,000 to go to this school.

SHARP:  What’s the secret? What’s different?

EGGERS:  It took a man that had lived in Ethiopia and Kenya and the US, but had grown up and knew the Marial Bai community and knew how to get things done there.  Besides just being an incredible scholar, he’s a guy that knows how to negotiate the price of bricks and mortar and things like that.

DENG:  The other idea is, I wanted to invest in the community, so we bought bricks from the local brick makers and hoping that that money will go to the local economy.  Now I could see shops in Marial Bai that came as a result of the bricks business.  Another thing is that we just inspire the youth. For example, when we started, it was just the rainy season and people had to carry bag of cements on their back.  People had to carry everything we needed to the construction site.

SHARP:  This all sounds so good and positive and the economy’s being rebuilt, even as the school project’s getting off the ground. Can you convey the feeling there after so many years of war, especially when there’s often a feeling that the peace isn’t that stable?

DENG:  There is still a concern that if the regions return to war, or if this pocket of insecurity in many parts of south Sudan spread all over, then it will be tough for us, because we have students who come from different part of the country.  But I have lived in Sudan for almost a year now, and I haven’t seen people advocating to go back to war.

SHARP:  Dave Eggers?

EGGERS:  It’s essential that we have to be optimistic and you have to give the young people the hope.  You know, there’s a generation or two that grew up without schools.

SHARP:  You’re both translators in a way.  You’re trying to bring continually the story of Sudan to people here in the United States.  And I’m curious how you’ve come to think about that, how you break through the sense of something being far away and out of sight and out of mind.  How do you get people to care about suffering far away?

DENG:  First I believe that all people have so much in common than they are able to realize. We are all the same.  It’s just about how do we get to hear about things?

SHARP:  Dave Eggers?

EGGERS:  Well, I think it was important, and it’s important for a lot of stories like this and in parts of the world that the US and Western world doesn’t know that much about.  I think most of the time, it’s best to tell that story through one person’s eyes and to be able to connect with their elemental humanity and our commonalities and say, “Well, that boy could have been me.”

SHARP:  Valentino, I can’t resist asking you one more question. I heard you got on an airplane recently and sat next to a woman who was reading the book, “What is the What.”

DENG:  We sat at the airport together and she was reading the book.  I could not resist the temptation after 30 minutes of seeing her reading and sometimes laughing.  And then I said, “Hey, that’s my story you’re reading.”  She said, “What?”  I said, “I am Valentino” and she could not accept that.  At that point, I had to show her my passport, and wow, it was a drama.

SHARP:  Valentino Achak Deng runs a foundation that builds schools in southern Sudan.  Dave Eggers is the author of several books, including “Zeitoun” and most recently “The Wild Things.”  Thank you both so much.

EGGERS:  Thank you.

DENG:  You’re welcome.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The six-year war between forces loyal to Sudan’s government and rebels in Darfur has effectively ended, the UN’s military commander in the region says. The UN says 300,000 people have died in Darfur, but the Sudanese government puts the figure at 10,000. Almost three million people are said to have been displaced by the fighting.
Anchor Jeb Sharp got a reality check from human rights lawyer Rebecca Hamilton who just spent the last month in Sudan. (Photo: Stuart Price/Albany Associates) >>>Rebecca Hamilton’s blog
>>> BBC coverage

>>>Andrew Meldrum of the Global Post on the situation in Darfur

Photojournalist Stuart Price spent 13 months in Dafur >>> click here to see his pictures

Anchor Jeb Sharp speaks with human rights lawyer Rebecca Hamilton about news out of Sudan that Darfur is no longer in a state of war. Nigerian General Martin Agwai made the announcement as he ended his tour as head of the joint United Nations-African Union force in the troubled region.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

JEB SHARP: Sudan’s Darfur region is no longer in a state of war. That’s according to the outgoing commander of the international peacekeeping force in the region. Nigerian General Martin Agwai is ending his tour as head of the joint United Nations-African Union force in Darfur. He says there’s only on rebel group in the region still capable of mounting limited military campaigns. General Agwai says that right now the conflict has descended into banditry and very low intensity engagements. His statement is being dismissed by Darfur insurgents though. They say they’re preparing to launch new attacks on Sudanese government troops. Rebecca Hamilton is a human rights lawyer. She’s writing a book about Darfur. She joins us from Nairobi. Rebecca Hamilton you’ve just spent the last month in Sudan. From your perspective is this war over?

REBECCA HAMILTON: I think it’s premature to say that the war is over. I mean it could be that the war is over or it could be that actually what we’re seeing is a lull in fighting simply because it’s the rainy season and as the general himself says, you know at the moment the rebel groups are so fractured that it’s true they’re unlikely to be much of a threat to the government. But imagine after Hurricane Katrina if US officials had come out and said the hurricane has past. We would have been like okay the hurricane has passed but in its wake people have died, people are injured, people are displaced. To me saying the war is over is sort of like saying the hurricane is passed. It may be true but it misses the fact that you have 2.7 million Darfurees who are displaced in these God awful camps still.

SHARP: Did the internally displaced people talk about wanting to go home? Is there a movement for people to go home?

HAMILTON: People want more then anything to go home and they would if they could. But the reality is that the conditions are just not there yet for them to go home. Now it’s interesting because I spent some time speaking with Sudanese government officials in Khartoum and they were very keen to tell me how actually Darfur was very safe and all the IDPs felt safe to go home and there were all these voluntary returns happening. When you actually check it out on the ground in Darfur what they’re talking about is the seasonal returns that happen every year around this time. Which is you send a couple of members of your family to go and try and do some planting that will give you a bit of extra food security in the coming year. But people aren’t taking their whole families home because they simply don’t feel safe.

SHARP: Rebecca Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, was indicted last year for crimes against humanity and he retaliated by expelling aid workers. Have those expulsions had a measurable effect?

HAMILTON: They absolutely have. There were a few very courageous women at one of the camps that I went to. And they sat me down and they were completely determined that I understood what the situation was. And in essence most of the agencies that were expelled were also the ones that were doing protection work. In the women’s lives what it meant was that there would be women’s centers at the camps and it meant that if a woman was raped she would feel comfortable going to tell one of these international agencies what had happened and so she could be administered a rape kit there at the camp. What has happened is that those agencies have been expelled and so the women that I spoke to were telling me now when one of our women is raped we have to report it to UN police. The UN police then accompany her to the Sudanese police. At the Sudanese police station what the women said has been happening is that in their incident report their writing down severe harm rather then rape. The thing that I thought about when these women were telling me this was well this feeds perfectly into President Bashir’s claim that rape simply doesn’t happen in Darfur.

SHARP: Rebecca what’s your overwhelming impression that lingers from the trip?

HAMILTON: I think the one image that sort of summed up the whole international community’s approach to Darfur was at the UNAMID compound in El Fasher ….

SHARP: UNAMID being the UN-African peacekeeping force.

HAMILTON: It’s this you know big compound of shipping containers that now serve as offices in the desert basically. And there’s razor wire around the outside and there are UNAMID soldiers who are standing guard. But despite all that what you have in front of it is a Sudanese police station. That captured it for me. For all of having UNAMID there UNAMID has asked for the Sudanese police to protect them.

SHARP: Rebecca Hamilton is a human rights lawyer. She’s writing a book examining the impact of the Darfur advocacy movement. You can find a link to her blog at our website The World dot org. Thanks so much Rebecca.

HAMILTON: Thank you.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.