24/07/2025
MEMORIES OF HAAT.
Gatreak Chiang Reath
In the early days of 2014--- February to be exact---and exactly three months after the outbreak of 2013 civil war, I and my family went to Haat, my home village. It was my first time since 2007 when I was taken there on a three days stay for my late mother's burial ceremony.
I was fortunate enough to be in-between initiation age, and it was all on me whether to find initiation appealing or not. My step mother, under whose responsibility I and my siblings were, found it more viable to retreat to the village given that Pom was a target the SSPDF could reach.
Back then, which I also suspect is still the case now, civilians safety was not a component of the SSPDF's war ethics or rule. MML's famous utterance that whoever is found where enemy resides is as well an enemy was the soldiers' guiding principle. This gave my step mother a thought of relocating us to Haat.
We left Pom on a small boat, fast as an hungry bird, and arrived at Old Fangak in the evening hours of 3rd/Feb/2014. We stayed there for a few hours before we left for Haat. It was also my first time to see the grand, beautiful view of old Fangak that stretched through the riverbank to the neem-lined streets for the first time. In my early days of riverine travel from Haat to Pom, Malakal, and Tonja, I did not have the luxury of seeing the beautiful view of this great place.
In the following hours we left. Haat was our destination. The echo of the name brought many thoughts: The early childhood days of 2005 when my mother took us there for the first time; the yellowish evenings when we would play hide-and-seek, I and my two cousins, in my grandmother's big, beautiful house, which was made fun of by the villagers that it was the size of a barn; the two cool springs; the sandy farm my grandmother had; the beautiful riverbank that if you had seen in those days you'd be telling stories about heaven right now; the wondrous night skies...whose stories grandmother weaved and molded and shaped to our laughter and delight, and all the lore that Haat had given us in our most memorable period.
These beautiful thoughts were nourished by the cool breeze of pow water, compounded, of course, by the knowledge that we had escaped death once and for all. The red sun was directed towards Haat, as my memory of last years' travel can tell, and was dying in the agony of emerging night. The west was engulfed in beautiful inferno, giving way to the romantic moon, one that unlike the sun, sometimes disappoints us by spending days in hiding.
The journey was long, yet I believe most of us in that small boat enjoyed it, knowing we'd surely set feet on the beloved Haat, a land that gave Gawaar their current convictions of honesty and bravery.
It was hours on end. I had, after the conversations went from cattle camps to war, resorted ro listening to music using my small X2 phone that I brought brought from Malakal. The music gave me some relief and romanticized me into an unnecessary sleep. I suspect Gordon Koang's melodious voice is not as great as it was those days.
I fell asleep. What made boats more enjoyable than cars is that one can lay and sleep comfortably without having to disturb anyone. My sleep was interrupted by a roaring sound of guns and for a while I thought I was in Malakal. But thanks to my brother Duol who reminded me that was our arrival in Pakur, Tang Guandiit's one-house-size village, probably two kilometres from Haat, that was being celebrated by gunshots. We'd unfortunately learn in the morning that the villagers panicked and some of them left their homes thinking that it was an attack, Tang Guandit being probably one.
In the early morning hours, around five or six, our boat finally anchored in Paanye, Haat. This was marked by a relentless firing of guns and songs, attracting nearby villagers to come and welcome us, given that they were given an early notice about our arrival.
The sight of Haat was welcoming and beautiful. It was, unlike in 2007, overgrown with grassy bushes and green lilies floating the shore that pushed out its unwanted waters. The homes were a bit farther away from the shore, and people had to walk a distance that was all water before coming in contact with land. This was due to floods that ravaged the whole area in 2013. But the village was nonetheless beautiful and emotionally appealing.
The sense of belonging that one experiences when one touches his home village is incomparably special. That particular moment was life-changing for me, because it was that moment that I realized what Haat meant for me. Besides being a home to my forefathers, it was where my mother's bones anguished underground.
When I stepped my foot outside the boat, my body nearly freezed, due to the fact that the water was as cool as ice, and the weather so romantic like the one you'd only read in classic romantic novels.
That enjoyment was cut short when I fell off the d**e and solicited everyone's hidden laughter. I was carrying my sister, Nyapuoka's little daughter, who was six during that time. She's currently beautiful and seventeen, and i am proud to have once carried her. You can imagine what it meant to carry a six years old on a thin d**e that needed a terrible walking balance. For a fourteen-year-old for that matter.
We were hugely welcomed. Haat was to our surprise still that beautiful home. There were many things I experienced in Haat that are worth narrating, but I'll only write about two of them: my experience as the first guy to appear in damaged clothes(new fashion of those days) and fishing camp.
One morning my brother Duol and I went to Wickuer Chiengwaah. It was the administrative place those days. Now that we were in the village and perhaps superior in ways of town, I was tempted by my ego to wear the new fashion jeans of that year, the slightly damaged one that had small cracks below the femur.
Young boys and girls were out in their homesteads playing. We first came across a small group of young boys that were probably our agemates. When we closely passed by, they laughed at us terribly. At first, we didn't know why they were laughing. But we realized afterwards that it was my damaged trouser that they were ridiculing. We could hear "look at this boy! He just came from Malakal and he's now wearing a torn clothe. Town people are either mad or they don't have clothes as are told of them". Despite the rarity of trousers for teenagers, these boys had the guts to ridicule my dressing style. I had to spend the whole day hiding from people, because whenever I came through or pass by any group, they'd just laugh uncontrollably. That story told, I hope you can now credit me with being the first to take that fashion to Haat.
Fishing camp was my next most memorable experience. My nephew Duoth Yieth took me there with my two brothers Duol and Yien to have a taste of it, me for the first time, and my two brothers the first time in many years.
Duoth took us to Thar-rura, his usual fishing place. That journey was tiresome, but I need not talk about it.
Our first day in Thar-rura was marked by many surprises. One of them was that there was no flour or food in the camp, that it was solely on fish that people depended. The second was that there was no fire, that people had to manufacture fire from a small stick and another with a hole. That was a technique I was seeing for the first time.
The first day was already giving me wonders. In the morning we were asked to go and collect firewood. This was also new. The funniest part of this firewood collecting is that it was not the normal firewood, but dry reed, that one had to collect. The task was difficult in that you first had to identify dry reed, and then cut them using a knife.
My first attempt to cut a reed the knife slipped off my hands into the water. I searched and searched and searched until I cried. Duol had finished collecting and went to the camp and cooked and ate and slept. Hours later after I was tired searching, I desperately oared towards the camp.
I was not punished because it was my first mistake, but I was seriously warned. Losing a knife in the fishing camp calls for a more severe punishment than looting oil money does today.
For the sake of our autobiographies, let me reserve some good stories.
~Gatreak Chiang Reath.
