22/07/2025
The Burden After the Battle
By Chol Michael Maker
Wednesday, 23 July 2025
There are moments when I sit in silence and genuinely wonder how I survived all those years in the SPLA from 1985 to 2005 without a salary, without comfort, and without the luxuries so easily taken for granted today. I lived not for personal gain but for a cause far greater than myself. I slept in the bush, marched through battlefields, often barefoot and hungry, yet I kept going. I was a guerrilla, not a gorilla. I was not a machine, not a wild creature, but a man who chose to sacrifice everything so that others might one day live in freedom and dignity.
And yet despite everything I endured during the war, I can say with complete honesty that I have never known a weight heavier than that of being a father in today’s world. No rifle or battlefield compares to the quiet anguish of watching one’s children grow up without the certainty of provision. The burden of school fees. The anxiety over unpaid rent. The shame of not being able to feed them from the sweat of one’s own brow. These are battles fought without gunfire, yet they strike just as deeply.
I was not yet a father during the earliest years of the liberation struggle. That chapter began later, and the children came like surprise guests at a liberation rally, arriving one after another without waiting for a salary or housing allowance. In the bush I survived without money. I led with an empty pocket but a full heart. Now, in these so-called peaceful times, I ask myself how one survives when peace itself has become a costly affair.
One question still puzzles me. How did I manage back then with no salary, no office, no business, nothing to call a livelihood? And yet I moved, I lived, I endured. Somehow, without formal employment or economic certainty, I carried on. Perhaps it was grace. Perhaps it was unity and a shared sense of purpose. Or perhaps we had simply mastered the art of doing without.
It was not until 2006 that I experienced the modest privilege of being a paid father, the quiet dignity of earning something and placing it into the hands of my children. Even then, it came neither easily nor regularly. The years of sacrifice had left their mark. Peace may be written on paper, but life today feels more uncertain than ever. I once survived on dry rations and fought for nothing but the dream of freedom. Now I face the burdens of bills, rising expectations, and responsibilities that feel heavier than war itself. My children now sleep in beds instead of on the ground, and they walk to school rather than into the bush, but the cost of fatherhood in this fragile peace weighs like a mountain.
Still, I will never forget the lessons I learned in the bush. Survival is not merely about food or money. It is about purpose, sacrifice and the will to endure. I did not fight to be rich. I fought to be free. And even now, as I carry the burden after the battle, I must summon that same spirit, resilient, grounded and unashamed of where I come from.
We must not surrender to the pressures of the present. Tomorrow may squeeze us even harder. Manhood grows more demanding and responsibility never waits. At times, even the means to survive seem deaf to the cry of hunger, hunger that we must never allow to ferment into bitterness.
But I remain proud of who I am and how far I have come. I have travelled a long difficult road, one that tested my strength, patience and humanity. I am still standing not because life has been kind, but because I refused to fall.
The Soul of the SPLA in Battle
In the heart of every SPLA soldier and officer, battle was a storm no words could fully capture. Fear was there, yes, but it was buried beneath duty, discipline and the unspoken vow never to let a comrade down. Adrenaline surged like a drumbeat in the blood, sharpening every sound and shadow as we moved through the bush or held our ground. We felt pride, not for glory, but for the cause, for the people, for the flag we had not yet raised but carried in our hearts. Rage burned quietly when we saw our brothers fall and guilt haunted us when innocent lives were caught in the crossfire. Yet through the confusion and blood we clung to hope, hope to live, hope to liberate, hope to return home and rebuild. Some of us prayed in silence, others pressed forward with nothing but belief in the struggle. Time lost its meaning. At times, we felt like ghosts still breathing. But above all, we were bound not by fear but by purpose, sacrifice and the unbreakable love of those who marched beside us. That was the soul of the SPLA in battle, and we shall never forget it.
“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”
— Nelson Mandela
