The bell rings, the students leave their classes in a disorganized manner. The children run, but few want to return home, preferring to stay and play on the grounds of this school that Comboni missionaries created in the Abassya quarter to welcome the Sudanese arriving in Cairo. “Over the years it has grown exponentially and it has pushed us always higher. Now we missionaries sleep in what was originally the terrace of the house,” said a laughing Father Cosimo, the school’s founder. Since he arrived in Cairo in the 1970s, the number of Sudanese has grown exponentially and for this reason, the missionary began to build new classrooms next to the church. Father Cosimo, who speaks fluent Arabic, remembers how at the beginning of the ‘80s, the Sudanese community in Cairo was primarily made up of students, from both north and south, who were on scholarships at Egyptian universities. Following the outbreak of the endless civil war, the deteriorating situation in Sudan brought about an increase in those coming to the mouth of the Nile in search of refuge.

From fraternal guests to ghettoized refugees

In October 2011 there were about 44,000 refugees acknowledged by the United Nations in Egypt, about 25,000 of who came from South Sudan. Until 1995 the word “refugee” was not an expression the Egyptian government attributed to the Sudanese, whom they also considered children of the same Nile. Since the signing of the Wadi el Nil treaty in 1976, Sudanese were permitted to live in Egypt without requiring a visa. “The civil war upset everything. It is not a simple case of conflict between a Muslim north and Christian-animist south,” explained Father Cosimo. Even if this is the most evident tip of the iceberg for those who see the Sudan from afar, in reality there are many more causes that have made this civil war a tangled mess difficult to unravel. The north-south division was created primarily by geography and climate. The north is a desert expanse marked by the 10th parallel which for thousands of years has been tied to the civilizations that have followed one another in the eastern Mediterranean and the Arabian Peninsula. From ancient Egypt to the development of Arab Muslim civilization, for about 5,000 years, those who have ruled Egypt have considered Nubia, the area that extends from Aswan to Khartoum, their natural hinterland. The south remained excluded from these dynamics because of a natural barrier made up of the sadd, quagmires and swamps of papyrus that grow on the Upper Nile. It was only towards the middle of the 10th century that Egyptians, looking for the source of the Nile, were able to penetrate the sadd, opening up the south to adventurers, merchants, missionaries and slave traders. The two parts, which for centuries were also on the opposite side of the slave trade, were administered separately by British colonizers, who were there until 1956.

“Until permission was needed to come to Cairo, thousands of Southern Sudanese escaping from the civil war didn’t think twice before moving to fraternal Egypt,” explained Lorraine Currie, a woman who has worked at the Sakkakini School for 18 years. “My mother chose to leave for Cairo when Bashir came to power in ’89,” said Achol, an ethnic Dinka student, who remembered the date when the Islamic government in the north also imposed shari’a in the ethnically non-Arabic and predominantly Christian south. Achol added, “She chose Egypt because a friend told her that once you were here, they would send you to another country and she hoped to get to Canada, a long way from the Arabs who want to impose their culture on us.” Thousands of South Sudanese clung to the same hope that this young student’s mother held. Destroyed by continuous war and persecuted because of their beliefs and ideas, the South Sudanese believed that Cairo could be a gateway to go, thanks to United Nations help, to a better place.

At first the Egyptian government guaranteed similar treatment to Sudanese seeking refuge as they would Egyptian citizens and the United Nations had therefore no role to play. The situation changed after an attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s life in Addis Abeba in 1995 by a group of Sudanese Islamists. From then on relations between the children of the Nile changed considerably.

From that day all Sudanese wanting to enter Egypt needed a visa and those requesting refugee status had to turn to the U.N. Additionally, Cairo was a signatory to the Convention on the status of refugees in 1951, but imposed certain reservations on the original document and refugees are not guaranteed important socio-economic rights. Access to work is regulated by specific laws and children are effectively denied access to public education. All this complicates the dynamic of becoming part of society and South Sudanese are frequently victims of racism and those Egyptians who think of them as black flies who steal work.

In spite of this, the reopening of the land border between the two countries, religious persecution in Sudan and the considerably increased welcome for refugees supported by the governments of the United States, Canada and Australia have led to an increase in South Sudanese who seek refuge in Cairo over the past six years.

A collection of drawings

“Our school very crowded. There are more than a thousand students this year,” explained Sister Anna Maria as she prepared a large box of books to take to the students. These are school books printed in Cairo, but they come directly from Khartoum. “For a couple of years we have been able to receive CDs of school books from the Sudanese Ministry of Education and we print them here before giving them to students and teachers, who are also rigorously Sudanese.” Thanks to an altogether informal system, book prices have been reduced to the bone. Educational materials cost about 5 euro for the first year and 20 euro for the last year of education, sums frequently out of reach for families unable to provide basic necessities for their children. “Students come to school with empty stomachs and are not able to concentrate. For this reason we have decided to provide breakfast. We try and guarantee every child at least one meal a day,” explains the school’s director, Father Jamil. Sitting on the pavement in front of the school, clutching a sandwich, 10-year-old Miriam says, “When I return home, my mother isn’t there. I only find my enraged father sitting in front of the television.” Like a majority of mothers, Miriam’s is a domestic servant for an Egyptian family. She leaves the house at dawn and returns at sunset and is the only one who brings money into the home. It is practically impossible for men to find work. “My wife decides everything. I have no role in the family. My children don’t respect me and I have lost all authority over them. What kind of a father is it who cannot bring home a piece of bread and has to ask his wife for money to buy a cup of coffee?” Miriam’s father asks. Refugee families have overturned traditional roles and the women are the real breadwinners, the ones who control and dictate rules at home. “I decide how many times I make love with my husband and he isn’t allowed to force me if I don’t want to. Men here behave differently than they would in our tribe. They are afraid to raise their voice or lay hands on us, because without our money, they would be out in the street,” a woman said proudly as she tries to gather clothes thrown about by her four children who live in a 7 square meter room. There are no beds or mattresses, just two gym mats thrown on the floor next to the frameless window. “Living here is completely different,” says the eldest daughter, who is grateful to live in four walls where, in comparison to her village, there is water, light and gas. “The landlord charges us a much higher rent only because we’re foreigners, but living here, around Sudanese like us, we’re almost invisible to those Egyptians who don’t want us around,” another woman adds while taking her daughter to the doctor. “Malnutrition, calcium deficiency and TBC” is the diagnosis the doctor is used to writing on the charts of South Sudanese children who come to him.

“It could have been considerably worse for me,” said little Hazika, who, returning home from seeing the doctor shows her mother a picture she drew at school. Ten corpses of children laid out on the border between north and south in countries Hazika has never seen, but that she has been drawing since she was born. Ten dying children surrounded by stinking latrines placed outside of tents of the camp at Yida. “They died of diarrhoea,” said Hazika, who has heard the story of the 64,000 South Sudanese who have been crowding into this camp trying to return to south since last May.

On July 9, 2011 South Sudan achieved independence from Khartoum in a ceremony that marked a new direction for the Sudan, a state with a difficult life since 1956 when it gained independence from Great Britain, becoming the largest country in Africa. Since that July, many refugees are impatient to return to the area around Juba, the new nation’s capital that has become the first place in the world for deaths during child-birth. Enthusiasm, however, is mixed with uncertainty in arriving in a country without infrastructure, where most of the people survive on less than a dollar a day and seven out of ten are illiterate. Even if South Sudan is sitting on vast mineral deposits and excellent agriculture potential, these opportunities are largely compromised by corruption. The desire to return home contrasts with the fear of arriving in a country where you no longer know anyone. To reach Yida, the South Sudanese experience and exhausting journey through thick bush and through the still contested border area of Jau. Travelling on foot with the few belongings they brought with them from a country they lived in for decades, the new arrivals are frequently malnourished. MSF raised the alarm in July stating that sickness attributable to the scarcity of drinking water could be reduced if there were sufficient latrines and access to clean water.

In Hazika’s collection of drawings, there is one dedicated to her compatriots trying to get back home. A large colourful bus filled with children and all their toys and parents with washing machines and refrigerators converted into suitcases with everything they have bought in the country that hosted them for years. In July there were almost 40,000 South Sudanese camped around Khartoum who were ready to leave. The United Nations bought airplane tickets for the South Sudanese who want to return home from Cairo, Khartoum or any other country in the world, but many preferred travelling by land in order to carry as many personal belongings as possible. However, there is a shortage of buses and roads in South Sudan are still in terrible condition. Only 50 km are paved and the rest turn into swamps when it rains. In Hazika’s drawing, the passengers have almost arrived at kilometre 18, the first point many try to reach as they return to their country. Once their, there are only 18 km to the Jaman refugee camp, which has gathered about 30,000 people who are not sure where they are going.

The exodus towards the south slowly continues, just as the winds of the Arab Spring appear to reach Khartoum. On the writing book of Hazika’s classmate is a pencil drawing showing a hurricane, starting in Cairo, coming to sweep away the old Sudanese dictator. Discontent was sparked on June 18 by news of a new austerity plan from President Omar Al-Bashir. He announced progressive elimination of fuel subsidies and an increase in taxes and custom duties on luxury goods. With this plan the president, who is also wanted by the International Criminal Court in the Hague for crimes against humanity perpetrated in Darfur, is desperately trying to increase revenue to balance the budget that has been devastated by the loss of oil revenues following the secession of South Sudan. From that point, Khartoum lost about 350,000 barrels of oil a day. Three quarters of the old oil production is concentrated in the south.

School continues at Sakkakini and the only dilemma that torments its directors is what language to continue teaching in. Not considering themselves Arabs, South Sudan has decided that English will be their official language and it would appear to be appropriate teaching this language seeing the students will return to the outskirts of Juba or will move to English-speaking countries. “The problem is recertifying the teachers,” explains Sister Annamaria. “Then it is not at all said that all will return to South Sudan.”

Confirming this theory is Lawrence, a child who examines with a lost feeling a faded photo of his parents’ village. “This is all I know of South Sudan. My father left by himself and said he will return to get us and take us back with him, but I want to stay here,” said this 13-year-old IT expert who loves being in the school’s laboratory. “In South Sudan he won’t find a computer, internet and all the music he listens to,” says his mother, who is also confused about what to do. “I don’t want to return to having anyone bully me at home.”

When one moves from the computer classroom to the music room, you understand that the Sakkakini students have Africa in their blood. The girls dance unashamedly with their braids flying. On their legs the older girls in tight jeans proudly wear t-shirts made using traditional materials. They drink large quantities of Coca-Cola to counter the heat and strike poses as soon as they see a camera. The boys instead play drums, keyboards and percussion, mixing traditional melodies with rap. Large earphones, baggy trousers, t-shirts with sleeves cut off and enormous dark glasses. This is the fashion followed by these students who until last year hoped to end up in Harlem. “My dream is to go to New York, embrace my father and brothers and form a rap group with them,” writes Mohammed, a Muslim South Sudanese, who has most of his family in the States. “When my father got permission to go to America, he had to decide which wife to take with him and he took his first one, because he had more children with her. That bitch didn’t want my name on the list and I stayed here with the hope of joining them,” concluded Mohammed with a look of resignation. Ever since the south became independent, the South Sudanese have no longer been considered refugees and the only ticket they can ask for from the United Nations is one for Juba.

In spite of all the problems in South Sudan, those who cannot wait for the day to return to their homeland hurry to pack their bags and go to say farewell to Father Cosimo, who blesses those who are leaving Cairo at Sunday Mass. The women of the community hug their companion who is leaving, giving them a gift, a shawl with the image of Bakhita, the slave born in Darfur in 1869, who after being ransomed by the family of the Italian consol, Calisto Legnani, went to Italy, becoming first a Christian, then a nun and eventually a saint. The children remain confused in a tangle of emotions they are not able to understand. “I’m happy, afraid, curious, moved and sad,” said little Zuna as a tear coursed down her smiling face. A blaze of music, dance and colours are the sound track of that ritual that seems to be a crowded, festive concert.

Not everyone appears to be affected by the event and in a corner of the church are two girls who timidly light a candle to Bakhita. With faint voices and clasped hands they ask to pass that exam, which, coming directly from Khartoum, they must soon sit. They take them at the desks of the Sakkakini School, their teachers put them in envelopes and send them to Khartoum, where they are graded and whose results frequently takes days of anxiety to return. “If we pass them, we can try and get into university” explains the more worried of the two. “We could continue to study and think how to transform our collection of sketches on pieces of paper into cloth models and, hopefully, into real clothes.”

Translated by Francesca Simmons