They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky- Book in its Entirety

The book They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky by Judy A. Bernstein is a very controversial and disturbing book. It gives outsiders a first-hand look at the terrible 26 year and counting war in Sudan. People get to see the war through children’s eyes and in two different areas of Sudan that people tried to escape to. It is really touching and gross. The fact that people from the clans can go against the clan and slaughter their former neighbors and clans because they decided to be Islamic and part of the Murahiliin, “some of the Muslims are traitors from the Dinka tribes; they speak the way we do. They may call to you, ‘come back we are Dinka… But when people come out of their hiding places, the traitors laugh and say “You are called by your death!’ and kill those people.” (Bernstein 53) In the US we are very lucky to get schools. In Sudan not all of the clans even had a school. In the beginning of the war the Murahiliin went to different clans and burned down their school houses so very few if any clans had a school houses, “the government planes dropped bombs from the sky and the school houses are all burned down. The SPLA was there to protect them but there was nothing they could do. You will not be going back to school.” (Bernstein 57) The people that live through the massacres still have to deal with the journey ahead and their loss and for a lot of people that wasn’t possible and for everyone it wasn’t easy. As one of the kids go back to their best friends house after a raid they find that they were killed, “Burned alive in their house. These were my lovely friends. Achol was my best friend ever… My eyes were fixed on the sight of death in front of me. I smelled it, tasted it and felt it. I hurt so much I could not live with it.” (Bernstein 60). People that lived didn’t have it easy as well as the people that died. Either way no one wanted to be in the situation they ended up in. The journey for the people was very long and hard and many people died. However, they were told where they were going was safe and had everything they needed. However, when the people finally got to the sites or camps they would be staying at for the war to “stay safe” the living conditions were gross and dangerous. One of the kids, Benson, was taken to a camp with a group of others that had escaped and after days of walking across a desert with little food or water, to the point where they even had to drink their own urine sometimes. The camp they came to was described as, “there were thousands of people but only a few shelters made of sticks and branches for protection from sun. Not one school.” (Bernstein 85) Benson also says, “I stared at this ugly place where no boy seemed safe.” (Bernstein 86) They are all infested with bugs. Through all the traveling the villagers picked up a lot of insects such as lice. They are everywhere in their hair and pants. The problem is they don’t have anything to shave their hair off with so they weren’t able to solve their problem. A lot of people, kids and adults, got sick and depressed which lead to their death. Most people didn’t even reach the camps before they died and once the others got there many died from lack of resources and hygiene there too. The whole war is gross and barbaric. The fact that a group of people can ruin multiple villages and families in such a dehumanizing barbaric way is very bothersome. They don’t only do that but also make all these kids and families suffer to try to find safety and even when they do it really isn’t safe. There is no safe place for them and people have had to live in fear for 26 years and it needs to end.

They Pour Fire on Us From the Sky- raid vs massacre

It is one thing to raid a village and it’s another thing to massacre a village. Some of the attacks the Murahiliin would come into villages on foot and separate the men women and children and kill them in different very inhumane ways. In They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky the narrator tell us, “The Murahiliin… captured many civilians and shot dead those who tried to run away. The captives were separated into two groups. The women and children were locked inside the huts and burned to death. The men were tied up, lead to the river-side, killed with a machete and dropped into the river.” (Bernstein 52) they would also come and randomly start shooting the first people they saw. At first they would just raid the villages for their cattle and some resources, but then it turned into a massacre. They would burn crops, steal more cattle and food, and even nail babies to tress like Jesus on a cross. Later they started to drop bombs on the villages and shoot them with helicopters and it became a daily routine. “… The Murahiliin had attacked their villages with shooting helicopters… the war was coming to southern Sudan.” (Bernstein 51) The war was expanding and it was just getting worse. They had never used helicopters or any aircrafts to kill people in random villages with no warning and no reason. They also would bomb some of the villages daily where they knew there would be a lot of people. The villages had to dig trenches to hide in randomly during the day if they could get to them on time. Even when they did thought not everyone always survived in the trench. The things that these soldiers did to the villagers for no reason, isn’t acceptable. It is dehumanizing and barbaric. The villagers couldn’t even defend themselves. “The men tried fighting the invaders with spears but they were all killed in a few minutes. “There was a plane standing above trees pouring fire on them”” (Bernstein 55) Even when the SPLA came and tried to protect the villages there is only so much they could do on the ground and they had no way of protecting people from the Murahiliin that were attacking with helicopters and aircrafts. Someone needs to end this war and bring peace back to Africa before it destroys itself.

They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky- Slavery

Slavery is in the past and people don’t have to worry about it anymore right? Wrong! Especially in Sudan in the first part of their now 26 year war. During some of the raids of the villages some villagers would be dragged on the back of horses and be sold as slaves. In the book, They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky, during one of the raids of the village a man named Deng was taken from the villages, “The Murahliiin had thrown him on the back of a horse and took him to a faraway place where he was sold as a slave.” (Bernstein 44) He goes on to tell the village about his experiences and the masters that owned him. He told them about the hard life that he had lived in the past few years while living as a slave. He told them under his first master, “Any person caught escaping is killed in the presence of all eyes as an example.” (Bernstein 44) The work was hard and there was very little food for each of them to eat. They also were severely punished, “The slightest mistake provoked a severe whipping.” (Bernstein 44) He wasn’t even called by his real name. One of the girls in the family that fell in love with Deng, which was against Muslim law, would call him by his real name and her father would say, “Why do you call him by his name? He is Kadam asuwat ‘black slave’” (Bernstein 44) even though he bathed everyone, cleaned their house, cooked for them, cleaned their clothes, and herded their cattle all day every day he was treated poorly, obviously not paid, and whipped if he didn’t do something just right. Through all the hard work he grew weak and still had to work. When he tried to escape he was beaten almost to death by the whole family except for one person and had to go a few days without any food. This made him even weaker.
A lot of people think that there slavery is gone and has been gone for a while. However, it obviously isn’t. Even in the US there is still slavery and it is a major issue that needs to be solved. I don’t think that it can ever be solved and it will always be an issue. However, the problem in Sudan is that the people that are trading the villagers as slaves are associated with the government. Therefore, the government obviously doesn’t care and if they don’t care then the issue will never be solved or at least get better. At least the government in the US has made laws against slavery. In Sudan they are telling people to abduct the villagers.

They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky- Disease

When people think of Africa they think of death, lack of food, scary animals, and AIDs. However, not very many people think of the other diseases that we don’t get or have to worry about they many people in Africa die from because they don’t have the technology or resources to cure or prevent these diseases. For instance, in the US we don’t have to worry about Yellow Fever. However, in Africa, especially in Sudan in the remote villages, they do. In the book The Poured Fire on Us From the Sky during the journey to the “safe camp” one of the characters meets a man name Monyde. During the Journey he got sick, “They said it was yellow fever. Kuany did everything he could to help Monyde but he died in only two days.” (84) Here in the US we don’t have to worry about things like yellow fever. However, in Sudan in the villages they don’t have the medicine to get rid of the diseases especially when they are going through the desert going from one village to another. Another issue was when the UN tried to come and help the people in the camps to get them food and supplies. However, “Un made boys more likely to sicken and die from yellow fever.” (90) The boys weren’t used to the food and ingredients in the food that they were being given and ended up getting sick with no way to cure them. A lot of the boys got sick and went crazy because they were thinking about their home and family. They have no time to grieve or get over anything they are just told to suck it up and keep moving. In the US we have major loses and we usually have time to get over it. The things they saw and see almost every day are so horrid. They see both their family and friends and people they don’t know be burned alive, or shot dead, or drowned, or their friends that they were just talking to minutes earlier drop dead next to them while walking. They have no time to take any of it in and think about everything they have to get over it within seconds and keep moving. This killed a lot of kids from getting sick and not wanting to fight and move on. Disease is a daily struggle for the people in Sudan that are fighting for their lives. They have to worry about things that the people in the US never have to.

They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky

Most people know the second part of the war in Africa and assume it started when Joseph Kony “became possessed”. However, that is not when it began. It actually began way before that and the LRA wasn’t even established. There was however a rebel group called the SPLA, Sudan’s People Liberation Army. Actually the people that really started attacking the villages were the government and at first the rebel groups were the ones protecting the villages and the survivors. When Islam became a prominent religion in Africa the government wanted it to be spread throughout Sudan. The main reason for this was to gain land. However, the government had the northern Islamic tribes believe they should own cattle like the Dinka and Nuer, the two major tribes in the central area that lived on the land the government wanted because the land was the most fertile in all of Sudan. This made problems because the northern tribes started to attack the central tribes for their cattle. But, wealth in those tribes depended on how many cattle you owned. The government made laws to try and make the central tribes convert. In the book They poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The True Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan by Judy A. Bernstein, The elders in the tribes said, “..there is no time to pray five times a day… the cannot force us to do this thing to our women. We love our women. We will not cut them like the castrated calf.” (Bernstein 37) and this is when the government got mad and started attacking villages. Villages were destroyed, families torn apart, and villagers thrown into slavery. “… During one of the attacks by the Murahiliin, people were killed and cattle stolen; Deng was taken away…. Murahiliin had thrown him on the back of a horse and took him to a faraway place where he was sold as a slave”. (Bernstein 37) Murahiliin are the northerners that were attacking the central tribes for the land since they weren’t converting and they wanted the land. Being a slave wasn’t easy. But, either was being back home. It got to the point that the attacks were just massacres. They killed everyone in sight and burned down the whole village. To escape people would run into the bush and hide in the tall grass infested with snakes, scorpions, hyenas, and lions. They would lose everyone they knew and had to trust the people they met to help them get from one village to the next. The soldiers that because apart of the rebel group found these groups of stranded people and helped lead them from one village to the next. However, no village was safe. The government would bomb the villages daily and there were little resources for everyone and some villages even attacked the groups of people so they would stay away from their villages because they didn’t want to give away the few resources they had. Many people died in the deserts going from one village to the next and the ones that didn’t became sick and weak. Some days the adults would have to drink their own urine due to lack of water. Their feet would get cut up, there were cannibals in the brush right by them along with many other dangerous animals, and they had nothing for warmth during the night. Even when they reached villages they rarely got something to eat and/or drink. When they reached their final destinations there wasn’t anything special about them, one area had chiggers, bugs that crawl into the cracks on your skin, bury in them and suck your blood. The more someone scratches at them the bigger the wound gets. The other area was poor and run down with very little resources. No matter what happened to you, being enslaved, killed, or living and trying to find safety it wasn't easy. There was no safe place and very few people actually found family. But the war most definitley didn't start because of Joseph Kony. The whole war is terrible. However, if people are going to learn about it they should really know the whole story.

Make the Inivisble Children Visible

Invisible Children is an organization set up in by kids for kids. The organization was started by three boys,jason, Laren, and Bobby went to Africa in the spring of 2003. They thought they were going to see the terrible things that they heard about Afica but at first they really didn't see anything. Until they went to Sudan. In Sudan there was a war. Africa's longest running war to be exact. This war had be going on for about twenty years at the time and is still going on. It was started because,a man named Joseph Koney got the idea of abducting children to be in an army to take over the government. He believed that children were the "perfect soldiers". They were old and big enough to hold and use a gun but young enough to control and brainwash. He has these kids slaughter their families and then are told their community won't accept them anymore and are forced into his army where they are not treated well. In the different areas there are kids called "night commuters". The kids of the villages are too scared to stay in their villages in fear they will be abducted. Therefore they commute to the city where they beleive they will be more safe.
Inivisible Children is a non-profit orginization that helps support the people affected by the war and stop the war. They do work in both the United States and in Central Africa.

In the United States they try to spread awarness by showing movies and going on road trips with people that work with Invisible Children. These people are called "Roadies". Roadies go through the US showing the documentaries and videos Inivisble Children has shot from their trips to the areas affected by the war. They also sometimes have some of the people they know from these areas to come to the US and explain to people what it is like and what they go through because of the war. They also have made moves within the government. They recently had Obama send troop to Africa to help try and stop the war as well.

In Central Africa Invisible Children has been and did work on a project called "The Protection Plan". This plan involved them building roadio towers for the abducted soldiers to hear the kids that escaped the army and others to help them come out and let them know they will be okay and accepted. It is also so "no massacure will go unseen". Before there was no communication between the different areas because there was no way to communicate. They could go weeks without knowing the places around them had been attacked. Now they are able to quickly communicate and let it be known they LRA are coming. They also set up something called the "LRA crisis tracker". This is something that tracks all the movements of the LRA and posts it for everyone to see. For instance, one of the posts were, "•Dec 31st, 2011
Dungu-Faradje Road Suspected LRA abducted two civilians near Nagero, DRC. Two other civilians managed to flee before abduction". Here is the link to that website to check out more. http://www.lracrisistracker.com/ The organization also sends people to Central Africa to do something like Community Service. They help to rebuild communities, schools, and stability (both financially and with the tribes). They have also set up a scholarship fund for the kids in the affected areas to get the right education because education is one of the most important things. These kids are the future of Africa and need to be educated.

As for me, I do the best i can to spread awareness and raise money. I would love to be a roady but I have the issue of not being able to miss a semester of school. However, I do the most I can to help out. For instance, I recently designed this shit that I am still selling for $15 and all the prceeds are going to Inivisible Children and then after i sell some the design will go to them too.