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.