Slave: My True Story
Fourteen thousand. That is the estimated number of Sudanese men, women and children that have been abducted and forced into slavery between 1986 and 2002. (Agnes Scott College, http://prww.agnesscott.edu/alumnae/p_maineventsarticle.asp?id=260) Mende Nazer is one of those 14,000. The thing that sets her apart is that she escaped and had the courage to tell her story to the world. Slave: My True Story, the Memoir of Mende Nazer, depicts how courage and the will to live can triumph over oppression and enslavement by showing the world that slavery did not end in 1865, but is still a worldwide problem.
In Slave: My True Story, Nazer personally and vividly chronicles her life, which began in the Nuba Mountains of southern Sudan. Her early life with the Karko Tribe in a rural and isolated area was very simple and happy. Nazer grew up in a family that was, by Nuba standards, considerably well off. She was the youngest of five children, with two brothers and two sisters. Nazer, along with both her brothers and one sister attended a government-run, Arab school. She led what has been described as an “idyllic childhood” with no worries about food, shelter, or social comforts. However, in the spring of 1993, everything changed. At the age of twelve or thirteen (the Nuba people do not keep records of birth dates) Nazer was abducted during a raid on her village.
“…a man seized me from behind. He pinned me down with his stubbly beard pricking the back of my neck…He dragged me to my feet and started to march me through the village…We arrived at the edge of the forest. Beneath the trees there were about thirty other children huddled together”(Nazer 97).
Nazer, along with the other children were taken to a converted army base run by Arab Militiamen loyal to Sudan’s Islamist Government.
“…a camp – made up of twenty or more khaki green tents, arranged in rows. We approached the camp in a long line, and at the gates we were met by a group of men in military uniforms”(Nazer
In Slave: My True Story, Nazer personally and vividly chronicles her life, which began in the Nuba Mountains of southern Sudan. Her early life with the Karko Tribe in a rural and isolated area was very simple and happy. Nazer grew up in a family that was, by Nuba standards, considerably well off. She was the youngest of five children, with two brothers and two sisters. Nazer, along with both her brothers and one sister attended a government-run, Arab school. She led what has been described as an “idyllic childhood” with no worries about food, shelter, or social comforts. However, in the spring of 1993, everything changed. At the age of twelve or thirteen (the Nuba people do not keep records of birth dates) Nazer was abducted during a raid on her village.
“…a man seized me from behind. He pinned me down with his stubbly beard pricking the back of my neck…He dragged me to my feet and started to march me through the village…We arrived at the edge of the forest. Beneath the trees there were about thirty other children huddled together”(Nazer 97).
Nazer, along with the other children were taken to a converted army base run by Arab Militiamen loyal to Sudan’s Islamist Government.
“…a camp – made up of twenty or more khaki green tents, arranged in rows. We approached the camp in a long line, and at the gates we were met by a group of men in military uniforms”(Nazer