Peter-dit: Christian Slave & Martyr
“I know that with only my own strength, I would have denied Christ and worshipped Allah. It was God who strengthened me… and delivered me from Allah and myself”
- Peter-dit
When I first met Peter, I asked him how old he was. Peter pointed to another man sitting in the same crowd of people, waiting unprotected from the searing sun, to talk with me and answered, “About his age”. This is one of the strange effects of five decades of brutal invasion upon a people. They forget details about themselves. Sometimes, they even forget who they are. In his book on spiritual warfare, Waking the Dead, John Eldredge helps us understand this state of confusion or forgetfulness by referring to the Coast Guard’s scale of rating the alertness of a trauma victim. They call the state of total disorientation “alert and oriented times zero”.
Peter has lost track of the number of years he has walked upon this earth, but he is not alert and oriented times zero. He is what is referred to as the highest state of awareness, “alert and oriented times four”. Even in the midst of chaos, pain and great loss, Peter never forgot Whose he was, and therefore knows who he is.
Peter appears to be in his fifties although the scars on his face are so thick and many, it is difficult to be certain. The Janjaweed invaded his village in early daylight. He could hear the Watchmen’s drums beating out their warnings, but it was sort of like our tornado sirens can be here in the south warning us of an ominous F5. We hear the sirens, but often have no place to run. Unprotected in an open field with an F5 bearing down on us, panic would ensue as we heard the terrible force of swirling wind and debris - seeing cars, trucks and maybe even houses picked up by the force of the wind and hurling toward us – with no where to take cover. This is the closest analogy for us that describes daily life for the Christians in Sudan when they hear the thundering hooves of the Janjaweed horses trampling their village, they have no where to run.
The Janjaweed roared into Peter’s village on horseback, firing their automatic weapons and yelling, “Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!” (Praise Allah! Praise Allah!) Some jumped off their horses, grabbed men, women and children and forced them into a random tukel. A tukel is what the Sudanese people call their homes; it is a small mud hut perhaps six feet in diameter, with a grass roof.
Once so many people were forced inside that arms and legs poked out between the gaps found in the mud bricks and the grass roof, the Janjaweed set fire to the tukel. As the armed Janjaweed guarded the flaming home to make sure no one escaped, outside was a frenzy of Allah praise complete with gun fire. Inside, the burning Christians screamed for loved ones and mercy.
Establishing an environment of fear and panic, the Janjaweed began calling for the citizens of Peter’s village to join them in the worship of Allah. They raped women and children, fired their automatic weapons up in the air and down into the ground in rapid succession, beat the men with their pangas (machetes) until they passed out. All of this is an attempt to establish control and force the villagers to convert to Islam. Sometimes it works; it did not work in the case of Peter Deet.
The Janjaweed beat Peter with their pangas without mercy. They knocked out most of his teeth. They then forced him to swallow his own teeth while they laughed, mocked him and called him “infidel”. They crushed the entire right side of his face during the beatings. Since Peter refused to worship Allah, the Janjaweed wanted to make him an example. They did indeed make Peter an example - for Christ.
Finally, the Janjaweed decided they could not break Peter easily so they tied him to the back of a horse. They then gathered his wife and children, along with many other villagers, and bound their hands. Many were tied to the backs of horses and drug. Some were forced to walk at gunpoint. Still others, especially young children, were simply thrown on top of the horses with their captors. All were forced to go north where they would become slaves.
The men were taken one direction and the women and children another. After walking this way many hours into the night, finally they stopped. The women and children were divided up to be raped by and sleep with their captors. Other men guarded the bound men.
This sort of travel went on for days as the villagers were forced north and the distance between the male captives and female captives grew. The men had no way of knowing where their wives and children were taken.
In the chaos of travel one night, Peter was able to escape. Near death from the open wounds he received during the beatings, Peter searched for his family. He found no sign of them.
Eventually, Peter made his way back to his decimated village. All livestock that couldn’t be carried north with the slave raiders had been slaughtered. All crops and homes had been burned, and wells had been poisoned. The Janjaweed left no stone of survival unturned. Peter returned to nothingness.
How to survive? How to rebuild? Why survive? Why rebuild? Unable to find and rescue his family, these are the questions that have haunted Peter for 15 years.
By the end of Peter’s testimony, we were holding hands – both of us in tears. I didn’t know what to say to him. His pain, his loss, his love for his family, his faithfulness - each of these things were so evident in Peter that I found it hard to fathom one person having them all at once. He suffered such extreme loss, yet his faithfulness continued. Finally I said I would pray for him. Peter replied, “That’s nice, but it won’t bring my family back”.
Our wet eyes locked. I knew he wasn’t being cold or blaming me. He was speaking to a practical truth, the reality that in a few short weeks, I would return to my family in a safe place with plenty of food. He, on the other hand, would remain in a place of dismal starvation wondering each and everyday if he would ever see his wife and children again.
I asked Peter, “In the face of such violence and suffering with your family literally ripped from your arms, how did you maintain your faith? How did you refrain from shouting out to Allah just from the sheer pain and agony as the Muslims beat you?”
The Dinka people have a unique way of holding their heads high with dignity while at the same time being the personification of humility. With this unique combination, Peter replied, “I know that with only my own strength, I would have denied Christ and worshipped Allah. But it was God who strengthened me. It was God who delivered me from Allah - and myself.”
As he stood to leave, he dried his eyes and pulled his head high. Dinka men don’t cry. Dinka men don’t touch women to whom they are not married. Peter broke the second of those rules as he embraced me with graciousness; he had broken the first within moments of beginning the story of his family.
Although I conducted many more interviews that day, I couldn’t get Peter out of my mind. Every tear shed over every heartbreaking interview contained a drop for Peter and his family. It seemed as though every time I left the compound I ran into Peter. I tried to make small talk with him, but what do you say to such a man?
Eventually, conversation always led back to his family. One day he told me he even knew the exact man in the north who held his family captive. I looked at him in disbelief. How could this be? He explained that with the trucks delivering hundreds of escapees from the north, he always runs to them and asks each returnee if they have any word of his family. Many have testified concerning Peter’s family and know exactly where they are being held captive.
I was incredulous. With the Peace Treaty signing of January 2005, the Islamic government of Khartoum agreed to release all slaves being held in the north. However, in the year that had passed, many slaves who had escaped were testifying that when the Non Governmental Agencies (NGOs) come through looking for slaves, the slave owners shuffle them from one location to another in order to hide them from the NGOs. All returnees gave us testimony that they had escaped; we found none who had been released as the Peace Treaty stipulates.
This new information haunted me. What could be done? The laws were in place. It was now illegal to own slaves. There was a law that all slaves be released and allowed to return to their homeland. The laws are meaningless. No one holds this evil radical Islamic regime accountable to those laws. No one reports the facts of slavery, mostly Christian slavery by a radical Islamic Regime, to the outside world.
On another day, as I was passing by, I saw Peter; we chatted a while. I asked him if he had eaten that day; he said no. Actually, he had not eaten in three days. I couldn’t believe that I saw him nearly everyday and he never told me he had no food. He considered it rude to complain to me. I brought him back to the compound to give him food.
After he ate, I asked him if we could chat a bit more. He smiled his humble smile. Rarely could we talk without me asking him again to explain to me how he endured such suffering for Christ and remained not only faithful at the time but so gracious even now as he worried and suffered over the loss of his family. It was a story I knew I would never tire of hearing. He patiently explained to me his own weakness and fear, but that in his agony, he just collapsed on God knowing there was nothing else that lasted.
I sat so humbled knowing I was not made of the same stuff as Peter. I have spent much of my life “making myself” (our culture is full of and takes great pride in being “self-made” people). Here I sat with a barely dressed man in rags, with his face bearing the scars of being literally smashed for Christ. He was beyond the foolishness of the illusion of doing or being anything in and of his own strength. Maybe for the first time in my life, I had a true understanding of “and the last shall be first”.
I asked Peter if there was anything we could do to help him. It was the same as when he was so hungry - his need was so great, but until I offered to help, he wouldn’t impose. Peter’s reply was calm and clear, “As I told you, I know exactly where my family is being held in Khartoum. I know exactly who has them. I want to go to Khartoum, file a petition in the court system, which is supposed to honor the new law, and gain the freedom of my wife and children. Then I will bring them back to live with me here in Nyamlel.”
“How would you go? How much would it cost? How long would it take? Wouldn’t that be dangerous?” I asked. Peter had obviously been thinking about this for a long time. “I will hire passage on one of the trucks that has delivered returnees and is returning to Khartoum. It would cost about 500,000 Dinar ($300). I think it will take about a month.”
I noticed his answers were clear and concise except he didn’t answer the part about danger at all. I didn’t need to ask it again. I had heard enough testimonies over the last weeks to know the dangers.
Peter and I continued to talk many times over the following days. As we talked, I learned more of what Peter had done before the war. Mostly, he built houses in the dry season and worked in agriculture in the wet season. He shared pre-war stories with me of his life and family. A plan developed for how he could work on our compound helping in the areas he was skilled, including discipleship within the community.
Make Way Partners does not buy back slaves. We have studied this extensively and know that in all cases, best-case scenario is that it drives the slave trade. It usually creates corruption and false slave markets as well. However, funding Peter’s travel to file the legal documents within the court system, testing these laws and documenting the government’s willingness to support these laws, seemed like a good idea and something we could support.
One evening, just before sunset, we collected and gave Peter $500. We then prayed over him. He waited several days before he was able to hire passage on a truck headed for Khartoum. Peter was hoping to make the complete journey in 4 weeks. It has now been eight weeks and he has not returned to Nyamlel. There is no way to communicate with him as he travels. He knows he has home and a job waiting for him on the compound when he returns. Please pray for Peter, his wife and his family as he seeks a reunion.
- Kimberly Smith, President
