They like the wind. And the fire that cleans up the country at the end of the dry season. But most of all they like the rain that brings new life. They cherish each new blade as a new-born child. At sprouting time when vegetables need peace they walk on their fingers while, at the same time, they address themselves and others with the utmost respect. When nature’s bounty is ripe, they dance, play, sing and celebrate for a few months until everything is gone. This is not only a custom they follow because of their sheer gratefulness but mostly because they cannot be still due to the intense joy stemming from the beauty that surrounds them.

They are mothers and fathers, girls and boys and even small babies, aunts and uncles, grandpas and grandmas... these are the most innocent and purest people in the world. They are not interested in the oil that foreign companies have discovered at the foot of their mountains, nor in the great profits for which Eastern and Western economic interests are struggling to gain in the war that, in seventeen years, has taken two million victims, while another five million have been driven away from their homes. The encircled and besieged Nubian families in the mountains of Central Sudan have been exposed to genocide, though they are merely looking for peace and the right to be what they want – the NUBAS.

Tomo Križnar