Ten Years' Captivity in the Mahdi's Camp 1882-1892

by Josef Ohrwalder; Sir F. R. Wingate

It was never safe for children to appear in the streets at night, or they would certainly have been seized by the starving people. One evening I heard a cry at my door, and myself and several neighbours at once ran out to see what was the matter. We saw a man dragging a boy away: we at once gave chase, and the man dropped the boy and fled; he intended to have a good meal off the boy that night.

During the famine several sold themselves or their children into slavery; but when it was all over, the Khalifa ordered all such to be set free without remuneration to their masters.

Dervishes, who had heaped insults on the Turks during the siege of El Obeid for eating donkeys, and other unclean animals, were now feeling Heaven's vengeance, for not only did they eat unclean animals, but their own children as well. There were so many dead bodies about that it was not possible to bury them all. At first they used to bury them within the city, but the Khalifa put a stop to this, and they were then taken out to the north-west side, and up to this day, if anyone walks in that direction he will find the plain scattered with innumerable skulls and human bones, which lie there glistening in the sun, as white as snow; the driving sand and burning sun have polished them like glass.

How many dead bodies were carried away by the Nile, God only knows; if people thought of it I do not think they would ever eat any more fish, for the fish must have had a surfeit of human flesh. The scent of the dead bodies brought hyenas everywhere, and they became so bold that they would come almost up to my door. As for the vultures, their name was legion, but even they with the help of the hyenas were unable to consume all the bodies.

Let us leave Omdurman for a moment and trace the course of the famine in the provinces. In Dongola and Berber the price of dhurra rose to one hundred dollars an ardeb.

The entire districts between Omdurman and Berber had become depopulated. In a hut might be found a man, his wife and children all lying dead on their angaribs. Even in the salt districts near Shendi, almost the entire population had died of hunger. In Kassala and Galabat matters were even worse; here the price of an ardeb had gone up to two hundred and fifty dollars, and even for this enormous price it was almost impossible to get it, for there was really none in the country. The great Shukrieh tribe had eaten almost all their camels, and its numbers had dwindled from forty thousand to four thousand souls.

The large tribe of Wad Zayid (the Debaineh) in the neighbourhood of Gedaref, who for his opposition to Mahdiism had been thrown into prison in Omdurman, had become almost extinct. The population of Kassala, Galabat, and Gedaref had dwindled almost to nothing. Zeki Tummal, to obtain food for his troops, had mercilessly robbed the corn merchants and compelled them to give up their very last supplies; he left them without even a handful.

Around Galabat the hyenas became so bold that they would sneak into the villages almost before the sun was down and drag off the wretched half-dead people. Out of Zeki's force of eighty-seven thousand souls before the famine there remained, after it was over, only ten thousand, including women and children. Karkoj and Sennar, which were generally called the granaries of the Sudan, were desolated by famine. It was, indeed, Heaven's terrible retribution on a people who had practised untold cruelties and shed rivers of innocent blood.

So great was the distress that it became a general saying that any one who did not die in 1889 would never die; and this year, corresponding to the year 1306 Moslem era, will remain engraven for ever on the minds of those who went through the famine in the Sudan and had the good fortune to survive it.

When the first supplies of the new harvest reached the market, there was the most heartfelt joy throughout the country, and every one congratulated his neighbour on the termination of their distress; but even the new harvest was not good, and dhurra did not go below twenty-four dollars the ardeb. The locusts did much harm to the harvest, and this plague has devastated the land now for nearly four years.