Toronto Boys - The Supreme and Reigning Gang that Terrorize Residents of Juba City

This piece is a personal observation about some motorcyclists (boda boda) in Juba who use to grab handbags and other valuable items from the pedestrians. The public later named them “awlad Toronto or Toronto boys” because they suspect them to have been coming from the Toronto Hotel parking yard in ATlabara. 

By Deng Kiir Akok 

Awlad is an Arabic word for boys while Toronto is a provincial capital of Ontario in Canada.

The author will later, in this piece, educate his audiences on how the Juba residents came to name some Juba boys with the above name.

But before everything else, let’s revisit those years that have brought the change in Sudan.

In 2005, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Sudan government signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) to end the Africa’s longest civil war, which has killed 2.5 million people and displaced four million others. 

The deal granted a southern region a six-year semi-autonomous. The period set the region to go to Referendum to decide whether it would vote for the separation or the unity of the Sudan. 

A sweet dream - a dream for separation as this author refers it to, was in the minds of many southerners. And this came true in 2011 when the southerners voted for separation with 99.9%. The percentage whom voted for the separation was unquestionable that led to the birth of a new nation in the African continent. 

As a new nation with new investment opportunities and a new hope for the entire world, the foreign investors saw a promising future in it. They come in different nationalities and invest in what they think would benefit them.

The Eritreans took the lead in Hotels industry and in water tankers. To name these hotels, the Juba residents have seen the names that exist in the world named in the capital Juba and other towns across the country. Those names were in remembrance of the countries where those investors hail from.

Though some hotels bear overseas names, those are the foreign countries that they once stayed and slept well or having gained their nationalities. Literally the foreign countries they once lost to as our lost boys and girls of the Sudan who lost to foreign countries during the civil wars.

One Eritrean-Canadian has built a property in ATlabara on a busy street of Shar-Facebook (Facebook Street) and named it ‘Toronto Hotel’. The hotel is located at the strategic street famous for Shisha smoking. Every addicted smoker in Juba had to visit this place at least three times a day.

In the front yard of this hotel, the boda-boda (motorcyclist), mostly young boys, whose majority of them ride numberless Senke motorcycles used to park there as they wait for passengers.

In 2015, when the South Sudan economy began to shrink, the unidentifiable motorcyclists developed grabbing handbags and other valuable things from the pedestrians on their ways to and from the market.

The grabbers come in two numbers and on one motorcycle, mostly riding in Senke which some people believe have their gears altered, and that no other motorcycle would try to chase and cash them due to its mechanical capacity except for YAHAMA.

The duo has different functions: one is to ride a motorcycle, and the other is to grab items from their victims’ hands. As the cases of grabbing were on the rise, the people were trying to find out where exactly did these boys come from.

It’s not that long ago that the public grew a suspicion on the Toronto Hotel parking yard motorcyclists that they are the ones responsible for the grabbing activities across the city. 

The rumors were already flying around in the capital. One rumor and of which the boys got their name had it that these boys were from Toronto hotel while the other maintained that they were from hell.

Since then, the boys have grabbed hundreds of handbags and other worthy items from the pedestrians and the passengers in the open vehicles.

For your safety, be careful with these boys whenever you are in the streets. There are many of them out there. All the Juba streets are full of them and have eagle eyes that they see anything you are carrying in your hands in the distance.

However, the funny thing they are making in their little heads is that, exceeding a certain distance from home is their right to check whether what you are carrying would benefit them.

The non-Toronto cannot understand the distance the Toronto boys subjected their victims to. But the good thing is that they don’t include in their list the breaking into peoples’ houses. It would have been a hard time for the Juba residents, this one was in the Toronto boys’ list. 

The residents are enjoying the little rest they have while at homes. Although there are rare reports of robberies at night times, we should isolate those from the Toronto boys’ activities. 

The Toronto boys don’t go peoples’ houses because they think if they do so, they would lose their motorcycles to the house owners. Some of them are weak and cannot face house owners with strong muscles. Their victim sometimes overpowered them and confiscated their motorcycles or let them meet their days.

But if your days are still long, there is nothing that will let you call them Toronto boys when they are at peace with you and other road walkers.

Your bad day begins only when you call them Toronto boys while having no proof that shows they are Toronto boys. This is because the name applies once you saw them grabbing anything from you or anyone. 

Sometimes, someone would trouble himself or herself by rushing and used the name on the wrong guys whom he or she suspects. For some reasons, the guys you are suspicious may lack connections with Toronto boys.

And the worse thing is that someone may be forty percent sure of the someone relation to Toronto boys and still use the name. Your idea would be a suicide. 

The guys you see to be resembling Toronto boys may be hardworking ones somewhere who give themselves hard times to feed on what they do with their own hands and they believe in it. They are not making their living out of the loots from pedestrians or passengers in the open vehicles belonging.

In such a way, these boys are not real. They are fake ones who only survive on shoppers’ and pedestrians’ belongings. If they are not, then they should find other ways of survival than to feed on other people’s materials.

Despite all the above, there is still one hope for the Juba residents. The hope is that the Toronto boys do not come up to the people’s houses looking for handbags or backpack to grab. They wait for their victims to come out of their houses about a few meters away from the buildings.

Even though there are night robberies that sometimes happen to some people’s houses at night, we should not treat those as Toronto boys’ responsibility.

Despite that, the only little hope left, Juba residents and the ladies have another latest bad news. The bad news is the Toronto boys have added into their long list of items they termed as wanted items from the pedestrians that any lady seen wearing a wig made of human hair, a type wig imported from India should voluntarily surrender it to them or faces the violence. 

The Toronto boys have just recently learned that some wigs are more expensive than some electronic devices. Some wigs cost up to five hundred United States Dollars according to one shopper in Konyokonyo who was familiar with the modern wigs prices in the town.

There is one moment I enjoy from these boys. This was when the two Toronto boys missed a handbag they were trying to grab from one young lady one evening in Hai Cinema and said to the lady: next time. The young lady was walking by the roadside when the bad luck was about to strike her.

The Toronto boys hoped that they would get her next time. The author guesses they said to themselves that the lady was not going anywhere and will still get her next time.

As of now, the pedestrians from shopping centers live in fear of losing their belongings since the grabbing of anything in possession of them began in 2015 up to date. 

Even a friend of mine, a Chinese man, has seen his laptop and the mobile phone being carried away by these boys in broad daylight. According to him, they took his laptop on way home from the workplace. 

He also lost his mobile phone to them on the different day, a day he termed as the worst day of the days he lived in Juba. Until now, Mr Jackie - that’s his name, didn't believe his electronics were gone.

To encounter this phenomenon, the pedestrians had to reverse the producers’ intended position of a backpack to front-pack. They do this because they do not know the direction in which the Toronto boys would launch grabbing on them.

They may come from behind when their victim is focusing in front. They maximize the moment the victims do not seen them. One would be wrong if he or she thinks it’s only pedestrians that are Toronto boys’ target. It also includes passengers in open vehicles. 

But so sadly, the death involves with these types of victims. Many people have lost their dear lives in such kind of grabbing. The death occurs when the Toronto boys used too much force to take off a handbag or backpack from their victims. 

Their victims in return would make a resistance to defend his or her property. During this pulling, the victim may fall off from a motorcycle or a pickup and lands on the ground with his or her head that could cause his or her neck to break. 

In conclusion, last but not the least, the author would like to thank God for restricting Toronto boys to Jubek State and the capital Juba in particular. Thus, the other states are Toronto boys free.

God bless South Sudan 

The Chol Muong We Will Never Know

By Deng Kiir Akok

Chol Muong Akot was born to Pakuacdiem clan in the present Awan Pajok County of Awan Mourkuau in Gogrial State. He was famous in Awan and beyond for his blessed appetite and wise sayings. 

Some senior people in Awan who have firsthand information about the community say Chol Muong was not the only one with a legendary appetite. But there were others with better appetite in the neighboring communities. However, those were not heard because they knew only how to eat to death compare to Chol Muong who was also born with wisdom.

Chol Muong was respectfully called by his first and bull names as Chol Gitbeek because of his outstanding personality. Any living person whilst lived in Awan during Chol Muong’s days called him by these names. 

Still, his in-laws felt it was not respectful enough to call him with his first and bull names. And to void this, they call him Mony Anyang-the husband of Anyang; for Anyang was his wife’s name. 

Gitbeek is a compounding of two Dinka words: Git refers to stripe and beek is for Saddle-billed stork. The word Gitbeek literally means stripe like a saddle-billed stork.

The Dinka people have belief surrounding this bird apart from its beautiful colors that makes it special for them. That if a saddle-billed stork cries, then there would go to be a human catastrophe. Its cries forecast a doom ahead of mankind. According to this belief, it’s not a cry itself that brings the human suffering, but it’s God that alerts his children when the tragedy is imminent.

Thus, a man of least importance wouldn't bother to choose Gitbeek as his bull name. Instead, he would pick his bull name from the other remaining bull names. This is because it will not match his status in the community, and it may create a loophole in the community’s bull naming tradition.

In addition, the community members, especially the elders, would not give recognition to his newly gained manhood name. Also, he would be regarded as one with hardheaded who doesn't abide by the community bull naming criteria where those with high esteem personalities get the rare bull names and vice versa. 

Nhialic agueer abiik (ten miithke)- the God is grinding flour (for his children), and per this Dinka saying, Chol Muong was born on the shore of Yanyyom, a small lake in Awan Pajok County which was his great source of food. The almighty God didn't stop from there and said being near to Yanyyom was enough for him; still, he gave him wisdom. 

His wise sayings, which have been used in everyday life of his community and beyond include the one he said while on a visit to a neighboring village to get some slow roasted crushed sesame to eat. Although eating from the neighboring village was a shame, he had not any other option to avoid it since his village did not grow such crops. 

On his arrival at the neighboring village, he concluded his long walk at the shadow of Kuruit - a thatching block made from the cut sesame plant stems tied onto wooden poles and left for drying. It was just some few steps away from one house in the neighboring village. 

His receivers, however, approached him in the shadow and gave him a warm welcome. They then asked him to come with them into the hut where he supposed to take rest. 

To his receivers’ surprise, Chol Muong refused to leave the shadow for the hut, and said: “a person sits in the shadow of what one came for.” As his host heard this, they quickly understood what their guest meant.

In their response, one of them said this: “We are not simple to be lost in the saying. We had now known what you had come for.” During the exchange of words between them, his receivers convinced him and led him into the hut. Good enough, his receivers had information about his usual habit of burying what he wanted to say in his great sayings.

Chol Muong’s other popular wise sayings include the followings:

1. The watching does not kill. If it kills, it would have killed him (Chol Muong) when he was watching one of drums at Atuet in Awiel East State.

2. Accepting someone’s call to share a little food is a pulling of one’s leg.

3. One should send a young person who will add his or her own word in your message and so many other sayings which are not mentioned here.

Now, our story has just begun. For those people who post other people’s photos on social media and claim them to be belong to Chol Muong are misguiding the South Sudanese people in his right photos. They intentionally had been doing this for almost the age of social media. The author of this piece took the above photo from those photos and have you seen has nothing to do with him. In reality, they belong to other well-fed men.

Last January, this author was in Awan, and had showed to a certain an old man, those photos being circulated on social media in the name of Chol Muong to confirm whether they were truly his. The photo of a stranger you see above is one of them the author showed the old man which he dismissed.

“If I could correctly remember, by any mistake, no camera had seen Chol Muong,” said the old man. The elders told me he was a busy man and had got no time to waste standing in front of the camera and wait for seconds for capturing. To be frank, those who claim to have got Chol Muong’s photos are lying to themselves.”

He then belched noisily and paused for a long while to allow the air to flow uninterrupted. “Abi Nhialic wa teek ok-okeek,” said the old man after the belching had ceased. And for their lies, he continued, may the god of our forefathers, let them lose their appetites whenever they want to post a post about our man.”

After a little while, he then departed without saying goodbye to me, and was heading towards his house. Hmm, it upset the old man.

Nowadays, to get Chol Muong’s right photos has remained a mystery to South Sudanese social media users.Those posters wish to have his photos and his never getting old sayings altogether, every time they want to make their post about him. When they did not secure his photos, they post photos of other men of an African origin, citing he was such a fat man.

As a result, these posts, though ignored by the Awan Muorkuau community, has impacted negatively on the real physical appearance of its great man.

In my observation on those individuals’ photos which the posters post about Chol Muong, one can conclude that they were not physically fit based on their appearance in those photos. I suggested that they could not make a living out of hunting and fishing as supplements to their way of life with which Chol Muong was known for. 

The author of this piece is closely watching these posters’ activities on social media and wonders if their intention was to tarnish the once physical appearance of Chol Muong or the image of the community. They have got no shy at all. Not even a ten-year-old from Awan can agree that the above photo is of Chol Muong’s leave alone the grown ups.

Whilst on the watch out of their posts they post round the clock, this author has seen with his own eyes some of those photos were almost missing some important human parts. If you have ever came across these photos and had a careful look at them, some of those men were nearly without heads or necks, unlike Chol Muong.

In conclusion, my message to those who used to post photos that have nothing to do with Chol Muong should immediately cease this activity. It’s not any photo of someone with a big belly you come across is Chol Muong’s.

It’s not up to them to guess how he looked in the photo nor the matter of making assumptions on someone’s photo. Imagine if someone, somewhere posts your photo, and made it public with a hundred words supporting it was yours, will you be happy? Surely not. The same thing applies to his people and the community at large. 

Even if we have good knowledge of his healthy appetite, that one alone doesn't justify that he was overweight. Please don’t try it NEXT time to post someone’s photo in Chol Muong’s name.

Fatness is not a motto for Awan Muorkuau; and if at all there’s a need for the community to advocate for something, then it would prefer to advocate for fitness.

God blesses South Sudan