Flashlight, radio offer some security in Sudan
Photo provided |
Simon Kenyon, a Purdue
faculty member since 1990, spent five months in Sudan updating
his field manual for veterinarians there.
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By Tom Campbell
A flashlight and a radio aren’t much of a defense
against smart bombs and cruise missiles, but in Sudan, it was all that
Simon Kenyon could manage.
He was sure his adopted home in northern Africa would
be bombed in retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United
States.
“We expected the U.S. would bomb Sudan, as it did
after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998,” he says.
The United States has identified Sudan as a nation that is a refuge
for international terror groups, and Osama bin Laden lived there from
1991 to 1995, before moving to Afghanistan.
So Kenyon spent $25 on a battery-powered radio, a small
price for an insurance policy that might give him some warning if the
bombs were on the way. He also squirreled away a flashlight to push
back the darkness that would surely remain after the attacks. Such supplies
are difficult to come by in Sudan, which is suffering from economic
chaos because of a 15-year civil war.
Kenyon, an associate professor of veterinary clinical
science, had returned to Sudan (his home from 1979 to ’85) to update
his book, Diagnosis Manual for Field Veterinarians in Sudan. He had
barely settled in for a five-month sabbatical near Khartoum when terrorists
attacked New York City and Washington, D.C.
He and his wife, Susan, a Butler University professor
of anthropology, watched the horror on Sudanese television. The details
were sketchy.
Neither understood the Arabic language, but the awful
pictures transcended the language barrier.
“In the three days after the Sept. 11 attacks, we
did think we might have to leave,” Kenyon says, “especially
if there was U.S. retaliation against Sudan, which we did expect.”
After the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan, Kenyon again
thought he and Susan might be forced to leave Africa.
“We did think that if the reaction in the Muslim
world to U.S. attacks generated a lot of anti-American or anti-British
feeling, then life could be difficult for us, but it didn’t happen.”
Kenyon says initial response from Muslims in Sudan was
like that everywhere — shock, disbelief, fear. But the Islamic
faith does not condone taking of innocent lives, and many Muslims believe
that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon could not
have been done in the name of Islam.
“People still believe it is a combination of Israel/CIA/domestic
terrorism that is responsible,” Kenyon says. “You have to
understand that the U.S. support of Israel and suppression of the Palestinian
right to a state is absolutely incomprehensible to almost all Sudanese
and central to all their thinking about the U.S.”
In the days and weeks following the attacks, Kenyon’s
prayers were answered and his hopes were lifted. America’s patient
desire to find and punish the guilty terrorists without expending innocent
lives in a quick and forceful retaliation gave Kenyon and his Sudanese
friends hope for the future.
Contact Kenyon at: kenyons@vet.purdue.edu
