ABSTRACT
One of my long-standing informants, Martha Nasim Ahmed, was displaced in 1987 by war and by 1993 had trekked with several thousand assorted others 650 miles from home, crossing and recrossing the international border between the Sudan and Ethiopia five times. During this time her people became newly prominent to combatants and humanitarian agencies alike, registering and reregistering their names, tribal group and religion along the way. Martha told me:
‘When we got to Assosa [the first refugee camp], they asked us, all of us, “Are you Christians?” And we said, in fact I myself said when they asked me, “Yes, I am Christian, I am a child of Jesus and I belong to the church.” And then this other person who had no particular link, he was asked after me “Are you a Christian?” and he said yes, he was a Christian. It was right there in [the refugee camp] that he came to believe. “I am a person of Jesus.” There he was behind me squatting on the ground, saying “Yes. Because of us fleeing through the bush, coming here as forest-foundlings, my Liver told me I should join the Word to my body”.’2
