"Shen shen shen Mama" ("ugly ugly ugly Mama"), Emanuel sings to himself as he cleans the kitchen in the Kibbutz Eilot dining hall. In the political protest song composed by his bandmate, Juma, "Mama" is the homeland, and the ugliness is the persecution of the Christians in southern Sudan that forced them to leave their homes and condemned them to live as refugees. The acute heartache expressed in the song is reminiscent of the protest songs of exiles from other countries in other times. "Of course I miss my friends and family, and the landscapes and foods of home, too," Emanuel says. "But our life is here now."

The band's name, Union of Great Equatoria, or UGE for short, comes from the name of Sudan's southernmost region. Most of the group's members are from there and although the band is multi-tribal, most of its songs are written in Juba, the predominant Arabic dialect in the area. Only a few of the members have any formal musical training. The singers acquired their experience from singing in church choirs. They have performed in Eilat, Be'er Sheva, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The idea was born in the refugee detention camp at Ketziot Prison, in southern Israel. One day, out of boredom, Emanuel hummed a song while strumming an imaginary guitar. "Do you play?" a tentmate, Francis, asked. Francis plays the organ, as it turned out, and in prison he missed making music. "We said, 'When we get out we'll start a band,' even though we had no idea when we'd be released, if ever," Francis recalls.

Emanuel was released in September 2006. He was one of the first of the Sudanese to be sent to work in the hotels in Eilat and to live in the Kibbutz Eilot holiday village. Francis was freed four months later. He lives in Eilat's Red Rock Hotel, along with other Sudanese who work in local hotels. In May 2007, Juma (also known as Jimmy) crossed the Egyptian- Israeli border and went straight to Eilat. In July, the band was founded.

Many of the Sudanese left Eilat within a short time and went to Tel Aviv to try their luck. Emanuel stayed. "I like the quiet here," he says. "I have a job in the kibbutz dining hall, I have a place to live and a school for my daughter. The future really worries me, but it's out of my hands for now."

The reports of hundreds of refugees who inundated Tel Aviv last weekend added to his worries. "I'm sure this will hurt our efforts to achieve some kind of stability, even for a limited time. For the Darfuris and the Eritreans, a solution was found. Only we, the South Sudanese, don't know what will become of us tomorrow," Emanuel says.

In fact, the state is not quite sure what to do with them. The South Sudanese are not being deported, because their lives would be in danger if it became known back home that they had spent time in Israel. On the other hand, their status is not being settled. They are considered illegal residents and their employment is possible solely on the strength of a promise from the Ministry of Industry and Trade that it will not take steps against their employers.

"We go about our country as strangers / In a land of other people," Francis sings as he wields a vacuum at Eilat's Isrotel King Solomon Hotel. "If you turn on the radio / You won't hear our voices." After work he goes to Eilot to visit. There is a great deal of traffic between the city and the resort village, by bus and sometimes on foot. The refugees' social organizations usually hold their meetings in Eilat. Eilot is the site of the school, of Sabbath worship and of band practice - usually outdoors.

Sandy, Emanuel's seven-year-old daughter, bursts into the room where the band stores its equipment. "I had a birthday party last week, with cake and balloons," she announces in fluent, unaccented Hebrew. The school attended by Sandy and 45 other refugee children has two classes, two teachers, two assistant teachers and a principal, Yuval Yelovsky. Transportation is provided for the children whose families live in the Eilat hotels.

About two months ago, at a meeting with representatives of the Education Ministry and the Eilot Regional Council, the parents requested that their children be integrated into the regional school. "We were concerned that the lessons were only in Arabic," Emanuel explains. "We took this as a sign that we were unwanted. But we're here to stay for at least five to 10 years, and the children need to learn the language and fit in."

Yelovsky, a member of Kibbutz Eilot, agrees. She says it took some time before the authorities realized that taking care of the refugees from southern Sudan requires was not just a temporary arrangement, for a month or two. Now the children learn Hebrew as well as Arabic. Yelovsky's small school has to cope with challenges unknown to Israel's educational system: students who suddenly arrive straight from the border, sometimes after undergoing horrific experiences; students who have spent most of their lives in constant flight and have never gone to school; and parents who are unfamiliar with local educational methods. "There were parents who couldn't understand why I mentioned discipline problems to them. They told me, 'So take a stick and beat him,'" Yelovsky says.

'Bones of the dead'

Says Assunta, a singer in UGE who also heads the community's women's organization, which was established in part out of a desire to look after the children's education: "We're tired of schools that aren't official. We had schools like that in Cairo and even in Khartoum. They were founded by good people, but they operated only a few months a year and the teachers were often absent. It was more for the sake of being able to say that there is a school, than to really teach the children."

Perhaps a visit to the classroom would convince her of the sincerity of Yelovsky's and her staff's intentions. On the wall beside the blackboard, next to an Israeli flag and an "Israel is 60" poster, are pictures of the president, the prime minister and the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces. The names of the children on this week's cleaning roster are written in Hebrew, as are the topics of their latest science lesson: water recycling and weather. It's hard to imagine a more Israeli classroom. Last week, the class witnessed a major achievement: One of the students, a 13-year-old boy, managed with great effort to read out loud in Arabic from the textbook. "Very good!" praised the teacher as the class applauded. It was the first time the boy had ever read. When he began attending school a few weeks before, he barely knew the alphabet.

"If you go to Rumbek / All you'll find are the bones of the dead in the forest / If you go to Darfur / You'll find the Janjaweed living in the houses of people they expelled and killed," Assunta softly sings as she makes the bed in a Club Hotel guest room. It's been eight years since she left her hometown, Juba City, to study at the University of Juba, which had moved to Khartoum because of the war.

Because the South Sudanese are forbidden to live in Khartoum, the capital, Assunta lived in a makeshift refugee camp outside the city that was basically a collection of mud huts. The conditions there were very tough to begin with, she says. In addition, whenever the people in one camp managed to improve their living conditions somewhat the Khartoum police immediately drove them out, and they had to create a new camp, farther away.

Assunta was arrested in 2005, because her husband was suspected of aiding one of the Darfuri underground organizations. Her daughter, only two years old, was left behind with no one to care for her. "The worrying about her was worse than all the blows I suffered in the interrogation," Assunta says. When she was released, two days later, she took her daughter and fled to Egypt. Nearly a year later, her husband was released, and he joined them. Last June they crossed the border into Israel and were sent immediately to Eilat.

The women's organization aims to help women to demand their rights and obtain an education. Some of the women are illiterate; others, Assunta says, speak no English and know little about the world around them. "Israel is different than Sudan and it's important for the women to learn about other things," she explains. "This way, even if we leave, maybe our lives will be better."

Women's rights are among the most controversial issues within the Sudanese community here. "In the hotels they don't let the women work on Saturdays because there's no kindergarten, so they earn less," Assunta complains.

"I wouldn't mind if my wife earned more than me," declares Emanuel, whose wife does not working at present, "as long as she didn't talk about it a lot. There are women who use this to humiliate the man. That's not good."

Rose, who was released from the refugee camp at Ketziot Prison two weeks ago, has not had the leisure to ponder the status of women as yet. She repeatedly strokes the head of her middle daughter, Raviya, 6, as if trying to make up for the long months of separation. When the family crossed the border last June, Rose was apprehended on the Egyptian side. She was the only one in the family who stayed behind. "A woman can't run as well as the men," she explains. She was held in an Egyptian prison for six months and only released after she paid $400. When Rose finally crossed the border into Israel, in December, she was apprehended on the Israeli side and spent two months and 11 days in Ketziot.

"Every day, I asked Daddy when Mommy was going to come," Raviya says in Hebrew, a language her mother does not understand. "Daddy would tell me, 'On Sunday.'"

"I fell in love with a beautiful woman, her name was Betty / She left me and I'm going mad," sings Juma, wearing his ever-present sunglasses. "All day I live in a dream / Thinking just of her / What will be, Mother. Tell me what will be." The song was written about a real woman and a real heartbreak. He knows the ratio of women to men in the Sudanese community is not in his favor, but he isn't giving up hope: "I'll find my woman," he says.

Emanuel tunes his guitar as the sun starts to set. Francis adjusts the amplifiers. "We fled from Sudan, we went into Egypt, now we're in Israel," Juma sings a song he just wrote. "They say they'll send us back to Egypt / They say they'll keep us here / We don't know what will be / I pray and believe/ Maybe tomorrow will be better."

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