Nature & Life in Poems --- Parts I & II

The late Dr Bellario Ahoy Ngong Geng was a polymath - a person of extraordinarily broad and comprehensive knowledge and skill. In the 1980s, as medical doctor and public health official for the Sudanese government, he was in charge of the malaria control program. When he joined the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in 1990, he began as a military trainer and ended as a Brigadier having established mobile health units for displaced populations and the war wounded. He went on to become Director General for Health Services, Commissioner of the South Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, and Chairperson of the Southern Sudan HIV/AIDS Commission. He participated in the Naivasha Comphrehensive Peace Agreement talks, was a member of the interim SPLM National Executive Council and was elected in South Sudan's first election, in 2010, as a Member of Parliament for Aweil South County, a position he held until his untimely passing in 2014. Dr Bellario however, was also a poet, in the long tradition of poetry in the culture of South Sudan and within his own family - both his parents were poets - and Nature & Life in Poems, Parts l & ll is a phemonenal collection. His original plan was to write 1001 poems, organised around a number of themes. Here, you will find the 615 he completed before his passing. Each Part is organised into Chapters (2-5) with the same title, but with a different sequence of short, interconnected poems. The poems will take you on a journey through South Sudanese culture, history, family and politics. Flowing with humour, whimsy and grace, Dr Bellario's poetry is both lyrical and powerful, confronting and comforting and most of all uplifting. In years to come this book will be read in high schools and studied in universities. It will find its place amongst the truly great works of art in South Sudan - Vale Dr Bellario.