We left Sudan because of war and now we are going back for the first time in twenty years.

(source: Map No. 3707 Rev. 10, UNITED NATIONS, Department of Peacekeeping Operations Cartographic Section, April 2007; demarcation line source is US Department of State)

The Sudan has been at war with itself in two successive civil wars since its independence in 1956 from British rule in the southern region and British-administered Egyptian rule in the rest (Anyanya 1: 1956-1972 & Anyanya 2: 1983-2005). Colonial powers may have decided to create Africa’s largest country by maintaining the two administrative regions together but they may just as easily have divided the country along the Jan 1, 1956 Line of Demarcation. Power in a post-colonial Sudan was handed over to the political elite in Khartoum to the detriment of Southern Sudan, Darfur, and other peripheral regions far from the capital. Power, wealth, resources and development have always been tightly controlled by a small click of autocrats based at the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile rivers. This Line of Demarcation is the divide that is now a defining line needing negotiations should Southerners vote for independence in a 2011 self-determination referendum, scheduled in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the second civil war in January 2005.

In the late 1980s, the war’s front line moved agressively through the border areas now dividing Southern Sudan from the rest of the country. When the war reached Koor’s, Gabriel Bol’s and Garang’s villages near Akon—where Northern Bahr el Ghazal meets Warrap state—everyone ran for survival. Those not fast enough were killed. Some managed to hide. Others, mostly children, were taken by northern government-backed militia and enslaved, like Koor’s younger brother Chol who we meet in the film after he is released from bondage and brought to Nairobi begin school.

Families were scattered as militia burned villages, killed their inhabitants and stole cattle. They ran in all directions to escape. Boys, often quick and nimble, ran the fastest and furthest away from the killing. As the youth continued to evade the war, they found themselves merging into growing bands of lost youth heading east toward safety. More than fifty thousand Sudanese eventually settled into one of five refugee camps in Ethiopia. In 1991, Ethiopia’s Mengistu government, allies to the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), fell. The new government chased the refugees out of Ethiopia, leaving the film’s three protagonists to roam for another year toward Kakuma II Refugee Camp in northern Kenya where they met.

Chris Koor Garang enrolls his younger brother, Chol, into a boarding school in Nairobi, Kenya. (courtesy Rebuilding Hope)

In 2001, the United States established the Refugee Resettlement Program for 4000 southern Sudanese refugees from Kakuma. Koor Garang was resettled in Tuscon, Arizona. Garang Mayuol went to Chicago, Illinois. Gabriel Bol Deng went to Syracuse, New York. A great book that should be read before viewing the film is David Eggers (2006) What is the What: the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng. It provides the Lost Boys context in more detail than the film, which will help the viewer better understand where Koor, Garang and Gabriel are coming from.

Each of the three boys’ (now men’s) stories are similar. They are representative of many “lost boys” who immigrated from refugee camps for distant countries, recieved an education and are beginning to return to Southern Sudan. Some are returning permanently to work in the government, to teach, to start businesses, etc. Others are going back as philanthropic visitors to build schools, supply clinics, etc.

The three grown men share the common goal of locating their families that they haven’t seen since the war sent them fleeing their respective village so long ago. Some members of their families now live in the same villages from which they ran. Others now live in larger state capitals. Some have fallen victim to the war and were killed like two million other Sudanese.

Gabriel Bol Deng in home village (courtesy: Rebuilding Hope)

Chris Koor Garang is studying to become a registered nurse and works as a Licensed Practical Nurse. He has set up a Non-governmental Organization (NGO) (The Ubuntu) to provide medical supplies to the modest Brown Back Medical Centre in Akon, to distribute mosquito nets to local people and share his skills with care givers there.

Gabriel Bol Deng finished his undergraduate degree in mathematics education and is a strong believer that education is the answer to relieve poverty for his people. He started his own NGO (Hope For Ariang) to build a school in his home town of Ariang. When he arrives in Akon, Gabriel Bol meets an uncle at the market and asks the whereabouts of his parents. He is told to go to his home village to find out because he is not the one to say. Upon arrival in the village, an aunt walks up to him, revealing that his mother lives on in Gabriel’s eyes that resembled hers. He later shares an intimate moment under a large and healthy tree and tells us:

Our ancestors, when they die, they know what those people who are alive are doing. And I believe my mom really, and my dad… they know what I’m doing. The tree grew out of where my placenta was buried and it’s where my mom was buried… My mom is giving something back in the form of a tree. This tree is the greatest blessing ever and the greatest connection between me and my mom… There is no better way to honor them than really, to help people and contributing to making life better in Ariang village.

Garang Mayuol's homecoming (coutesy: Rebuilding Hope)

Garang Mayuol’s main goal during his first visit home is to seek out and locate his mother who he hasn’t seen in twenty years. He would also help his two friends with their NGOs. All three of them realized, as they distribute mosquito nets and sewing kits to villagers, that the need quickly surpassed their supplies. The anguish from not being able to provide for everyone is self-evident on each of their faces, particularly when one man repeats to Koor over and over after being told that there are no mosquito nets, “Just one will be enough for me and my kids.” While buyig supplies in Kenya, they decided to purchase less mosquito nets than expected due to weight restrictions on the charter flight to South Sudan. A decision that weighed heavy on their shoulders.

The historical background provided in the film is minimal but it still provides context to the war that displaced four million people, sent one million into refugee camps outside of the country and killed two million. Post-colonial power, typical for the British in retreat, was distributed to a select few to British best interest rather than the best interests of the population as a whole.

Gabriel Bol describes the source of conflict in Sudan when he states that the main source of the problem lies in the hunger for leadership. He says that clicks and specific groups are dominating politics and using religion to divide the people of Sudan.

The film portrays divisions between Arabs and non-Arabs in Sudan within its historical narrative. When referring to the divide-and-conquer strategies of Sudan’s central government in the civil war (Muslim north vs Christian South) and in Darfur (Arab vs black non-Arabs), Marlowe suggests that non-Arab black Darfuris are natural allies of Southerners. The divisions exploited by the Khartoum government are much more complexe and are not necessarily divided along religious, linguistic or ethnic lines. They were exploited along political lines to control power and share wealth to suit their political ends. It is dangerous to hint about such cultural/ethnic divisions prior to a self-determination referendum, because the minorities on both sides of the North/South border will suffer if political powers continue to exploit these divisions to prevent or promote separation of the Sudan.

Despite this, Rebuilding Hope gave me a glimpse at something new in Southern Sudan. The diaspora who left their homeland because of war are returning with hope for the future and a with strong connection to the land and its people they were froced abandoned so long ago.

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Jen Marlowe recently wrote an update about South Sudan and updates us in her article: S. Sudan makes some progress amid possibility of war.

More from Jen Marlowe on Untold Stories: Pulitzer Centre on Crisis Reporting, including a video about education and health care in South Sudan.

Have you seen another film about South Sudan, Lost Boys or about changes taking place in Sudan that we should now about? If you are South Sudanese and have regturned to your homeland to rebuild after being in exile, what is your experience? Please share in the comments below.

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movie trailer:

I read in one of your blog entries that Sudan’s civil war between the Sudanese government and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army created 4 million refugees and one million Internally Displaced People. What is the difference between a refugee and an internally displaced person and what happens to them now that the war is over? Are they allowed to go back home, and if so, how do how do they get back and where do they live? Can you interview a refugee or IDP that has returned to give me an idea of what it is like for them?

ANSWER:

Sudan’s civil war between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) began in 1983 and ended in 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The war lasted 21 years and displaced five million people, predominently from regions in the South where most of the fighting took place. Of these five million people, approximately four million were displaced internally to other places inside Sudan. The other one million people took refuge beyond Sudan’s borders to neighbouring countries (Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Libya, Egypt).

Considering that refugees have crossed international boundaries, they are entitled to certain rights and international protection. But it’s still not easy being a refugee. Internally displaced people receive no such protection nor special rights because they remain under the jurisdiction of their own government and cannot claim extra rights not available to their compatriots. Internally displaced people are often in need of special protection because their governments may be unwilling or unable to protect them or may actually be the cause of their displacement.

According to Forced Migration Online, the recognition of ‘internal displacement’ gradually came to the fore in the 1980s and “became prominent on the international agenda in the 1990s [because of] the growing number of conflicts causing internal displacement.” The problem of internal displacement from the civil war in Sudan (the country with the largest number of displaced people in the world at the time) may have influenced the recognition by the UN. In 1992, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali appointed his Special Representative on Internally Displaced Persons, Francis Mading Deng, himself a ‘southern’ Sudanese. Deng described internally displaced persons as:

persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of, or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognised state border.“

On page 82 in Douglas Johnson’s, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil War, Johnson writes of experiences of ‘southern’ Sudanese being displaced northward in peak numbers in the mid- to late-1980s which probably contributed to Boutros-Ghali’s decision to establish a Special Representative on Internally Displaced Persons:

Murahalin raids were at their peak in 1986 and 1987. Their impact in creating famine and spreading human rights abuses have been well documented. Not only were cattle taken, but Dinka villages were attacked and burned, civilians (including women and children) were killed or abducted and taken back to the North where they were traded or kept in slavery. Families split in order to survive: women, children and the elderly tried to follow the rail line from Aweil into Kordofan, and from there made their way to the displaced settlements around Khartoum.”

Forced Migration Review has an issue of its journal dedicated to guiding principles on internal displacement.

Johnson continues with a description of the same raids’ role in forcing young men to seek refuge in neighbouring countries because they:

were usually killed by the army or the Murahalin if they were caught in northern Bahr al-Ghazal or Southern Kordofan [so] they tended either to go with the cattle as far south as they could, or head east for Ethiopia, to settle in the refugee camp at Itang or join the SPLA (or, in sequence, both).”

Since the civil war ended in 2005, refugees and IDPs are returning to Southern Sudan. Not everyone wanted to return home soon after the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement because of the novelty of peace and the fear that war may return. An article posted on the International Organization for Migration (IOM) website on March 31, 2006 gives a good idea of the desire Internally Displaced People in Khartoum to return home one year after the signing of the peace agreement. Photos below are courtesy of IOM.

IDPs returning to Southern Sudan 2008 (source: IOM)

IDPs returning to Southern Sudan 2008 (source: IOM)

IDPs returning to Southern Sudan 2008 (source: IOM)

According to a January 2009 report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), an estimated 2.24 million displaced people have returned home to Southern Sudan and border areas since 2005 . The report states that 81,432 IDPs were assisted home by the United Nations and their International Organization for Migration, which organized “more than 250 separate movements in 2007-2008″ that were mostly by land but also by air and river transport.

During a visit to Southern Sudan last March and April, I spoke with many people working with refugees and IDPs who said that not all IDPs had their returns assisted in the same way. While the IOM provided transportation (see above photos), and ‘non-food items’ like tarps, kitchen tools and jerry cans for water, other ‘spontaneous’ returnees were brought home by Southern Sudan government authorities who sent truck convoys northward to Khartoum. Those that returned on the convoys are considered spontaneous returnees because they basically had to decide quickly whether or not they wanted to to head southward by returning on the trucks and joining the convoys.

The IDMC report writes that 68,000 returnees went home during 2007 and 2008 from “other state authorities and other bodies [who] launched organized returns.” These government sponsored returns may have been politically motivated by the Government of Southern Sudan to assure that ‘southerners’ living in the north would get counted in the south and categorized as such by the census. Other spontaneous refugees are also those returnees who decide on their own to return to their homeland and do so without assistance.

The same report states that the total number of spontaneous returns of internally displaced people and refugees since 2005 is 1.95 million. Figures from last year alone equate to 456,155 returns of both spontaneous and organized refugees and IDPs.

Many still wait to be returned to their homelands: “511,597 Internally Displaced People have been registered by UN/IOM [in greater Khartoum, South Darfur and Wau, Western Bahr el Ghazal] as expressing their intention to return home.”

Living conditions of returnees

Returning home is no panacea for the inadequate living conditions experienced while displaced. An IRINnews article from May of this year notes that the returnees “still experience limited access to livelihood opportunities and basic services, among other obstacles.”

I visited many villages in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal state of Southern Sudan and interviewed dozens of people about their situations. One village elder told me that most of the people in the village have just returned in the past two years. He pointed out a man who had returned the previous week. The new arrival had no place to stay, had no family that he know of and did not have any goats or cows to help establish himself.

Waterhole in War Faj village, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, Southern Sudan (March 2009)

In his village of War Faj, where the temperature during my visit in March was 39°C, They did not have a proper well from which to get clean drinking water. A borehole was expected to be dug within about a month of my visit. In the meantime, women (who are responsible for getting water for their families) had two options for getting water: One is to take all day to fill one jerry can from their local water hole (above photo) or walk to the next well, three to four kilometres away and wait in line with other women to fill their cans and walk all the way back with excessive weight on their heads.

War Faj village centre, villagers of War Faj, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, Southern Sudan (March 2009)

Villagers of War Faj, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal, Southern Sudan (March 2009)

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Refugees returning to Southern Sudan:

Rebuilding Hope

Without context, the article is no more than another record of ‘tribal’ violence in an African country already mired by war. Without prior knowledge of the situation in Southern Sudan—and the Canadian media provides very little—the details are meaningless. Actually, Southern Sudan is in a post-war renaissance that may lead to a lasting peace, self-determination and independence; if, and only if, they can hold on to the four-year-old peace that Le Devoir describes as “already fragile.”

It’s important that news about Southern Sudan gets reported because newsworthy stories in Sudan are not just related to Darfur or to the International Criminal Court indictment of Sudan President Omar al-Bashir, which deserve media attention for the international condemnation and reduction of human rights abuses that can come from exposure. But the situation in Southern Sudan is also in need of media scrutiny to support democratization and to help maintain a fragile peace deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war between the government of Sudan and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army.

Sudan’s second civil war since its 1956 independence from British colonialism, lasted 21 years and officially ended on January 9, 2005 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in neighbouring Nairobi, Kenya. The CPA set up a power-sharing structure between the central government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement with the creation of a coalition Government of National Unity for all of Sudan and the Government of Southern Sudan; both with new interim constitutions. The agreement allows for the transformation of the Southern rebel forces into a regular army for semi-autonomous Southern Sudan with Joint Integrated Units of both armies in specific border areas. It prescribes oil revenue-sharing protocols and the establishment of a border between the north and south of Sudan, which will transect oil-producing areas.

An interim period of six years is established to implement the peace agreement, after which the South can hold a referendum to decide to remain within Sudan or to opt for complete independence. This is tentatively scheduled for 2011.

Approximately two million people were killed during the war and about four million were displaced from their homes to other regions of Sudan and nearly one million refugees fled to neighbouring countries. Since its independence 53 years ago, Sudan has been at peace for only 15 of those years (1972-1983: Addis Ababa Agreement, and since the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement). Despite these statistics, almost no editorial space in Canadian media is given to the current situation in Southern Sudan.

Media attention of the region was particularly abundant during the 1988 famine when more than 250,000 people starved to death. But since the signing of the peace deal, the media has focussed more on the conflict in Darfur than the tenuous peace in the South. The negotiations of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement with former southern rebels may have added to the current civil war in Darfur, whose own rebels wanted to be included in peace negotiations but were kept from it.

Sudan presently hosts the largest United Nations mission in the world (not including the UN African Union Mission in Darfur) with a mandate of “supporting the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement… [and] facilitating the voluntary return of refugees and displaced persons.”

Why is the movement of refugees and displaced people more newsworthy when they flee war and persecution than when they return to the homelands they were previously forced to flee? The story of returnees to the south is a mirror into the future for Darfur refugees whose current situation is a glimpse into the past for the Southern Sudanese still struggling with their new peacetime conditions.

According to Amnesty International, the civil war now raging in Darfur has displaced more than 2.25 million people since 2003, while IRIN reports that more than 2.24 million Southern Sudanese have returned to their homeland since 2005. Both are impressive migrations of people that require an important amount of support from the United Nations and other NGOs to help them resettle. Donor countries like Canada (via CIDA, page 16), which provides $66.8 million in humanitarian aid to Sudan, have an influence in Sudan’s future and also need journalistic scrutiny.

Those that return to their homeland in the south believe that the peace deal will endure and are eager to help rebuild the country, while many are still unwilling to return for fear of the reoccurrence of war. Those that do return, discover that—in many areas—living conditions in the war-ravaged south are more difficult than the areas where they are returning from: lack of sufficient drinking water, no schools, nor clinics and a difficult means for livelihood generation. Most arrive in their homeland after more than a decade of absence with little more than a few belongings. NGOs provide some with a tarp to set up a temporary shelter, blankets, water containers, cooking utensils and other non-food items, while the World Food Program provides food subsidies.

Being a refugee from war and a returnee to peace—both in Sudan—look all too similar and deserve equal attention. Media attention about Darfur needs to continue to help end the war there and it needs to begin about Southern Sudan to help it cling to its tenuous peace.

[translated and published in French in Le Couac)

I recount anecdotes of my time in Southern Sudan to friends, family, journalists and am reminded of how little we know about the place, which beckons a second visit. How the media focuses on the war in Darfur, or the International Criminal Court arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir but completely ignore the immense challenges facing the southern part of the country as it adapts to times of relative peace four years after the signing of the January 9, 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended 21 years of civil war.

Few people I’ve spoken with realize that Sudan is divided in two: Sudan and Southern Sudan with a coalition Government of National Unity dominated by President Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party for the whole of Sudan, and a semi-autonomous Southern Sudan led by President Salva Kiir Mayardit’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement. Salva Kiir is also First Vice-President of Sudan under the power-sharing peace deal. Even fewer people I’ve spoken with are aware that under the mandate of the CPA, Southern Sudan is scheduled—at the end of its post-war six-year interim period—to hold a referendum in 2011 that will determine whether or not Africa’s largest country will be divided, giving independence to the South.

In the meantime, what has happened to the one million people that have been living as refugees in neighbouring countries for up to two decades, or to the four million Internally Displaced People (IDPs) who were uprooted from their homes when they fled the fighting? More than two million have already returned to their traditional homeland in the south, which was devastated by the war. How are the returnees adjusting to the tenuous peace now that they have returned to regions they no longer recognize, or for the younger ones, have never lived in?

Below are IDPs during their return to Southern Sudan in 2008 as coordinated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Nearly all of the Southern Sudanese I had the pleasure of speaking with while visiting the south have returned to their traditional homelands only within the last two years. Many left when they were very young while some were born in exile, which required of them complete readaptation to a homeland they do not know.

Why is our media uninterested in following the story of an African region the size of France after the end of what has been described as the Twentieth Century’s longest and bloodiest civil war? Five million displaced and two mimmion dead! What is it about the initiation of peace and democracy that persuades news editors to look elsewhere for stories? This virtual blackout of information about Southern Sudan is what led me to visit. I wanted to meet the people who are making the transition to a peaceful society.

Now that I’ve returned, I have more questions than before, but they are no longer based on a total lack of information. How does a rebel army like the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) make the transition from rebel forces to official army of Southern Sudan and member of the Joint Integrated Units with its former foe, the Sudan Armed Forces? How is former soldier, Lt. General Salva Kiir Mayardit adapting to his new job as President of the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) and First Vice President of  Sudan’s interim Government of National Unity (GNU)? What are the most imposing obstacles to the peace agreement (and there are many: serious underdevelopment, food insecurity,  intertribal conflicts, international pressures, border disputes, resource sharing, slow/non implementation of CPA requirements, census results, February 2010 national elections, the 2011 independence referendum, etc.)

I will attempt to address the above questions and others in future posts to this blog so I invite you to return here and comment on what your read. I am in regular contact with people I met in Southern Sudan and will be following their stories and the story of Sudan as it unfolds. I’ve just begun to review the thousands of photographs, hours of video footage, dozens of audio interviews, and the pages and pages of notes taken throughout my trip. I’ve started reading the books, reports, newspapers and documents I picked up while in Southern Sudan and have consolidated the names and contact details of people I met there. I’m reviewing websites of organizations I came across in Sudan and am adding links to the relevant ones to the sidebar on this blog. There are many news blogs that provide regularly updated news about Sudan, many of which I’ve added RSS feeds here as well.

Burningbillboard.org is my South Sudan resource gathering point. If you are interested, it can also be yours.

Here is the transcript of the audio report with a few added photos:

Exactly three weeks ago, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Darfur. Like many people in Sudan, I was glued to the television set to view the announcement. It was 4 p.m.

An anonymous blogger who worked for an international aid agency in Darfur wrote on AlertNet, that one hour after the announcement was made, his agency received a phone call. “The Government had revoked our licence and we must close all our programmes. No further explanation. First thing the next day we were told all international staff had to leave Darfur by 4 p.m.” They had to be out of the area exactly 24 hours after the ICC announcement.

According the the UN’s Organization for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 13 International Agencies were expelled:
- Action contre la faim
- Solidarité
- Save the Children (UK & US)
- Medecins Sans Frontières (NL & FR)
- CARE International
- Oxfam (GB)
- Mercy Corps
- International Rescue Committee
- Norwegian Refugee Council
- CHF International
- PADCO
- And three Sudanese relief agencies were also closed.

The International Herald Tribune reported on March 21, that armed men looted Oxfam’s Darfur Warehouse, “stealing all of its contents.” While in Malual Kon, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal State where Mercy Corps has a compound, I learned that all of their equipment from their Darfur and Khartoum operations were seized since their expulsion: computers, communication radios, everything. Since their communication system was centred in Khartoum, they have had to reorganize their communication strategy for their activities in Southern Sudan.

Internews—which is an International NGO affiliated with Mercy Corps—coordinates Nhomlaau FM in Malual Kon. It has three other community radio stations in Southern Sudan. One of these is located in  Kurmuk, Blue Nile State, which is within the North/South transitional area. The radio station there was nearly closed along with Mercy Corps, but they managed to continue broadcasting by arguing their independence of the US-based NGO.

I’ve been travelling throughout Southern Sudan for the past four weeks and was recently in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal state, which shares its northern border with Southern Darfur. According to the IRIN News Network, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal is expecting an influx of Internally Displaced People (or IDPs) from Southern Darfur as conditions are expected to deteriorate as a result of the expulsion of the 16 NGOs. Although the report suggests that the UN and the Southern Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Commission are “are preparing for potential inflows of Darfuris,”  their arrival will certainly put a strain on the area’s already scarce infrastructure.

IDPs returning to Northern Bahr el_Ghazal in 2007 (courtesy IOM)

Since 2007, there has been a coordinated transport of hundreds of thousands of IDP returnees to Northern Bahr el-Ghazal from Southern Darfur and Khartoum. These people are returning to their homeland after being displaced during Sudan’s other civil war that ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005. Many are returning to rural locations without access to sanitation, safe drinking water, clinics or schools.

According to the International Organization for Migration (or IOM), many villages in the area have had a rate of IDP Returnees as high as 80-90% of their pre-2007 population. 2007 is the year when organized returns of Internally displaced people began in earnest with the help of IOM and the government of Southern Sudan.

waterhole in War Faj, Northern Bahr el-Ghazal

Access to safe drinking water is already in short supply throughout the state for those already living there. The influx of Darfuris could cause serious tensions at existing water sources and could lead to localized conflict. Waterborne infectious diseases, like cholera and meningitis, could become a serious problem.

To make matters worse, the rainy season is approaching. By the end of April, road travel will be become difficult and delivery of goods will be seriously impaired. Rain is a serious matter in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal and neighbouring states. During the 2008 rainy season the state experienced serious flooding. During my time in the area, I’ve driven past remnants of nearly half a dozen temporary camps where thousands were displaced to during last year’s flooding.

Flood Map of Northern Bahr el-Ghazal and Warrap States (courtesy UNJLC, Juba)

A  March 1, 2009 report from the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, writes, “The potential movement of 1.5 million displaced Darfur residents into Southern Sudan’s Northern and Western Bahr el-Ghazal states, due to disruptions in humanitarian assistance, presents a severe threat to food security in the two states.”

During a visit to Darfur four days after the ICC arrest warrant was issued President Al-Bashir said that his decision to expel the 16 NGOs from Darfur was “irreversible.” The position of the Khartoum government has not changed since, although they have vowed to replace the international NGOs with Sudanese agencies and end the need for aid in Darfur within the year. No clear solution is in sight.

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An interesting article about Fallout Scenarios as a result of the expulsion of 16 NGOs from Darfur can be found here.

I make my way from inside my canvas tent on the Save the Children (UK) compound, and walk the narrow cement sidewalks past the tents and tukuls of others toward the washrooms and the outhouses at the far end of the compound. From a metal drum half-filled with water, I scoop water into a wash basin and carry it to one of the three washrooms. There is no running water here nor anywhere in Malual Kon. More than half of the population of the town has returned here since 2007. The war has been over for four years and their exile in northern areas of Sudan—or in neighbouring countries—has ended with their return to their homeland. Since I arrived last week, my time is spent visiting various villages and speaking with villagers about the situation they live in as recent returnees in a severely underdeveloped part of Sudan.

After my wash, I return to the tent, gather my things and leave the compound through the front gate that faces the Malual Kon’s airstrip. Staight ahead, across the runway, are three immense World Food Program (WFP) warehouse tents. A dozen men have already started to unload the first of six trucks filled with essential foodstuff (sugar, salt, oil, flour, rice, etc) that arrived yesterday. This is most often provided in Work for Food programs that encourage villagers to work on projects like digging wells and making bricks for the benefit of the community.

I walk toward the roundabout and turn right along an unnamed road toward the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Compound. Today, like every day since I arrived, I will visit a village or two that receives CIDA-funded livelihood or infrastructure support from IOM. The communities in these villages are highly impacted by the return of an overwhelming ratio of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) who’ve come from the north of Sudan.

These communities (I’ve already visited seven villages) are in need of basic infrastructure like safe drinking water from nearby wells or boreholes. Like primary and secondary schools. Like vocational training and a means of earning an income. Like access to medical services in nearby clinics. Every village I visit needs most of these things. All of the villages need more sources of potable water.

Today, I get into the front passenger seat of the IOM truck with the capital letters ‘U’ and ‘N’ on the from hood and a blue IOM flag waving from the CB antenna bolted onto the front bumper. Deng Mareng Deng, IOM’s community mobilizer, and my interpreter, gets into the back seat and we drive out of the compound, past the airstrip, around the WFP warehouses and head north to the village of War Faj.

War Faj is the first village I visit in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal toward the border with Southern Darfur. It is remote and deep in the bush along back roads barely larger then the land cruiser we are driving in. Goats scurry out of the way as we drive past and herds of cattle barely glance at our passing.

A few villagers greet us under the tree in the central area as we drive in. The largest tree in any village is always the central meeting place where the most amount of people can gather in the shade. We greet with handshakes and are are directed to seats under the tree. More than 80% of the villagers here have returned from the north of Sudan in the past two years, putting pressure on the water resources that were already direly lacking.

From under the tree, we sit while other villagers arrive and settle along the circumference of the shade. They bring chairs from nearby tukuls or stand among the others. the children sit on the ground. We  begin with introductions and spokespeople are chosen. Each one comes up and tells me their story: where they have

returned from their wartime displacement; what is the water situation in the village; that there are not more women present because most of them have walked miles away to a nearby village that has a borehole to collect their family’s water needs for the day; that they would offer us water but they haven’t any even for themselves; the list goes on with each intervention. Five people speak in total; three men and two women.

The last speaker is a woman who invites us to the village’s only water source: a large hole in the ground with a trickle of brackish water that gathers into a small pool. It takes thirty seconds to one hour to fill one plastic gerry can. And the water is not clean. It causes waterborne diseases like Giardia, Cholera, Dysentery and others. IOM has War Faj on their list of recipients of a borehole pump.  The villagers could not imagine it arriving soon enough.

Lino Madut Angok

The first photo is of Lino Madut Angok, who used to be a student in Sud Academy but has since changed schools with the help of Kellee Jacobs and contacts she has in Canada. Profiles of Lino and four other students who have just left Sud Academy to finish their last year of high school at Riruta Central School can be found on Kellee Jacobs’ blog. Kellee has been actively working with Sud Academy during a volunteer stage there and has written about it on her blog.

Lino carries around the accompanying double-sided letter to inform people of his situation and his history to help get support wherever possible. He showed it to me while visiting him at his new school and allowed me to post it here. It is apparantly a common practice for these boys (men) to always have such a letter to use when needed.

The following portraits are of the student leaders from the Sud Academy whom I asked to point out the badges they wear that represent their leadership role at the school. Although there wasn’t enough time to speak with each of the following students individually about their personal stories that brought them here as refugees, these portraits provide a glimpse into their respective personalities, their shared histories and the perseverance that will carry them forward.

Maduok Magok, Assistant Head Boy

Philip Manyok, Debate Chairman Primary

Daniel Deng Yel, Head Boy

Deng Maduok Deng, Deputy Chairman Duties

David Deng Yel, Time Keeper

Rose Aweng, Office Girl

Augustino Agoth, Prefect

Mayom Madjieu, Treasurer, Student Union

Peter Jok, Deputy Debate Chairman Secondary

Joseph Deng, Chairman Duties/Deputy Information Officer Student Union

Achieng Alice, Assistant Prefect

Kuol Bol Kuol, Advisor Student Union

Reich Maluak Abraham, Chairman Student Union

David Laak, Deputy Chairman, Student Union

Nyang Makuach Wol, Information Officer Student Union

Peter Mariak Akeen, Secretary Student Union

Tina Gon, Treasurer Student Union

Rimond Ayii Kiir, Prefect

Gregory Dut, Deputy School Captain

Wol Makuach, Prefect

Abraham Mawut Achuil, Assistant Environment Prefect

Dangan Pap, Deputy Advisor Student Union

Linet Naliaka, Prefect

Machar Biar Dau, School Captain

In the offices of Sudan Radio Service in Nairobi, Kenya. (February 2009)

While in Nairobi, I made contact with Southern Sudan as it expresses itself in exile, taking refuge from the past while building for the future. One of the first visits was to the offices of the Sudan Radio Service (SRS). This organisation is Southern Sudan’s first independent broadcast provider of news and information about Southern Sudan. It is broadcast on various FM and shortwave signals. Their first broadcast was made on July 30, 2003, 1 1/2 years before the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Khartoum-based Government of Sudan and the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). SRS broadcasts in English, Arabic and eight Sudanese ethnic languages, and focuses exclusively on Issues and events in Sudan.

I met with John Tanza, the radio station’s Deputy Chief of Party (a title that reflects the primary funder of SRS: USAID). We discussed possible collaborations between me and SRS correspondents based in Southern Sudan. We decided that I should meet with SRS journalists that work from areas I visit to collaborate on stories of common interest.

Dan Eiffe in his Sudan Mirror office in Nairobi, Kenya. (February 2009)

In fact, we have planned that I hook up with Martin Siba, the SRS Wau Bureau Producer. I will be going to Wau after Juba on Wednesday, March 4 for a few days before continuing onward to Aweil, Warrap and Abyei.

Another place I went to visit are the Sudan Mirror. The paper’s publisher and founder, Dan Eiffe (photo) invited me into his office and told me stories of when he was a young Irish priest in South Africa and later in Southern Sudan. He told me that in June 1998 he stood in the US Congress and said to the congressmen and women during his testimony, “Southern Sudan is apartheid at its worst. Apartheid is a tea party in comparison to what happens in Southern Sudan.” Below is an audio interview I did with Dan Eiffe in February 2009.

Outside the modest grounds of Sud Academy in Nairobi, Kenya (February 2009)

Southern Sudanese refugees left Sudan during the civil war in numbers of about one million. This does not include the internally displaced people (IDPs) that rang from 4.5 to 5 million people. Many refugees ended up in Kenya and among these are the students of Sud Academy, a primary / secondary school based in a poor neighbourhood of Nairobi.

Partial funding for Sud Academy comes from Canadian Aid for South Sudan (CASS), through which I learnt of the school and who gave me contact with, Kellee Jacobs a Canadian volunteer who bfought me to the school. She wrote The Right to Education – Sud Academy’s Case Study. I’ve posted more photos from the school here.

Members from his community in Montréal considered the IRB’s decision to be discriminatory and decided to come to his aid by creating the Committee to Support Abdelkader Belaouni. They stipulated that the IRB’s decision, based on the fact that Kader did not have a family in Canada and did not have a job discriminated against him because of his blindness.

Kader says that the IRB left him in a “vicious circle” whereby he could not attain a job because he was without status in Canada and he could not get status because he was unemployed. Three months after arriving in Canada in March 2003, Kader registered with the job bank at Institut Nazareth et Louis-Braille to help him find work. “Every time they found found a job for me, I was unable to take it because I had no papers. I was not allowed to work,” he insisted. “Everyone told me that as soon as I had the papers, I should contact them because they’s like to hire me.”

As for him not having a family, Kader replies that his family here are his friends. “The guy cleaning my room right now, is my family. The girl who called earlier will bring my my supper. She is my friend. I find that I have a large circle of friends that are my family,” he says with a smile.

When asked what he does to pass the time, Kader says that four months into his stay in St-Gabriel’s Church, he decided that his time here would be time to spend learning. Sanctuary would become his music school. He has a piano teacher and several musician friends who have helped him compose original music. He already has an album and is working on his second. He also excercises on his stationary bike and the purple Pilates ball you see in the photo.

Kader says that he might make the same decision today after three years if he had to choose again whether or not to go into sanctuary. But he’s glad that he doesn’t know the future. “If I knew I would still be here three years later, I might hae been afraid to move forward,” he says, adding that destiny brings with it many things. “It’s true that I’m enclosed in this church but I’ve become a musician. I host a radio show called Radio Sanctuary.

Although he wants to leave as soon as possible, Kader says, “I am will in the church. I miss nothing. What I denounce in the injustice. Other than that, there is little else I can do. Other than be patient.”

On January 17, more than one hundred of Kader’s ‘family’ came out to denounce the Canadian government’s refusal to grant Kader refugee status on humanitarian grounds, which would allow him to rejoin his community outside the walls that have kept him confined for over three years. The demonstrators walked through the streets of Pointe Saint Charles to remind those that may have forgotten, that Kader is indeed still confined after three years. The march was postponed to one week (as the poster indicates) because a large demonstration in support of Gaza was organized on January 10th.

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