Hope and hardship: Returning home to South Sudan

Mar 3rd, 2011 9:25 AM UTC
By ONE Partners

Roseann Dennery of Samaritan’s Purse is on the ground in South Sudan. In this blog post, she recounts what it is like for many Sudanese citizens who are returning to South Sudan from the north.

In Northern Bahr el Ghazal in South Sudan, people are returning home from the north. Along a main thoroughfare transporting returnees from Khartoum, the air is heavy with clouds of dust and teetering buses. In them carry the remnants of a life of hardship left behind -– jerry cans, suitcases, bed frames and trunks, old fans and hookah pipes. Returnees are making their way back to a place that has remained alive in their hearts, though memories of the details have become diluted and blurred after years of war and survival, and burdened life in the north.

As I move through what are now becoming makeshift camp communities, people are eager to share their stories. Their pilgrimages home are highlighted by joy and relief, though marred by the reality of what is — or rather what isn’t- available for them here.

Arak towers over the others at a water point. She wears a pale pink hat and a smile that envelopes her face. She has a sense of dignity about her, her black and white dress flows around her as she fills her jerry can. She summons me over as she stands near the tap. “When I left for Khartoum I was young. There was a famine here, and my mother way dying. Her last wish was that my brother and I would leave, to get far away from the rebels.” She scoops up her small daughter, who is tugging at her dress. The daughter appears so small and vulnerable in this place, lost among the crowds of women and young girls trying to gather their water. There is sense of anxiety in the air that the water will run out. My instinct is to sweep her away from here. She rests her dust-stained face on her mother’s shoulder.

Meanwhile Arak continues “Now that I am back, her memory is all around me. Sometimes I imagine my mother here, walking toward me. This is my mother’s homeland. It is good to be back, we are supposed to be here. But my items were looted along the way. They never made it here…” her voice trails off as she looks at the piles of personal belongings that others have already received. “Work is hard to come by. We worked in Khartoum, but here, I am not sure what we will do. And water,” she says as she points to the pump. “It is a big problem. There is not enough. I walked through the night to get this water.”

Others join in, crouching down and shouting out their own stories of the lengths they went to in order to fill their buckets and jerry cans this hot morning.

The sun is high, and temperatures are over 40 C. It’s dry with winds that burn like fire against your skin. It is hard to explain the desperation of the search for water in a barren area of southern Sudan until you here, experiencing it with all of your senses. Every thought, every breath, revolves around the search for water.

Samaritan’s Purse is the only organization working north of here, in an undefined area called Lanager, drilling wells and installing hand pumps. This region is particularly harsh and dry, yet returnees have resettled back here. While we were visiting a church we heard of an issue at a water pump nearby that wasn’t working. Women were crying in front of it after walking hours only to find it dry.

It’s undeniable that life is hard here. Many have become accustomed to city life in Khartoum, and they are resistant to the idea of moving into the outskirts of the main towns where they are being dropped off. The local government wants returnees to move to the rural areas to become farmers, but there are little resources- or interest- to do so. This presents a frustrating challenge to relief organizations that see the growing water and food needs of the returnees.

Despite these problems, each person I spoke to said they’d rather be here than in Khartoum, where life was difficult and restrictive, and religious oppression was a regular struggle.

I met Pastor Joseph Garang near Lanager. He is pastoring a church in an area that was a main target of the enemy during the war. “You can still see the remnants of the burning if you look around,” he said outside the new church being built. I asked him if many of the people coming back are seeking answers in God, in church.

“There are 300 people that come to this church now. Many are returning here, the area they left over a decade ago. These people have a lot of questions. We all do. How do we follow God now? How do we trust again? Some are angry. Some have forgiven. We want to leave the past behind, and look forward to peace. We are learning together,” he said as he walks inside the shade provided by the cemented walls of the church. “One thing we all share…is that we are happy now to practice freely together.”

I ask for a photo of him and some people from his village, he smiles proudly. It is clear that Pastor Garang is committed to providing a sense of hope to many who have lost it along the way.

This is the spirit in which I left Northern Bahr el-Ghazal — an area pregnant with the promise of hope and peace – yet tempered by the understanding that it is going to take time, and outside help, to get there.
I think of Arak’s parting words as she left me that morning and walked off with her child snuggly against her hip. “Life will always be a challenge, but we have learned a way to survive. We are Sudanese and that is what we do. We adapt.”

TAGS: From Our Partners, ONE, Policy News, Sudan Future