Road to Nowhere

After Sudan's long civil war, what awaits the displaced at the end of their journey home? Nothing.

MAYOM DENG AKOL, South Sudan - The rainy season has just ended, but this stretch of south Sudan savannah is already dry and turning brown. It's called Mayom Deng Akol and was once a bustling village with two markets.

It emptied out when Arab militias began raiding it during Africa's longest civil war. Nearly all of the villagers fled as Mayom Deng Akol, like so many other border towns, was torched.

Now, with an elusive peace finally at hand, they're beginning to trickle back. But here they are finding so much less than what they remember.

Just five days ago Lungar Machar arrived back in Mayom Deng Akol from the western Darfur region with his two wives and seven children.

They walked for 16 days straight; beginning at 6 p.m. in the evenings, when it was cooler, and ending at sunrise. It was a strenuous and perilous journey, especially with children as young as two and three years old. But Machar had no idea that the greatest difficulty would begin once they got here.

"I'm proud to be home," he says. "This is where I was born. But I'm really concerned because there is no food or water."

Machar says he has located the land where his thuckles (grass huts) once stood, but the area is now overgrown with brush. He has also had to ask for food from relatives who returned before he did, but he says they barely have enough for themselves.

"I have a brother here," he says. "I will ask him to give me a cow. I'll sell it and buy sorghum so that we can eat. I'll clear my land again and plant after the dry season."

But it could be more than nine months before the family can harvest food to eat. Confronted with this reality, Machar says he can only do what he can do. After that, he says, it's in God's hands.

Machar and his family, like many others in the region, depend on food from the United Nation World Food Program. It is literally dropped from the sky once every two months from giant C-130 cargo planes.

The planes fly low and push out 50-kilogram (110-pound) sacks of grain -- more than 800 at a time -- which are collected by local officials on the ground and distributed to the people in the community.

But one tribal chieftain says so many people are returning to the region that the food only lasts a month.

The village also has only one source of water, a well that was drilled just a week ago with the help of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and that must supply potentially thousands of people.

The civil war between the Arab-Muslim government in the north and Christian and Animists in the south led to the deaths of as many as two million people, primarily through famine and disease. Between four to six million people were displaced, most of them within Sudan itself.

But with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in January -- creating a power-sharing government between north and south -- experts predict that "spontaneous" migrations will occur, with more than a half million southern Sudanese beginning to return to their homes during this current dry season.

Most international aid agencies fear that the migration to south Sudan, an area already considered one of the most underdeveloped places in the world, could create a potential for more violence in the competition for already scarce resources.

"There's really nothing for people to come back to," says IRC Field Coordinator Julie Steiger. "We're concerned that this could also put a great strain on these host communities people are returning to, since they have very little infrastructure to begin with."

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres underscored this point in August when he told reporters about south Sudan: "We have not a problem of reconstruction. We have effectively a problem of construction."

The Sudanese civil war has left, or rather kept, the south in a staggering mire of poverty. A recent U.N. survey here uncovered grim statistics that suggest a society still in the dark ages as far as literacy, health and overall well being.

South Sudan has the second-lowest adult literacy rate in the world at 24 percent and the very lowest primary school completion at 2 percent. Ninety percent of the population earns less than a dollar a day. One in nine mothers dies during pregnancy or childbirth, and one in four children dies before his or her fifth birthday.

And all of these statistics apply to the current population of south Sudan, before any mass migration after the recent peace deal.

Some of those who have returned are already reconsidering their decision. Maraj Yai came back to the south in April with his two wives and four children. He sits with about a dozen other men under the shade of a wooden awning. Some are just resting out of the hot sun, while others are weaving rope out of nylon World Food Program grain sacks that they have shredded into thin strips.

"Since I've come back I've had nothing but problems with my health," he says. "We've all gone hungry, and there's no medicine. My wives are gone the entire day looking for water."

Yai says he's thinking about returning to the Darfur region where his family can survive.

International aid agencies are asking the new Sudanese government to discourage returnees from coming back to the south before proper resources are in place, but regardless they know they still have to prepare for them.

The U.N. is beginning to map out a plan for a series of aid stations along possible returnee routes to provide emergency food, water and medical care. Others, like the IRC, are trying to ramp up local infrastructure with the construction of services such as health clinics, like one just built in Mayom Deng Akol.

For a few who have already returned, like Deng Tung Tung, the hardships are indeed formidable. But the draw of home, he says, transcends the difficulty.

"Yes, things are bad," he says with a shrug, "but better to die here at home in the south than somewhere far away in the north."

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