By Yuggu Charles
Internally displaced persons (IDPS) who have been living in the North due to the civil war in Sudan continue returning to their former homes in the South thanks to the concluded referendum. But while determined to return home from where they were uprooted by the bloody war between the North and the South, the IDPs are bracing for hard times due to lack of social amenities and shelter.
Most of them have been living under squalid conditions in the North where they sought refuge during the more than two decades of civil war between north and south.
Many of them have returned home following the referendum that gave the Government of the semi-autonomous Southern Sudanese region a verdict to secede from the North.
One such IDP is Jane Simon Kulang Moses, a 38 year old mother of four, who has been living in Khartoum since 1990. She returned home last December and could not recognize her locality since so many things had changed since she fled with her family. “I had a home in Khartoum but not here in Juba. All the IDPs should be welcomed back home and provided with homes,’’ she narrated as she inspected her makeshift shack, where she lives with her family.
Jane said she decided to return home after the Church in Khartoum mobilized many IDPs and facilitated their return to Juba.
She said that the government provided her and her family with a tent for shelter, upon her arrival in Juba. Further help, she says, has not been forthcoming since then.
“Life has become a nightmare. Even getting casual work is difficult,” she said, adding that things could worsen for her family during the long rains envisaged in April.
As she awaits the official inauguration of a new nation slated for July 9th, Jane is crying out for help.
To her, peace should be translated into better education, jobs, good hospitals and good infrastructure. She complains that the price of food remains unaffordable in Southern Sudan. “Things here are terrible, I cannot believe that we Southerners and Northerners live in the same country yet the cost of living remains different. I pay twice the cost in Juba as compared to Khartoum which enjoys good infrasructure, clean water, better basic health facilities and even accessibility to food,” she said sadly.
Another returnee, Nelson Lasu Eliza, 45, left Juba for Khartoum in 1992 and has just returned home.
He says he is now happy that his country would soon be considered an independent nation. He described the referendum which showed that 99 per cent of Sudanese people favoured separation, as a milestone. “The verdict by Southern Sudnaese was a clear message that the people of Southern Sudan yearned for freedom. We have sent a clear message to the whole world that we needed freedom and finally it has come”, Laso retorted. Like other IDPs, he is living in a makeshift tent with his family. Lasu said that he will never return to the North which is predominantly Muslim.
“I am happy and grateful to God that they have finally brought me home. I hope things will change for the better,” he said.
Lasu said he lived in a four roomed house in Khartoum and is wondering whether he would be compensated for the house.
Another IDP is 50 year old Catherine John Taban who has been in the north for 20 years. She said she had left four of her children in Kosti in the North because they were still in school.
When asked why she had decided to return to the South, Taban said she could not wait to celebrate the referendum results. “I want to celebrate this freedom with fellow Southerners. I have come because now there is peace.”
“The referendum was peaceful, but I did not participate in the voting, because I was not registered as a voter,” she said.
“I am looking forward to a better lifestyle and good job opportunities. But the problem is that we have not been given adequate assistance. I was given 150 kilogram of sorghum but it is not enough. It might run out anytime soon and I do not know whether there will be more donations from the Word Food Program (WFP),” she said.
While traveling from Kosti, to the south, Taban said, she lost all her utensils and bedding worth 2,000 Sudanese pounds. She explains that the property was loaded in the barge she travelled in from Khartoum but, she could not establish at which barge terminal they got lost; Malakal or Kosti.
“I had four plots and one residential house in Kosti and I don’t know what will happen to the property,” she said.
Meanwhile Ladu Frezer Loku , a 22 year old student who returned from the North in November said he fled the South in 2007 after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement to study in Khartoum. “I have returned because I love my country,” he explained. Like other South Sudanese, Loku said he would not return to the North. But he is lamenting the high cost of living in South Sudan. “Life is expensive here because 50 kilograms of onion in the north cost 65 Sudanese pounds, compared to 200 Sudanese pounds in the South,” he said.
