LAST Friday marked the fourth anniversary of the brutal South Sudanese conflict. And although the march of people fleeing violence – arriving exhausted, traumatised and laden down with their possessions at Uganda’s border — may have slowed to around 400 people a day, this is still Africa’s largest refugee crisis.
At its height 2,000 people arrived daily, many having experienced or witnessed horrors they will never forget – civilians have been murdered, raped and villages burned to the ground. Uganda, where the government has long held a welcoming policy towards refugees granting them plots of land and granting freedom of movement rights not found elsewhere, offers the sanctuary they are longing for.
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Despite this, life as a refugee is tough. Some 287,400 South Sudanese refugees are living in Bidi Bidi settlement in the West Nile region of the country, considered the largest refugee camp in the world. The settlement is very dusty, the roads unpaved and with limited shade or cover where temperatures regularly reach 45 degrees.
In total, Uganda now hosts more than one million South Sudanese refugees, 80 per cent of them women and children. As the protracted war continues – it broke out when the struggle for political power in the south erupted into violence in 2013 – there is no prospect of them returning home any time soon. Gradually the makeshift shelters of tarpaulins and mud huts are becoming semi-permanent housing and the need for more than emergency aid grows.
Grace Becton, the charity Mercy Corps West Nile programme manager, who oversees work with the South Sudanese refugees of the area, has watched the reactions of those finding a place of safety. “Most people have walked for three or four days to get here,” she says. “They are exhausted, hungry, thirsty and have experienced significant trauma. At first they experience a sense of peace – there are no bullets here, no conflict, they are safe from harm. But once people settle in they realise how difficult it is going to be to rebuild their lives.
“They start to feel frustrated, they are left in limbo. It is particularly hard for the young people.”
That, she says, is where Mercy Corps comes in, offering financial support to help people to start small farms – growing local crops of cassava, white sorghum, sesame and maize – and other small businesses.
The charity offers training, tools and seeds, puts refugees in touch with Ugandan farm agents and is also running an innovative project offering grants to mixed groups of refugee and Ugandan farmers, working side by side.
“The Ugandans we have spoken to tell us the benefits are mutual,” she says, explaining that some “host farmers” have unused land which can be brought back into use with the help of the often highly-skilled refugee farmers, as well as the financial backing of the charity.
“They also remember when Ugandans were refugees [it’s brutal military dictatorship ended in 1979], so they feel compelled to welcome them.”
Tiko, a 26-year-old Ugandan and Guo from South Sudan, who are working together as part farmers’ group in Bidi Bidi, have experienced the benefits. Guo arrived in October 2016 from Kajo Keji, where she was a farmer, after walking with her four children for a month. Her husband is still in Sudan.
“I came here because of war,” she says simply. “When they [South Sudanese military] find you, they want to shoot you. We lost a lot of our brothers. To get money here, especially as a woman, is a very big problem.”
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But the flexibility of the programme is helping her to piece her life back together. “My life has improved [in the last year] because we are now in the group and we have friends with the nationals (Ugandans) and we can communicate with them,” she adds.
Tiko also sees the advantages of “sharing and staying together”
“They can help us, we can also help them,” she says. “Since they have a hardship in their mother country, they have to feel at home in this country.”
Also in Bidi Bidi, 60-year-old Tabu says she and her family walked for days to reach the border with Uganda.
“It was terrible” she says, self-conscious suddenly of the missing finger on her hand where it was hit by a bullet.
“If I had waited there [in South Sudan] I would have died.”
Now, however, with the help of a grant from Mercy Corps she has set up a stall in the settlement selling dried fish, onions and coffee. Life is still not easy.
Tabu’s small house, constructed with UNHCR plastic sheeting, leaks in the rain and blows off in the wind.
Tabu and her husband require medicine and the food is never plentiful.
But with the help of Mercy Corps the stall makes enough to feed her grandchildren and helps them move towards a future when the sound of bullets will not ring in their ears.
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