Returnee Recounts Experience in Sudan War, Grateful to the Catholic Church for Support

Bona recounted the first days of the war in Khartoum, describing the situation as “very bad”. “Gunshots killed many civilians. Memories from the war back in South Sudan came back to me. I knew I had to take my family and flee once again.”

 “There were many of us coming to Malakal from Khartoum,” Bona recounts, and adds, “We passed through Medani road in Aljazeera State in Sudan where people we suspected to be the RSF had erected checkpoints. They harassed us, asking whether we were hiding military personnel in our cars, and whether we had seen any armed men on our way.”

The police who were also manning the roads ransacked cars of those who were fleeing and tore their bags apart, looking for what to loot.  

“They took anything valuable including electronics and money. They claimed that we had stolen those things from Khartoum,” he said. 

Those returning first arrived at Renk, a town in Upper Nile State, where charity organizations facilitated their travel to Malakal.

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Highlighting some of the challenges faced by returnees stopping over in Renk, Bona said, “There are many people suffering in Renk because they wait for two weeks or more to get a ticket to travel to Malakal.”

In Malakal, charity entities, including the Catholic Church are overwhelmed by the large number of returnees who are in desperate need of food and shelter. In a previous interview with ACI Africa, the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Malakal described the situation of returnees from war-torn Sudan as “very bad” and appealed to the international community to support the diocese that is reaching out to those affected by the violence.  

“Thousands of returnees now in Upper Nile State are living in very deplorable conditions without food and shelter,” Bishop Stephen Nyodho Ador Majwok said.

He appealed for assistance for those fleeing the violence, saying, “We are asking our partners and donors to continue helping our Diocese to extend help to these vulnerable people.” 

Kerbino Kuel Deng is a South Sudanese journalist who is passionate about Church communication. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Social Communications from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA). He currently works as a Journalist for ACI Africa.