Feature article I wrote for the July 2008 issue of The Lutheran, the member magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Be it ever so humble
Lutheran help follows refugee families back home to Sudan
By Stephen H. Padre
After living 15 years in a refugee camp in Kenya, it would be easy to think of it as home. But Martha Akuol Akol always knew she’d go back to her real home in southern Sudan. In January 2007 her family resettled in the east African country.
They hadn’t been home since 1991, when they fled the violence of Africa’s longest civil war. It dragged on for 21 years, killing 2 million people and forcing 4 million from their homes before the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed in 2005.
Akol’s family first escaped to a place on the Sudanese-Kenyan border. The following year they made their way to Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwestern Kenya. At its highest point, the unofficial count of refugees living in the camp was more than 100,000. Most, like Akol’s family, fled the war in Sudan.
Although they were forced to become refugees, life went on. Akol and her husband, Abraham, left Sudan with two young children. As years passed, they had four more.
At Kakuma, the Lutheran World Federation provides residents with many services and essential supplies, including daily provisions of food and water. The LWF receives funding from the ELCA World Hunger Appeal.
At the camp, Akol’s youngest child, Joseph, attended preschool and ate porridge the LWF provides so children can stay healthy and grow despite the difficult circumstances.
Now, as peace takes root in southern Sudan, many refugees are returning home. In 2007, 4,686 Sudanese were repatriated through the LWF-managed departure center at Kakuma. An additional 14,475 people left the camp on their own to return to Sudan.
When Akol and her family resettled near their former lands in Sudan’s Jonglei state, the LWF was there again to help them re-establish home and livelihood. It provided shelter materials, blankets, mosquito nets, cooking utensils and basic farming equipment. Water is a short walk from the Akols’ house. They use a hand pump at a borehole on the corner of the LWF compound in Kongor.
The LWF, with support from the ELCA World Hunger Appeal, offers this kind of help in two parts of southern Sudan through its re-established program in that country.
William Dau, LWF community services officer in Kongor, said those who returned after the 2005 peace agreement carried very little to restart their lives. “People came without sauce pans for cooking, so we had to give them something to cope with their lives here,” Dau said.
Returnees also receive tools for an equally important need in the region: building peace. “When people came back, they said it was hard ... to go back to a peaceful life,” Dau said. During the war there was no law, government or system to keep order. “Conflict had become part of their living,” he added.
To help, the LWF trains community leaders in how to resolve conflicts through mediation. Staff hold awareness meetings, facilitated by peace committee members in cattle camps, focusing primarily on youth to reduce violence over theft of livestock, a common occurrence.
The LWF is also building schools—attracting families who are eager for their children to resume their education.
That first year back at home, Akol and her family found life wasn’t without challenges. Most of their sorghum, tomato and watermelon crops were destroyed by flooding in September. They hadn’t acquired any cattle yet, a source of food and a base of wealth in Sudan.
Yet Akol said she is happy to be home. Although her family was taken care of in the Kenyan camp, she said it’s better to be in Sudan, where she can grow food and be free to do what she wants without being dependent on others. Here she can again enjoy the fruit of the acacia trees—something she missed all those years in Kakuma.
After a year in their new home, Akol’s 5-year-old, Joseph, declared that he likes Sudan more than Kenya “because it is our country.”
Akol has put Sudan’s future in her children’s hands. She wants them to finish school. She tells them that if they are educated, they can do whatever they want in life.
As for young Joseph, Akol said she hopes he grows up to be a relief worker like those who fed the family in Kenya.
