About 5 000 displaced Sudanese have completed an epic 700km trek through dense forests and swamps, returning home after four years in exile, the aid agency that helped them said on Tuesday.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said the group’s members were overjoyed to be back after their arduous, four-month journey, even though they missed their target.
They had aimed to be home in Bahr el Ghazal province in time for last month’s handover of control by Sudan’s government to former rebels, in a peace deal ending a two-decade civil war.
”They are very happy and relieved that they won’t have to move for a while,” said IOM official Bill Lorenz, who accompanied the trekkers.
”They are also happy to be reunited with their friends and family after a long while,” he said in a statement.
About 600 of the group are still trickling in this week, and the whole group will spend the next two months in a temporary camp before returning to their villages in the districts of Raga and Wau.
Meanwhile, the former exiles will receive food, as well as seeds and tools, to help them rebuild their lives, the IOM said.
The group, which fled after government forces took control of the districts in 2001, left a camp in Sudan’s Western Equatoria province in April.
Most of its members walked the entire route, with their planned 30-day journey growing longer as they sought to avoid areas littered with mines, cutting through forests and wading across swamps.
Although the IOM provided trucks for the elderly and sick, children and pregnant women, these got bogged down as the rainy season hit.
Forty-three people died along the way, about half in a truck accident as they started out and the rest from disease, while 33 babies were born during the trek.
The UN’s World Food Programme dropped food supplies to keep them going, while other aid groups provided medical care in the field.
One youngster walked the last 15km on a drip after being treated for appendicitis, the IOM said. — Sapa-AFP