| Page 3 of 3 < |
Sudan, in Mud Brick and Marble
Soba Aradi is one of a dozen camps housing 2 million displaced people on the fringes of Khartoum. The city's boom "benefits probably 1 percent or less" of its people, one critic said.
(Stephanie Mccrummen - Twp)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
"We have similar grievances," said Deng Alor Kuol, a southerner who became a minister in the national government after the 2005 peace agreement. "Marginalization and neglect."
As Charles Kalisto, a resident of Soba Aradi, put it, "When I see all these tall buildings" in Khartoum, "I ask, 'Why am I staying under a plastic sheet?' "
Kalisto, who has lived in Khartoum for 22 years, has watched the city become clad in scaffolding and layers of new asphalt. He has tried to get a construction job there, to no avail. Kalisto, like many southerners, said it is difficult to get a job if you are not well connected, and even harder if you are not Arab.
So he is leaving, along with hundreds of thousands of others who have returned to the south in the past two years, by truck or a treacherous barge journey down the Nile.
In Soba Aradi last week, he was among a handful of residents who showed up at a big white tent to register for a U.N. program that is helping 150,000 southerners return home in organized bus convoys before the rainy season starts in May.
Kalisto said he and his family have no hesitation about leaving Khartoum, even for all the unknowns of southern Sudan, where villages, farms and nearly every scrap of infrastructure were destroyed in the war and most people are living in tents.
When he arrives, the government will give him seeds, some sticks and a tarpaulin. Still, Kalisto said, "If tomorrow there is a train, we want to go."
Suzanne Yobu will not be far behind. In 2011, there will be a referendum in the south on independence from Sudan, an option she seems to find attractive.
"This government has a different feeling towards the southerners," Yobu said. "They look at the south as inferior and themselves as superior. If we separate, we'll have more revenue, and more freedom also. The south has oil, and gold. But right now, the money is in their hands."
