CRS communications officer Kim Pozniak is reporting for Caritas on the advent of independence in southern Sudan. She filed this report for the Caritas blog:

When I arrived in South Sudan’s future capital Juba yesterday, the joyous preparations for independence were immediately apparent.

Landing at the airport, another passenger pointed out the newly installed lights along the runway to allow for night flights. Everywhere you look there are small signs of progress.

Driving along Juba’s bumpy, dusty roads, you see women cleaning the streets. Signs for the long expected independence have been put up along small storefronts, on crumbling walls and white washed tree trunks.

Spending my first day in Juba, I spoke with many people about their hopes and dreams for the new nation. I want to tell you about two of them.

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Andy Schaefer, CRS technical adviser for emergency coordination, was in Agok, Sudan working to assist some of the more than 100,000 people displaced by recent violence in the contested border area of Abyei, Sudan. He shares with us his impressions from the field.

One thing that has become apparent to me while working to meet the needs of those displaced from Abyei is that the Church’s presence really is a symbol of hope.

A few Sundays ago during Mass, local parish priest, Fr. Biong gave a speech about helping people to rebuild their lives and the need for continued support during this difficult time. This is such an important message for everyone to hear: the displaced, host communities, and those working to help meet their needs.

Priests like Fr. Biong help people to feel that they have not been abandoned. He continues to be with his people seeking refuge in Agok, by ministering to their spiritual and physical needs. To watch him work is very affirming. The sense of solidarity he fosters is palpable.
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Andy Schaefer, CRS technical adviser for emergency coordination, who was in Agok, Sudan working to assist some of the more than 100,000 people displaced by recent violence in the contested border area of Abyei, Sudan. He shares with us his impressions from the field.

The situation here in Agok is still very fluid. It’s been a few weeks since their displacement from Abyei, and you still see people coming and going. Some are leaving to go further south while others are arriving because they’ve heard from the government that it is safe to return. This is the planting season, so people are trying to make decisions about what they’re going to do over the next few months for food. It is important to them to be able to get seeds into the ground to harvest crops in the coming months. Their very livelihoods are in jeopardy.

Markets here continue to be bare. Prices are so high, especially fuel, that even the truckers or vendors that under ordinary circumstances would bring goods to the local market, aren’t doing so because they’ll either break even or lose money on the transportation. The incentive to bring items to sell is not there.

Catholic Relief Services and the Caritas Network are coordinating with other humanitarian aid agencies to get supplies to those most in need. Like a rock thrown into a pond that forms concentric circles as the ripples fan out, we’ve looked to see where other agencies are working and are responding in the peripheral areas where they’re not reaching. We found that for the most part people in the city of Agok are being assisted but those small villages outside of the main city have not been helped. CRS and Caritas have been able to go out into the bush to find pockets of the displaced.
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Dear Friends,

I hope that everyone in the Catholic Relief Services family will join together this month to welcome a new nation into the world community: The Republic of South Sudan.

I am traveling to Juba, its capital, for the independence day ceremonies on July 9. There I will join many CRS colleagues who worked so hard to make this day come to pass, and I will celebrate with the wonderful bishops of South Sudan who deserve great praise for their persistent effort to bring peace to their troubled land.

Desmond Tutu, when he was Anglican archbishop of South Africa, once said he was not surprised—as many were—that his country had made a peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy because “so many people all around the world were praying for us.”
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Andy Schaefer, CRS technical adviser for emergency coordination, is in Agok, Sudan working to assist some of the more than 90,000 people displaced by recent violence in the contested border area of Abyei, Sudan. He shares with us his impressions from the field.

Whenever a person responds to an emergency situation you have to face the grief and loss of those affected. There is so much work to be done and so many people who need assistance. It is also in these moments that you see the real face of humanity and the deep compassion people can show to their fellow man. I’ve seen two such examples since arriving to the Agok area of Sudan.

Agok is a town that used to number about ten thousand but has recently swelled to the tens of thousands since conflict broke out in the neighboring town of Abyei. The International Organization of Migration estimates that more than 90,000 have been displaced. A large percentage of the displaced have found their way to Agok, which is only 25 miles from Abyei.

In general, it is next to impossible for people in Agok to squeeze out a living. A natural disaster, bad luck or man-made conflict can wipe out a family’s reserves. Despite this, I’ve seen numerous families in Agok open their homes to the displaced. They share the burden of those who fled the violence by providing them with shelter, food and water. They’ve cobbled together a support structure to help their countrymen weather these difficult times. Of course this is not a sustainable solution –the host families will soon run out of supplies. Assisting the displaced is not a task they can shoulder on their own. But, for me, as a humanitarian aid worker, seeing their compassion and commitment to assisting their neighbors has been a heartening experience.
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Andy Schaefer, CRS technical adviser for emergency coordination, is in Agok, Sudan working to assist some of the more than 90,000 people displaced by recent violence in the contested border area of Abyei, Sudan. He shares with us his impressions from the field.

Getting to Agok was an odyssey in and of itself. We had to take a two-hour flight on a single engine aircraft from Juba to Wau, and then take another 5-hour, bone-jarring drive into Turalei, followed by an additional 4 hours to Agok. I’d estimate that there are only 50 miles between Wau and Turalei. Poor road conditions really hobble overland travel.

Five of us along with a driver rode in a white land cruiser along dusty cratered roads. The car was stocked with provisions. We’d been told that the markets in Turalei where barren and we needed to bring with us all the food and supplies we would need for the foreseeable future: lentils, rice, tea, foam mattresses, kitchen sets, water, and fuel. It is impossible to get diesel in Agok and Turalei where we are working, so we had to make sure that we brought enough with us for all the work we’d be doing and for the return trip back to Wau.
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Please click the play button in the box below to read the transcript of our recent live, 1-hour chat with Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of southern Sudan. Bishop Kussala chatted with Catholics from around the United States about the current situation in Sudan, the upcoming independence for South Sudan and the great work Catholics in the United States have done on behalf of our brothers and sisters in his homeland.

The first miracle in Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala’s life happened when he was just a few months old. During a military raid on his village in southern Sudan, soldiers entered his family’s house and killed his mother and sister. They left baby Eduardo unharmed and didn’t burn down the house.

Now, 47 years later, he is the Bishop of the Diocese of Tombura-Yambi, and he continues to devote his life to bringing peace to Sudan.

You can help make that possible.

“My message to the Catholic population is their brothers and sisters in southern Sudan have been under oppression and have been suffering, and they need to be free” Bishop Kussala said. “We need the prayers of the Catholic population, the Christian population. And we need their support, materially, spiritually and morally. And we need them to walk along side us.”

After a 22-year civil war that killed more than 2 million people, against all odds, the people of southern Sudan held a peaceful referendum to declare their independence.

On July 9, The Republic of South Sudan will become Africa’s newest nation.

“The birth of a new country I think has to be a gift to everybody,” Bishop Kussala said. “And everybody should be happy about it.”

Stay with Sudan. Build a future.

From Caritas:

As part of programme of prayer and activities leading up to the independence for South Sudan on 9 July, the Sudanese Catholic Church will be blessing and planting trees of life to mark Pentecost this Sunday 12 June.

Each diocese will plant a tree as a symbol of new birth. From Sunday until independence day, families, institutions, schools and parishes are being encouraged to plant trees.

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From The Observer:

The Notre Dame men’s lacrosse team furthered its social justice initiative with a Playing for Peace game followed by an interhall tournament Sunday.

Kevin Dugan, director of Men’s Lacrosse Operations, said they held the tournament to show Notre Dame’s unceasing support of Sudan. The initiative began fall semester with a three-on-three basketball tournament and Stand with Sudan peace rally.

“It’s a follow-up to make sure we didn’t just have this one event in the fall and check it off the list of things to do,” he said. “We want there to be a continuous call to awareness on the situation in Sudan.”

Read the full story here.

Join the Notre Dame men’s lacrosse team at Arlotta Stadium at the Playing for Peace game against Georgetown on April 10th at 12:00.

Get all the details here.