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OLD FANGAK: On a piece of land surrounded by floods in South Sudan, families drink and bathe from the waters that washed away the latrines and continue to rise.
Around 1 million people in the country have been displaced or isolated for months by the worst floods in memory, the intense rainy season being a sign of climate change.
The waters began to rise in June, washing away crops, flooding roads and worsening hunger and disease in the young nation struggling to recover from civil war. Now hunger is a threat.
On a recent Associated Press visit to the Old Fangak area of Jonglei State, parents spoke of walking for hours in chest-deep water to find food and medical care as malaria and diarrheal diseases spread.
Regina Nyakol Piny, a mother of nine, now lives in an elementary school in the village of Wangchot after her house was flooded.
“We don’t have food here, we depend solely on the humanitarian agencies of the United Nations or on the collection of firewood and its sale,” he said. “My children are getting sick from the floods and there is no medical service in this place.”
He said he eagerly awaits peace to return to the country, believing that medical services will continue “that will be enough for us.”
One of his nieces, Nyankun Dhoal, gave birth to her seventh child in a world of water in November.
“I feel very tired and my body feels very weak,” she said. One of her breasts was swollen and her baby had rashes. She wants food and plastic sheeting so she and her family can stay dry.
The mud sucks at people’s feet as they engage in daily struggles to contain the waters and find something to eat.
Nyaduoth Kun, a mother of five, said the floods destroyed her family’s crops and life has been a struggle for months, with people selling their precious livestock to buy food that is never enough.
The family eats only two meals a day and adults often go to bed on an empty stomach, he said. They have started collecting water lilies and wild fruits for food.
He said he had little knowledge of the coronavirus pandemic plaguing other parts of the world and spreading largely undetected in resource-poor South Sudan. “There are many diseases living among us, so we cannot find out if it is coronavirus or not,” he said.
Instead, their fear is that the makeshift water dam around their home could collapse at any moment, flooding young children.
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