Challenging new reality for urban returnees

High-rise buildings, factories and city jobs are not to be found in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal (NBeG) and Warrap, two states bordering the northern part of Sudan in the soon-to-be independent nation of South Sudan. Here, most people walk on dirt roads instead of asphalt, ride donkeys instead of in cars, and live in tukuls instead of brick houses. Khartoum and Aweil, the state capital of NBeG, are only a journey of a few days from each other but a world apart in terms of lifestyle.

"My mother worked in a factory, my husband was a construction worker, and myself, I was a house maid in Khartoum," says Angelina Ajok Athian (34).

She is sitting on a plastic chair outside her new home, a temporary emergency shelter made out of grass mats and plastic sheets in Apada, a transit site for returnees in the outskirts of Aweil. What used to be an empty field until late last year has now turned into an informal settlement with some 18,000 people who have returned from the northern parts of Sudan.