The Catholic Archdiocese of Juba has delivered relief aid including food to people displaced by recent violence in Wonduruba Payam of Central Equatoria.

A Catholic priest who visited Wonduruba over the weekend explained, “We have brought 150 bags of maize flour, ten bags of sugar, ten bags of beans, and 100 boxes of biscuits for children, we have about 50 pieces of mosquito nets.”

“We have salt because this is the request of the people that they need salt especially those in the bushes, we have milk, soap and about 30 cartons of cooking oil,” he added.

He said that the Catholic Church is planning for more trips of humanitarian aid to the people of Wonduruba in a few weeks time. The priest has estimated the number of IDPs in the bush in the thousands.

The priest also expressed concern for the people suffering in open weather. “The mothers who are giving birth in the bush, their children are exposed to rains, bad weather, sickness.” But he noted that the Wonduruba parish priest has transported several mothers who gave birth to Lainya for medical attention.

The priest is also urging people to return to Wonduruba to check on their crops.

“I would like to ask my mothers, young brothers, elders that despite the fear and the trauma that has been inflicted in them let them try to come slowly back to take care of the many things that they left here because they have the maize to be harvested, the sim-sim, and beans that we have seen.”

“If this is not done we are foreseeing that there is going to be hunger in this village even if things will be normal but people have lost many things that their lives depend on,” he said.

For his part, Ambrose Lomin, a local Wonduruba intellectual said, “We in Wonduruba have not witnessed this kind of incident since we were fighting with the Arabs but it has been imposed on us through unknown people – maybe their feelings are different to make the people suffer like this. God will guide the people of Wonduruba’’

Lomin said, “The crops are now being destroyed, eaten by animals, cattle, goats, everything is now left unprotected. The absence of the people and civil administrative set up in Wonduruba is creating a problem.”

Noel Lowila Kaden, the acting paramount chief of Wonduruba, said He came from the bush to receive the aid delivered by the church at the parish compound in Wonduruba Centre. Lowila said children have started dying in the bush as the population is now feeding on wild fruits.

“We have no food; there are many people in the bushes. They do not have salt, soap, even a single thing. Here people have not gone to Lainya at all. Those who fled to Lainya make half of the population,” the chief said, referring ot the major centre of displacement, which is closer to Juba.

More than 100 families coming from the bush to Wonduruba centre were registered by Saturday to receive the aid.