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| Paramount Chief Ahmed Omar Younis [wearing a green scarf] with Falata tribe elders |
Paloich, South Sudan - The cattle appeared first - a handful crossing the red dust track ahead and vanishing into thick, thorny bush.
The vehicle skidded hard then reversed into a break in the
scrub and the herd swelled out of the haze. Perhaps 300 beasts, glossy
with symmetrical horns a metre in length, more than 1,000 heavy hooves
crushing the earth as they moved.
Three young boys trotted barefoot alongside, sticks raised. The
vehicle bounced beside them until small domes of cloth tents appeared,
wood-smoke rising from the emerging camp.
The settlement belonged to the Falata people and was made in the
quiet bush a few kilometres outside Paloich, a parched settlement on the
White Nile river in South Sudan's conflicted Upper Nile state.
The Falata are a collection of Arab tribal communities who
migrated from western Africa to greater Sudan mostly in the 19th and
early 20th centuries, allegedly settling on their return from a
pilgrimage to Mecca.
| South Sudan peace talks? |
They are nomadic Muslims who rear vast herds of cattle and
today move widely across territory in Chad, southern Sudan and South
Sudan's Upper Nile state, since Sudan split in two in 2011.
The total Falata population may number as many as three million.
Seated on grass mats under the shade of low trees, paramount
Chief Ahmed Omar Younis explained that his particular group of about 200
men, women and children comprise 10 distinct tribes with different
dialects, but Arabic is their shared language.
They claim to have at least 60,000 cattle, but to reveal the
exact number would be impolite - akin to asking someone how much money
is in their bank account.
Access to these transient, private people is difficult. Chief
Younis said no organisation - government or NGO - had visited them until
this day.
Christian aid organisation World Vision is undertaking a mass
livestock vaccination campaign in South Sudan with the goal of
immunising more than 300,000 animals.
The vaccine drive is important for nomadic tribes who move regularly and can therefore spread disease between herds. Their lives revolve around their cattle, and they welcomed the initiative and invited the veterinary team into their camp.
The Falata have been caught up in violence from both government and
rebel fighters of the now one-year-old civil war in South Sudan.
"They are vulnerable," Nazarene Gieth, World Vision food security and development officer, told Al Jazeera, "because
nobody understands who they are or has investigated their movements.
The war in this country affects them and they need help, but they need
to be stable so NGOs can build a relationship with them".
Greatest needs
Chief Younis said the greatest need was to protect cattle from
raids and disease, and obtaining supplies of non-food items such as
tools and plastic sheeting.
Younis said last week South Sudanese rebel fighters known as the
White Army attacked a sister camp near Paloich. They beat the women and
boys, and slaughtered scores of cows.
Violent conflict is not the only threat facing these tribes.
Falata women live largely separate from the men in the camp.
The women from Younis' group said their children's health was the most
urgent problem.
Falata girls marry starting at 16 years old and can give birth
to as many as 14 children. Their access to medical care is almost
non-existent.
If someone falls seriously ill, the best they can do is attempt
to hitch a ride with a passing oil or military truck and seek help in
the town of Melut, more than an hour's rocky drive south, where there
are clinics for communities displaced by war.
But the trucks seldom stop.
Khadijah Mohammed is 25. She has four children, the eldest is
nine. Her youngest, a baby of three months, has been sick for weeks with
vomiting, diarrhoea and fever.
Khadijah said seven children and 10 women from their group died in the last year, all with similar symptoms. The cause could be a disease outbreak or related to malnutrition, but it remains unknown until a medical assessment is done.
| We know very well the water is dirty. We have heard the rumours about
sickness... But we don't have another choice for water. There are no
wells. |
Additionally, safe drinking water is difficult to find. Paloich
hosts a major oil-drilling station run by Dar Petroleum, one of the
largest companies in South Sudan.
The Falata live in its shadow and source water from pools rumoured to be contaminated by waste.
"We know very well the water is dirty. We have heard the rumours about sickness," said Chief Younis through a translator.
"But we don't have another choice for water. There are no wells."
This reporter contacted Dar Petroleum's South Sudan offices
seeking information about environmental assessments of the Paloich site,
specifically potential effects on water quality in the surrounding
area.
No response was received by the time of publication.
Black fever
Veterinary workers took Khadijah and her baby to a hospital run
by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) at one of Melut's internally displaced
persons camps.
A physician suspected the child had kala azar - black fever - a disease transmitted by sandfly bites. It is the second deadliest parasitic killer in the world after malaria.
According to MSF, the number of people treated in South Sudan for kala azar more than doubled between 2013 and 2014. Malnutrition
lowers the body's ability to fight the disease and no nutrition
assessments on this collection of Falata has been compiled.
An outbreak of kala azar is containable but it's deadly if not treated, and could be killing the women and children.
Meanwhile, fighting continues across southern Sudan and South
Sudan with attacks reported in recent days in Upper Nile and across the
border in Sudan's South Kordofan region.
What is certain is that these transient, elusive nomads require
support and recognition but will keep moving to avoid clashes in an
enduring search for safe places to graze their cattle.
