The Foreign Service Journal, March 2013

36 MARCH 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL began returning home. Initially, the pace was slow and steady. However, returns spiked just before the January 2011 referen- dum, which granted residents of Sudan’s 10 southern states the opportunity to choose autonomy. As the world focused on the implementation of a suc- cessful, violence-free referendum, hundreds of thousands of people began traveling south via road, rail, barge and plane. It was against this backdrop that I arrived in Juba with USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance to facilitate U.S. assistance for the influx of returnees. We immediately increased monitoring at transit and desti- nation sites, and coordinated with partners to ensure that the incoming returnees received adequate assistance. We traveled to the port in Juba to interact with the shiploads of people who transited the port almost daily. Most had been delayed at bottlenecked transit points in the north for days, and all had been trapped on barges for the slow, two-week journey down the Nile. Yet they arrived in a state of celebration, with families singing and dancing and women joyously ululating. They had been displaced for generations and shared with me the joy of a long-awaited return. The returnees represented all walks of life, from the rela- tively wealthy to the very poor, and from the elderly to the very young. On one ship, I spoke with a mother who had given birth just before her ship docked. Without any thought for her recent hardships, she exclaimed, “My baby has been born in the place of my parents’ birth; my family is finally home!” Tens of thousands of returnees flowed into stadiums and schools, or ended up underneath trees with their belongings: beds, sofas, chairs, tables, cooking utensils, corrugated iron sheets, radio and TV sets; sometimes even fridges and small generators. In many cases their material goods had made them rich by comparison to the southern Sudanese who wel- comed them home. As they shared their concerns and hopes with us, some returnees expressed fear of the unknown regarding their legal status in the north following the referendum. But none reported being forced to leave the north. Many came back expecting to participate in the voting, only to discover that they had missed their chance to register. Yet this setback did little to deflate their excitement at returning home. We visited local authorities in areas where returnees were congregating to determine the extent to which they had planned for, and were able to absorb, the thousands of families on their doorsteps. Some officials designated plots of land for