'God has answered my prayers': Mother reunited with children in South Sudan after 3-year search
Nearly 15,000 children have been separated from their parents during war in South Sudan
In the chaos of South Sudan's civil war, it took three years for Nyagonga Machul to find her lost children.
Machul had travelled from her village to the capital when President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, fired his deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer, in 2013. The dismissal triggered a civil war in the world's newest nation that has increasingly been fought along ethnic lines.
Cut off from her children
Machul found herself cut off from her son Nhial, now aged 14 and the protector of the family; 10 year-old Ruai and eight-year-old Machiey, brothers who love board games and swimming; six-year-old Nyameer with her shy smile; and Nyawan, now four but then the much-loved baby.
Praying for news
For years, Machul prayed for news. In December, she heard her children were alive — but far away in Bentiu, the northern gateway to the nation's oil fields. More than 1,000 kilometres of battlefield stretched between them.
A terrifying ordeal
Machul had left the children with their grandmother, but one night gunmen attacked their village. "I was in bed sleeping. All of a sudden I heard the sound of gunshots, then people shouting, screaming," said Nhial.
The panicked children scattered and hid near the river Nile. Wandering back, they found each other, but not their grandmother. They decided to flee.
Snake and crocodile infested waters
They walked through swamps, in chest-deep water infested with snakes and crocodiles. They begged food from families with little to spare.
'I had to pay someone to carry the little ones'
Then a former neighbour, Nyabika Temdor, took them in, camping with them on a tiny island in the Nile. But gunmen struck again and they ran.
"I had to pay someone to carry the little ones, as they couldn't walk," Temdor said.
A long, arduous journey
After four days, they reached a camp for displaced families in Bentiu. The sprawling settlement of 120,000 people is bordered by barbed wire and watchtowers.
That is where CINA found them. A local organization supported by UNICEF, case workers painstakingly trace separated families. They enter the names of lost children into a UNICEF-supported database that holds nearly 15,000 names.
Survival is a daily challenge
Having a parent vastly improves the long-term chances of a child's survival, said Marianna Zaichykova, a spokeswoman for UNICEF. But the program is chronically underfunded.
Reunifications on the decline
Last year, reunifications dropped by 50 per cent because there was not enough money to trace families, Zaichykova said.
'I am so happy'
Machul was lucky. UNICEF arranged for the children to fly to Juba this week. Their mother waited for them in a tent made of sticks and plastic that looked just like the one they left in Bentiu.
She dappled drops of water on her children's faces in a traditional blessing. Her friends began to sing. And then she opened her arms for her children.
"God has answered my prayers," she said. "I am so happy."
