Famine Hit: South Sudanese Eats Weeds and Water Lilies To Survive

The women were among a crowd of 20,000 people that emerged from the swamps and assembled at the rebel-held village of Thonyor, in Leer county, when they heard the United Nations was registering people for emergency rations.

Some families received fishing nets and rods from aid workers to keep them going until food arrived.

It was the U.N.’s first trip to Thonyor in a year. Many parts of the country are inaccessible due to fighting. Others are just very remote. South Sudan, the size of Texas, has only 200 km (120 miles) of paved roads, nearly six years after independence from neighbouring Sudan.

“What we’ve seen is a lot of people coming from the islands,” said George Fominyen, a spokesman for the World Food Programme. “They have been living on water lilies, they have been living on roots, from weeds in the Nile, at most they eat once in a day.”

County commissioner Majiel Nhial said when villagers received food aid last year, they were attacked. Men in uniform looted and burnt their homes, he said.

“We lost all our properties, cows and our houses were looted. We were attacked, women were raped and girls abducted,” he said.