“My children keep asking me for food”

I’m suffering with diarrhoea due to eating coconut daily.

Angelina Anur, eight-years old, lives in Manawan Camp with her mother and three siblings. She says they hardly have a meal a day, since food aid hasn’t been provided for over a month now.

“It is one month and half now without food distribution in the camp and the situation has forced us to eat the fruits of the coconut,” Angelina says. “I’m suffering with diarrhoea due to eating coconut daily.”

South Sudan’s violent conflict has affected all service sectors in the country, and children suffer the most. Besides the lack of food, children have no access to health care, education and shelter.

“The children were born to suffer in South Sudan as you can see. We are like orphans in this Country,” Angelina says, urging aid agencies to at least provide them with emergency food rations.

Angelina’s mother, Amona Nyanluak, says she struggles every day to get food for her children, blaming the violent conflict for the suffering. “My kids and I wouldn’t have suffered if the country was peaceful.”

My children cry when there is no food.

“I don’t sleep well at night because my children cry when there is no food for them,” she says, adding that her children “keep asking me for food while I have nothing in my hand”.

Nyanluak plans to go back to her home in Bentiu, but she worries about how to get there, fearing transport costs, robbers and unknown gunmen on the way.