The villagers hear the distant roar of jet engines before a cargo plane makes a deafening pass over Mogok, dropping sacks of grain from its hold to the marooned dust bowl below.
There is no other way to get food to this starving hamlet in South Sudan. There are no roads, and the snaking Nile is miles away.
After enduring famine-like deprivation, women sprint to gather the rations that must sustain their families for months.
“The children were eating leaves,” Nyawal Puot, 36 and a mother of five, told AFP in Mogok, a cluster of thatch huts on a barren plain, many days walk from anywhere in northeast South Sudan.
Mogok was saved from the brink, but one in two South Sudanese are starving, some approaching famine, just as President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar have once again united in government to try and lead the country out of six years of war. Read more…
