A Southsider in South Sudan

Ciara O’Malley (28), from Rathfarnham, is a member of one of Oxfam’s emergency response teams in South Sudan. She went to school in Notre Dame and studied at UCD. It was a far cry from her experiences in the African nation.

IT’S funny to think that I grew up not far from the Oxfam shop in Rathfarnham – now I’m working for them thousands of miles away in South Sudan.

As it is a new country that is now just three years old, it has great potential but it has been wrecked by a decades-long civil war, and now that conflict is being divided along ethnic lines.
What’s unfolding here is a complex emergency where there’s ongoing conflict but also a severe food crisis. It’s a very challenging environment to work in.

South Sudan is a dusty place, but when you’re landing, you see that it’s surprisingly green (not unlike Ireland) because of all the sun and rain it gets during the wet season.
I live in Juba, which is the capital but it is quite small. South Sudan is one of the most underdeveloped countries in the world. But despite having little or no proper roads, people in Juba are pretty good at following the rules of the road.

The South Sudanese are very friendly people but are initially quite reserved. Once you develop a relationship with them they’re extremely warm and caring people.

In South Sudan, I live with 19 of my colleagues in a shared Oxfam house. I’m the only Irish person. My colleagues come from Portugal, Spain, the UK, the United States – it’s quite a mix.
I manage Oxfam’s humanitarian response in a place called UN House in Juba, which is a UN base and has three big camps in it with 25,000 people who have fled the conflict.

As I am the external representative for Oxfam’s response in UN House, I attend coordination meetings with other aid agencies, the UN police and peace-keepers in order to represent Oxfam’s work. There are several of these per week.

Then I pop in to the camps, check on the activities the team are doing and troubleshoot issues on the spot. This can be anything from supply issues, to queries from the community leaders about our work and selection of beneficiaries.

Every month food distributions take place in the camps over 10 days. At a food distribution, Oxfam provides people with vouchers for charcoal (used as a fuel to cook food) that they can redeem with various vendors who have set up in the camp.

Since December, we have reached 261,000 people at several locations across South Sudan with food, clean water, sanitation, hygiene materials and other essentials from fuel to solar lamps.

Around four million people need urgent humanitarian support now – including 200,000 children suffering severe acute malnutrition. The conflict meant that people couldn’t plant crops earlier this summer and the country is on the brink of a massive food crisis, with a total of seven million people facing hunger in the months ahead.

The majority of Oxfam staff are locals. We also have one or two staff members who are among those living in the camps, highly educated people who have like over a million others been forced to flee their homes because of the conflict that broke out in December 2013. It’s great to be able to give people who have been through so much the opportunity to be part of the team and the emergency response work.

Donations to Oxfam Ireland’s emergency response in South Sudan can be made at Oxfam’s Southside shops in Dundrum, Dun Laoghaire, Rathfarnham and Rathmines, or in the south city centre at Parliament Street, South King Street and George’s Street, by calling 1850 30 40 55 or visiting www.oxfamireland.org/southsudan