Thousands of families in South Sudan caught up in the country’s latest famine and lingering civil war have taken to eating weeds and water lilies for survival, Reuters reports.



Sara Dit and her 10 children are among those families. They are hiding from marauding gunmen in the swamps and islands of the river Nile.

The civil war that succeeded the country’s independence from Sudan has come with very devastating effect on citizens of Africa’s youngest nation. Families cannot farm crops or earn money to buy food. They eat water lily roots and the occasional fish. Dit’s family have not even eaten for days.



“The children are sick but what can I do? There are no hospitals near us and we can’t move far from where we are hiding. My older children go fishing but we can’t get enough because we don’t have tools.”
Dit said while cradling her four-year-old son in a temporary nutrition clinic set up by UNICEF.

Nyaluat Chol, a mother of six, said her family had also survived on water lilies and palm fruit for the past year.

“We have been running from fighting for a long time. We settled in the island because its much better there. But we can’t leave to go buy food. We eat the weed floating on the river, sometime we get fish.”
The 31-year-old mum said.

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.

“What we’ve seen is a lot of people coming from the islands. 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.”
George Fominyen, a spokesman for the World Food Program said.

The government declared famine in the country’s Unity State earlier this month, revealing that the unending conflict in the country combined with high food prices, economic disruption and low agricultural production would make 4.9 million people food insecure between February and April, with that number rising to 5.5 million by July.

https://ezeja.com/news/2017/02/27/starving-people-of-south-sudan-eating-grasses-to-survive/

lalasticlala
fp

............and yet some people that are enjoying "three square meal" in our country are screaming for War

I thought south Sudan has oil?....so our oil...our oil...can lead to this..!!

this reminds me of mah grandma's goat,,,, it likes grass a lot



#positivevibes

omg. this is heart wrenching...such a pity. lawd, that green goo is upsetting