* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
It is Wednesday 23rd July in Gorwai, a small village of Ayod County in northern Jonglei State, South Sudan. We – a team comprised of UN agencies and NGOs that had been dropped in by helicopter two nights before – snapped out of our sleep at around 6 am by the usual sound of artillery fire popping from the direction of Ayod town, in the East. These are the sounds that keep the displaced population , that which the team has come to help, very much on edge. These are sounds of the very fighting that triggered their flight from their towns and villages to this isolated, rural, relatively peaceful place in the middle of the bush.
At the beginning of the day, I do a quick round to see that my UNICEF colleagues and partners are all set up and providing their various services to the displaced people gathering to register for food from the World Food Programme (WFP). All seems fine and on track, bar a couple of minor tweaks here and there – the children are irritated and crying from having their upper left arm being used AGAIN, this time for measurement to see if they are showing symptoms of malnutrition, just moments after being vaccinated for measles in the same upper arm.
We discussed as a team and agreed that the vaccinators needed to take care to swab and clean the vaccination wound properly before letting the child move on, to avoid blood contamination on the strips used for screening for malnutrition. Such are the practicalities of administering multiple responses while conforming to strict protocols.
Once confident that the teams are managing well, I walk five minutes to the helicopter landing site on the edge of the village. Our Logistics Officer in Rumbek had informed us by SatPhone this morning that the Logistics Cluster helicopter, funded by the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO) was due at approximately 09:30, around about now, bringing in our much needed programme supplies of medicines and water treatment chemicals, amongst other stuff.
As I am standing with some locals from the village, enjoying a moment of calm and reflecting on the situation and life in general, there seemed to be a noise coming from the direction of the registration site. Slowly at first, then quickly escalating, like the crescendo of an excited crowd in a football stadium.
Something was wrong.
Within seconds, I start to see children, women, a trickle, and then thousands of them, running in my direction, towards the centre of the village where we’d set up school tents near the water borehole. They were scared, running from something, panicking and screaming as they ran. As I stood and watched, I couldn’t see what they were running from. Military men in uniform from within the community, already visible at every corner, began to look much more engaged and ready to act in defense of their people. They were walking, weapons in hand, towards where the people were running from. There were no shots; just shouts and screams as people continued to run and panic.
