Mary's Sudan goodbye: 'I will not come back' after going South

Mary Valentino said goodbye on Saturday to the cardboard shack she has called home.

Valentino was one of 1,500 ethnic South Sudanese preparing to board buses returning them to their ancestral homeland from Khartoum-area squatter camps where many of them have lived for more than two years.

"I'm very happy to go back," she said, smiling with a baby on her hip after emerging from her family's dirt-floor hovel beside a busy road in Khartoum's Haj Yousef district.

"I will not come back here again," she said. "It is very difficult to live here."

Her camp, home to about 1,000 people, was one of about 40 in the Khartoum area which are home to almost 20,000 "stranded" southerners, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says.

Almost every single one of them wants to go South, said a survey by IOM which provided technical support for Saturday's repatriation.

Millions of southerners fled to the north during a 22-year civil war which ended in a 2005 peace deal that paved the way for South Sudan's independence in July 2011, following a referendum.

About 1.8 million southerners have gone to South Sudan by various means since 2007.

Those who remain at the Khartoum settlements have no money to travel themselves. While they wait for transport they have been living in conditions which the UN called "appalling".

South Sudanese have been classed as foreigners in Sudan since April last year, restricting their access to employment and services following the South's separation.

"No job. No money," says Wol Dyang, a former Sudanese policeman who is the camp's leader.

Although Dyang is missing his lower teeth, his bald head, thick-rimmed glasses, a sports jacket and short wooden staff give him a bearing of authority.

"We still have luggage that needs to be loaded," he advises, as suitcases are strapped down atop old scratched buses that will transport the passengers.

Donors did not respond

A luggage truck is tilting at the edge of the road, weighed down with tyres, oil drums and beds while a child with a runny nose plays near mattresses waiting to be put aboard.

The camp is being dismantled, and what remains looks like a garbage dump.

Men and boys peel off the cloth which formed a crude dwelling around pieces of wood that are now piled onto a donkey cart and sold.

A stiff wind blows dirty sand into people's eyes.

Geneva-based IOM, to which 155 countries belong, appealed to donors in November for $10.55 million to support the Sudanese and South Sudanese governments in providing "safe and dignified" transport for the 20,000 southerners in Khartoum.

However, the donors did not respond and IOM used its own resources to provide buses and trucks for Saturday's convoy.

The repatriation initiative is led by the governments of Sudan and South Sudan, which agreed to provide security for the convoy to Northern Bahr El Ghazal state in the South.

The journey will take a few days.

IOM is supporting the return, with help from other UN agencies and the Red Cross, to ensure people are moved "orderly, safely and humanely," said Mario Lito Malanca, IOM's chief of mission in Sudan.

Tensions between Sudan and South Sudan, and a lack of funds, had prevented any IOM-assisted repatriations since last year.

But a September summit between Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir and his South Sudanese counterpart Salva Kiir led to improved relations between the neighbours.

They had intermittently clashed along their disputed border last year.

The summit affirmed the commitment of both sides to implement a series of economic and security pacts, including one for the free flow of people and goods across the frontier.

"Both governments have in fact recently confirmed their support in addressing the urgent needs of this stranded population," though they are unable to fund the entire transport costs, the IOM said in November.

For one southerner, who gave his name only as Lino, this new spirit of cooperation between the two countries has helped bring an end to his 25-year stay in the north.

"I was always hoping to go back," Lino said.