Bridging the Gap

The visible traces of past Mundri go back to 1958, when the current health care center was build. This is the only group of buildings still standing and being in use, although parts of it are now abandoned, because there is a danger of collapsing. Apart from this health care center, there are plenty of destroyed schools, churches, and other left-overs to spot. Admirers of the so called urban decay will have a good time here.

An American aid-worker, one of the few white people around, reveals that in the year 2000, when he first visited the area, there where only three tukuls (houses) in town. At that time, there were still bombings going on, and being the front line, Mundri was nothing more than a bunch of ruins, a terrifying hell hole with the smell of gun powder.

The reopening of the health care center by the Mundri Relief & Development Association, as well as the establishing of a primary and secondary school, the Motherland Progressive School, soon attracted the first daring ex-refugees, and ever since, especially after the peace agreement in 2005, people have been coming back in increasing numbers.

Right now, Mundri is an average town with about 6,000 inhabitants (but that could be doubled within a year), a market, a county judge, a major, a police station, a prison, some churches, a football field, a restaurant, simply all the basic elements are present to make a village function. But it is just basic, nothing more than that.

It’s definitely a good thing that people are coming back and build up a new future here, but it also brings several problems. People bring back HIV/Aids, the current schools are too small and there’s a serious lack of teachers (most of them come from Uganda). A lack of clean drinking water, and sufficient hygiene, along with malnutrition, are also common problems without a direct solution, let alone the decades of war, which left behind the people in a collective depression.

But, signs of progression and hope are surely been seen. The old bridge across the river, destroyed in 1992, is almost being replaced by a new one. By the end of this month it reconnects Mundri to the rest of the world. Though you would never know for sure, after all this is still Sudan.