Advocate reporter Paige Aarhus is in Africa with members of the Lacombe-based charity A Better World. She is filing stories about the people she meets and the issues they face. Today she examines the efforts of Central Alberta charitable groups to help the people of Sudan.

KOSTI — An emaciated white donkey falls to its knees as it struggles up a muddy slope in 40 degree heat. It is pulling a huge battered metal tank full of Nile River water, the first of many loads today.

An entire herd is gathered around a single water pump on a scorching, cloudless morning.

These donkeys will deliver tank after tank of muddy water to two camps where residents have gone from internally displaced people to permanently displaced people — but in both camps, residents are still living day-to-day as refugees with no water, little food and limited access to education and medical care.

The El Leya and Goz El Salam IDP camps in Sudan’s White Nile province are home to over 30,000 people displaced during a 20-year civil war between the government and the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army.

Darfur might get all the attention in North America, but the civil war left two million dead and another eight million people without a home. It ended in 2005 when President Omar Al-Bashir signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, but thousands from South Sudan have yet to return to their homes.

At El Leya and Goz El Salam, most will never return.

The camps look more like villages — mile after mile of mud and straw huts are connected by twisting sandy paths to small businesses and a food distribution centre. Wood and straw school buildings are in shambles — the few hundred children who attend will often get their lessons under trees.

A parched field strewn with plastic bags and garbage separates the two camps.

It’s here that a pair of Central Alberta groups hope to make day-to-day camp life a little more bearable.

Lacombe-based charity A Better World has teamed up with CrossRoads Church’s Global Compassion Committee to undertake a series of relief projects at the Kosti camps.

Their first order of business is to build a pipeline from city water supplies to the field between El Leya and Goz El Salam, but it will take a lot of co-operation with international agency Adventist Relief and Development Agency (ADRA), which runs the camps, and the Sudanese government to make this project work.

Inside one sagging wood school house at Kadogli, a camp of 22,000 that already has a water pump, community leaders from the other two camps describe their people’s needs to volunteers from Alberta and Sudanese government officials working for the Humanitarian Assistance Commission (HAC).

Mohamed Madoud, an outspoken representative from El Leya, said the top three priorities are water, sanitation and education.

“During the rainy season, the people will walk seven km to get water from the river, but it is contaminated. We have many cases of diarrhea and sometimes cholera,” he said.

Madoud and other representatives are excited for the Albertans’ visit because so many other agencies are involved.

The inclusion of government officials also means red tape that can strangle down so many good ideas will be easier to cut.

“We are looking for support for the poor whether it is from Canada or the government of Sudan. We have very much need here,” an unnamed government official said.

Bashir had promised to expel all foreign aid agencies within a year, after the International Criminal Court charged him with war crimes and issued a warrant for his arrest.

“I don’t think so because the committee works with so many international agencies. We must maybe wait for things to soften,” the government official said.

His words are a huge relief to Dan Wilson and Anton Beukes, representatives from CrossRoads. They came to Kosti for due diligence — to make sure the needs that were described to them were there, and that no other obstacles stand in the way of a massive investment.

Wilson said he feels much more confident after visiting the camps.

“I think we feel very positive from the meetings today. We got the answers we needed and the support of the government and local community,” he said.

After the water project, A Better World and CrossRoads will look into building classrooms, medical clinics and supplying a group of Canadian volunteers to visit the region and do what they can to help.

Better World co-founder Eric Rajah said he’s confident the new project will be one the entire Central Alberta community supports.

“The local people are well-qualified, well-connected and experienced, all those things lend themselves to a good project. I’m so glad I came and didn’t listen to people back home who said the foreigners have to leave,” he said.

“I see a lot of potential for people to come and help if it is as stable as we have seen today. We’re very excited.”

paarhus@reddeeradvocate.com