File:Name Kang John Bol Age 28 Location Rumbek Origin Mayom County - Unity State (14287969065).jpg

I have a young child in Yei. It was difficult to leave her but I had the opportunity to further my studies and I took it. After I enrolled at Rumbek University, my friends and I rented a house in town and were very excited to start our classes.

I knew that there was a big SPLM meeting taking place in Juba on 15th December 2013. We were all following the news and reading reports in the newspapers. I thought this was just politics as usual but we all started receiving calls from Juba the next day saying that fighting had started. I still thought that it was political and would stop after a short while. On the same day, after more calls and reports from the media, I realised that the situation had changed from political to tribal, as people were being killed based on their ethnic group. I was very surprised.

We started to feel the effects when we went to class on Monday. There was a lot of tension and people were having discussions in tribal groups. Majority of the students in Rumbek are from the Dinka community, so a lot of animosity was directed towards the Nuer students. I am a Nuer. It was not a comfortable environment to learn.

When we returned home, we were confronted by a group of women who blamed us for the current situation. Thankfully, another Dinka woman who worked nearby defended us and told the women to leave us alone. She said that it doesn’t matter where we’re from, that we’re just students.

Later in the day, our landlord returned home and found out about the incident. He is also a Dinka. He was very upset and went looking for the group of women and warned them never to come back or speak to us in that manner again.

My friends and I were very grateful. However, we did not want to keep causing trouble for our neighbours and our landlord. If there was a risk, then we would shoulder it. We decided to move to the UNMISS (UN Mission in South Sudan) compound on 18th December 2013 and are still here.

Many of our Dinka friends from the university came to visit and they always had words of encouragement. When we decided to start attending classes again, the same friends came and escorted us to the university in case anything happened. The University Dean and Student Union also visited and encouraged us to keep up our hope and faith.

I was very surprised by what happened. South Sudan has been at war for a while and I really thought that we had found peace. Civilians need to be left out of fighting. Now people have lost trust in the system. I just hope for peace and a return to normalcy so that I can finish school and continue with my life. I hope that one day we refer to ourselves as nationals, not tribes, because South Sudan is more than just tribes.