KENYA: Despite a peace accord, Sudanese refugees are still arriving in Kenya, writes Rob Crilly in Kakuma, Kenya
Abdullah Merghani Ahmed's life was turned upside down one morning in May when, just before dawn, Janjaweed militia swept through his village on horseback.
They torched the buildings and shot anyone too old or too slow to get out of their way. Each raider picked out a woman and raped her. Abdullah (20) lost one brother. His sister was raped.
The next day he and 13 others from the village of Kuss in the state of West Darfur struck out for safety. Their journey ended six months and more than 1,000 miles later, when they crossed the border into Kenya.
"When we left we weren't thinking about Kenya," he says, sitting in the neat, freshly swept refugee compound he now calls home. "But on our journey we heard about this camp. We had nothing left to lose. Everything was gone, so we just kept going until we felt safe."
He arrived at Kakuma refugee camp at the start of the year. It was set up in 1992 to house refugees from the bitter civil war in the south of Sudan.
A final peace agreement between the southern rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and the Khartoum government was signed in January. On Monday, international donors will meet to pledge funding for a multibillion-dollar programme to kick-start reconstruction. That should be the first step towards repatriating the 67,000 Sudanese refugees in Kakuma.
But the refugees are still arriving in Kenya. Whole villages in southern Sudan are clubbing together to send women and children over the border in search of food, while hundreds of unaccompanied boys continue to arrive looking for an education in the camp schools.
Now it is also home to 74 people fleeing the conflict in Sudan's western region of Darfur.
Refugee agencies were stunned to learn that families were prepared to travel such vast distances.
George Okoth-Obbo, country director for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said it was still difficult to understand the flow.
"Is it that some locations have greater stability after the southern peace deal, thus allowing movement through the south, so that refugees from Darfur can end up in Kenya?
"Or was this an incremental set of movements with people setting off some months ago, who just happened to end up here without triggering any kind of pattern, flow event or exodus? At the moment we don't know."
Abdullah, an English student, and his family walked first to El Geneina, capital of West Darfur. From there they used up most of their savings on a lorry ride to the neighbouring state of Kordofan, where they spent three weeks living in a bus station.
All they time they were trying to reach rebel-held land in the south, and protection from government persecution and Janjaweed raids.
They eventually reached the Nuba mountains, bordering SPLA territory. After a long wait, they were helped by an aid agency, which arranged to fly the family into Kenya.
"We don't know how long we will stay here but we will not go back. There is nothing left at home," Abdullah says.
He left behind a broken land. Sudan's vast oil reserves should make it one of the richest countries in Africa. But today it has one of the world's lowest life expectancies: 42.
Commentators believe it will take years to transform southern Sudan into a functioning society and persuade the refugees to exchange the schools and clinics of Kakuma for home.
The UNHCR is planning to return people over a five-year period.
In the meantime, people are still leaving for Kenya.