Bol Deng, 45, lost track of his family in 2013 and has not heard from them since then. | Courtesy

A man in Gumbo Sherikat is appealing to the public to assist him in locating his missing family spotted in Renk town recently after they disappeared more than ten years ago.

Bol Deng was separated from his family during South Sudan’s independence in 2011 after he relocated them from Khartoum to South Sudan.

Bol said he remained in Khartoum while his wife Nyakony Ayuog Suliman and three of his children, Lina Bol Deng, 6, Karim Bol Deng, 4, and Linda Bol Deng, 2, settled in Renk town.

He continued to communicate with his family from Sudan and has been providing for all of their need before he lost contact with the family.

Bol briefly lost contact with his family after South Sudan introduced a new country code after independence.

But he managed through friends and family to connect again with his children by phone.

Unfortunately, in the 2013 civil war, Bol was informed in Khartoum that his family house in Malakal was bombed and his wife and kids were killed in the house and no one survived.

For him, the news of his family’s alleged demise was like a nightmare. However, he did not give up searching and returned from Sudan to South Sudan in 2014.

But throughout the past couple of years, his efforts to find his family, have been in vain.

In 2016, he received a phone call from an unknown person – informing him that his family members are alive. The caller asked him to send money to evacuate them from Malakal to Juba.

He did not believe the news and requested the man to first give the phone to his daughter to speak with.

“ I told him to give my daughter the phone because. At that time she was 6 years old and she can speak but he hang up the phone and switched it off, so I discovered that he was trying to blackmail me.

It seems like when Bol tries to consult himself and forget the past, another hope of finding her family is renewed because, in 2023, he again received another call that his wife is in Renk.

Bol was told his wife, who allegedly lives in Radis refugee in Jableen of White Nile province in Sudan, came to Renk for the funeral.

He says he later discovered that his wife was married to someone else.

He said he has tried to reach his family through Red Cross but in futile.

The 40-year-old man is calling on well-wishers to help him to see his children who are now aged 16, 14, and 12 respectively.

“All I want now just to see my children they disappeared a long time ago and I heard they are life. It’s not a problem if my wife gets another man all I want to see is my 3 children,” he said.

“I sent letters through all NGOs for help but all doors are still closed. I need someone to link me up with chiefs in the Al-Radis refugee camp.”

Since the 2013 onset of the violent conflict in South Sudan UNICEF and its partners have registered more than 12.000 children for family reunification.

In October 2017 more than 5,000 children were reunited with family by UNICEF and Save the Children.