Thirty-two-year-old Nyakong Nyal Deng slowly steps back and looks away as she covers her face. Her fingers gently sweep over her eyes.

She is hiding away her tears. 

As she narrates the cause of a now-healed scar on her right cheek, she pauses, but continues to weep briefly in silence.

"I don’t want to remember this," she says, through a translator. “I got burnt here by fire,” she adds, pointing at the scar from her early days at a United Nations protection site in Bor.

Nyakong and many others fled their homes in Akobo, in December 2013, following fierce fighting in their hometown, located in the remote east of South Sudan. Initially, a few sought refuge at a United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) base, and later arrived at a designated Protection of Civilians site, miles away in Bor.

In Akobo at the time, UNMISS suffered casualties – with the death of two of its peacekeepers – but thousands of lives of those fleeing were saved.

Five years later, Nyakong is among about 250 internally displaced persons who have been assisted back to their homes by UNMISS, in a first-phase voluntary return process, which comes after the signing of a peace agreement in September.

“After I came here to Akobo, I feel like I came back home - even if there is nothing, there is no problem,” says Nyakong, referring to the calm occasioned by the peace agreement.

Spectacularly dressed to the ‘t’, with earrings and a beautiful necklace to match, her elegance could easily mask the destitution around her.

"Sometimes we eat only dinner, and sometimes we have a little breakfast, and sometimes we cannot eat,” she says, as she looks towards a cold traditional three-stone-fireplace.  

A modest compound completes the décor of her current life, where she is getting on with her routine chores of washing dishes piled up from an earlier meal.

Although settling in has not been easy, she is happy that she is back with her entire family – her husband, and her four children – unlike many others, who perished in the conflict. The statistics – yet to be formally established – include Nyakong’s close family members.

“When I came back to Akobo, there was nothing left of my house. My house was destroyed,” she says. “My father and his sister they were long dead,” she adds.

The conflict also resulted in widespread insecurity and breakdown of infrastructure. This made living miles away as a displaced person in Bor seem much better, especially with the centralized humanitarian infrastructure, and assistance from various aid organisations.

But starting out again is what Nyakong, her family, and some friends have set out to do.

That means making the best of what is at hand, including re-learning to exploit the natural resources they once depended on.

“Where we are coming from, there was no river, but now we have come to a place where there is a river,” says Nyakong’s namesake and neighbour, Mariam Nyakong. “We can fish, our children can eat fish,” says Mariam.

With their return also being dependent on peace, they can now indeed pick up the pieces of what was left of their homes during their absence, and continue to flourish despite the initial difficulties.