Thanks to support from the United Nations and its branches, the Ethiopian government, and various NGOs, from 1993 onwards the refugees who made it to Bonga were able to re-orient their lives to a wider world.  The rising generation were keen on education of all kinds, and a new leadership began to emerge, competent in dealing with a new set of challenges.  This included keen preparations for an eventual return to the Sudan, where some of their contemporaries were already growing up in northern towns, or were involved in one or other side of the continuing military struggle.   By mid-2007, a good number of people had been repatriated to the new Blue Nile State, part of the ‘northern’ Sudan as defined by the north/south border of the 2005 peace agreement.  The longer-term future for people of this ‘marginal’ area still looks very uncertain, partly because of continuing war in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.