Ayod County - formerly known as Yod locally - is inhabited by Gawaar Nuer, who divide themselves into two sections called Baar and Nyang. These are further composed of major clans: Chieng-Kapel, Bhaang, Jamuogh, Chieng-Thony, Chieng-Nyadakuon, Jithiep, Chieng-Pear, Chieng-Nyaiguak. This structure is not mere anthropological detail. It is how people know who they are, who they marry, and who they count as kin when disputes reach the cattle-camp councils. In the January 2011 referendum on South Sudanese independence, Ayod County voted unanimously for separation from Sudan. That unanimity says something about both the political memory and the social cohesion of the Gawaar.

The Guinea worm study was not the only health alarm. Ayod County has documented some of the highest rates of trachoma ever recorded - a bacterial eye infection that, repeatedly reinfecting, scars the eyelid and eventually blinds. In February 2011, the county was reported to have been hit by a severe water shortage: rain had failed, returnees from exile were increasing the population, and more than ten boreholes had broken and not been repaired. Each of these stories is the same story in different clothes. Clean water prevents Guinea worm. Clean water and basic sanitation prevent trachoma. A functioning borehole prevents desperation. None of these things is unsolvable in engineering terms. All of them require the kind of sustained, funded presence that South Sudan's state has never quite managed in places like Ayod.

In 2004, clashes broke out between the Padang and the Ciendool of Cienthoony - both Gawaar Nuer sections - over rights to move cattle across community lands. Thirty-five people died in three separate fights. In February 2011, armed supporters of General George Athor Deng Dut fought Sudan People's Liberation Army troops in the county; at least twenty were killed. Athor had lost the April 2010 gubernatorial election for Jonglei State, which Kuol Manyang Juuk won, and had accused the SPLM of rigging the results. In May 2011, unidentified men raided Kuanydeng village in the south of the county, stealing a large herd of cattle; six people died including three attackers. The Jonglei minister of law enforcement, Gabriel Duop Lam - later arrested during the 2025 Nasir clashes - said the absence of mid-lower teeth and small body scars on the attackers identified them as Murle. The raid followed a larger one the previous month by Nuer Lou on Murle in Pibor County that had killed over 400 people.

Police in Ayod had no trucks or helicopters with which to chase the Kuanydeng raiders. The stolen cattle were reportedly being driven through Duk County toward Pibor. The geography of inter-communal cattle raiding in Jonglei - Nuer raiding Murle, Murle raiding Nuer, Dinka raiding both, each cycle avenging the one before - is one of the hardest features of life in this part of South Sudan. Sedentary outside observers often ask why the cycle continues. The Gawaar and Murle and Lou Nuer pastoralists would answer that cattle are the currency of marriage, status, and survival, and that honour and grief do not forget the way documents do.

Ayod County centres around the town of Ayod at roughly 8.13 degrees N, 31.41 degrees E in Jonglei State. The terrain is flat floodplain - part of the great inland delta of the Sudd, where the White Nile spreads into the world's largest tropical wetland before gathering itself again for the journey north. The county was briefly part of Fangak State during South Sudan's 2015-2020 administrative reshuffle. From altitude, the landscape in the wet season is bewildering - a shimmering mosaic of water, grass, and cattle paths winding between raised settlements. In the dry season, the land bakes and the cattle move toward the river. The people live, as they have long lived, by the rhythm the floods dictate.