A new era

Noon is not a good time
to visit Tawidaat Camp
for displaced southerners
living on the outskirts
of Khartoum, North Sudan

The blazing sun
beats heavily
on this desert capital

Maria
sits under a makeshift roof
of plastic, cardboard, tin

Her three-week-old baby
wrapped in a grey towel
suckles at her breast

Maria
is among the millions
of internally displaced Sudanese
who fled the civil war
raging in the south

“It is fifteen years
since I left the south”

Maria looks at me

I bend
to stroke the baby’s head

“What is
the baby’s name?”

I ask

“Naivasha”

Maria responds

(Naivasha

is the Kenyan town
hosting the negotiations
toward a peace accord

between

the Government of Sudan

and

the rebel Sudan Peoples’
Liberation Movement)

Maria’s smile

radiates with the hope

and the promise

of the dawn
of a new era

an era
   of
peace

“Naivasha”

Maria whispers his name
and cuddles him gently