Sudan is...

Sudan is dark wiry frames, gnarled by a painful history into staunch knots.

Sudan is black pillars of smoke, ever billowing on the hillside, ephemeral emblems of a past still smoldering, ready to be rekindled again.

Sudan is the rusting wreckage of tanks for war and tanks for fuel, split open and boiling under the fiery sun.

Sudan is the thatched structures providing permanent residence to a wandering people.

Sudan is the skeletal structures of burned-out building with makeshift repairs serving as the hospital, the school, the seat of government for the district spanning many tens, if not hundreds, of kilometers.

Sudan is the sand that spills inside the shoe and house, grinding between the toes in a painful refinement of lifestyle and thought.

Sudan is the piercing, bloodshot gaze broken into broad forests of white teeth.

Sudan is a circle of men around a common bowl, squatting on their haunches to share food with their hands and words with their mouths.

Sudan is the periodic chants in Arabic emanating from mosques, reflecting the flow and hum of the day’s heat.

Sudan is the donkey tightly strapped and bearing the weight of 20 liters of water for the day’s use, goods to sell for this week’s or month’s income, or supplies for constructing homes of wood, grass and mud.

Sudan is reaffirming trust by greeting every passerby, knowing that failing to do so plants the seeds of mistrust.

Sudan is the generator housed in a grass hut, powering the TV connected to the satellite linked to the outside world.

Sudan is the UN helicopter landing, the peacekeepers de-boarding, the people watching, the leaders discussing, the community waiting, the visitors leaving.

Sudan is the lone white man walking down the street, supervising an NGO project conceived in an office between a keyboard and a monitor, and born on shifting ground between a LandCruiser and a hoe.

Sudan is the hope that a struggle for peace will supplant a past of violence for a secure and stable future.