Today I bumped into a Sudanese friend (a woman who comes to English classes at the local Community College where I work) , and we greeted each other with the usual pleasantries. I asked her how her holidays had been going (Easter) and she said it had been bad. Assuming she was talking about the weather, and the flooding we had just had, I said, “yes, hasn’t it been wet” .. and then she proceeded to tell me that she had just heard that 2 of her “cousins” and 3 of her husband’s “cousins” in Southern Sudan had been killed. Wow, I thought … that is much worse than a bit of soggy carpet or a boggy road. Were they soldiers? I asked. No they just looked after cows, she said. It seems things are getting bad again in Sothern Sudan – and its not just in Darfur, which is the area currently being reported on. And the Sudanese community were so euphoric in February 2005, when it seemed a certain PEACE had been achieved.
Here are some scenes from the celebrations in Coffs Harbour at that time of hope. 
I was particularly moved by her news, as I am currently reading a novel by Dave Eggers called “What is the What” – an autobiography of one of the Lost Boys, Valentino Achak Deng. I asked Yar where her “cousins” were. A small village called Yirol, she said, but I wouldn’t find it on a map as it was too small. I asked was it near Marial Bai, the town which Valentino came from, and amazingly, she knew this town, and said her teenage daughter was reading a book about a Lost Boy who came from that town. What an incredible co-incidence, I thought – that we were reading the same book, at the same time. The other amazing thing that she told me, was that this current round of fighting did not involve the militia or the Northern Islamists or even the rebels, but was between southern Sudanese tribes. What chance has that troubled region got, I thought.
