* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Ishbel Matheson is director of media at Save the Children and is blogging from South Sudan over the election period.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
On our trip to Mvolo, we heard that families that have fled recent tribal fighting are camped in the forest about an hour north of town. It's now the season of intense heat just before the rains and when we step out of the car, it is like stepping into a furnace.
Kids gather round, curious to see the visitors. A little boy Maher Macok tells me that he lost many of his friends, as different families ended up in different places.
"Have you made any new friends?" I ask him. He doesn't answer for a while, then after some prompting, says: "Not so many good ones."
The children also tell me that they can't go to school now - but there was a school in their old place.
The causes of this conflict are complex - availability of weapons, growth of the rival tribe's cattle herds, disarmament on one side but not the other - but the upshot is that these kids are here, for the foreseeable future.
There is a rudimentary tented health clinic set up by Save the Children's partner organisation, SIDF. But it's an inhospitable place to raise children.
Still, peeking out the doorway, I see a young woman smiling at me. When I look down, I see why: she is cradling a fast-asleep newborn baby.
"This used to be our medicine store," says Peter, the community health worker, gesturing to the shed where the woman and baby are sitting. The new mum smiles at us, we smile back.
"What is the baby's name?" someone asks. "Dawa," says the mum. This means "medicine" in Arabic - because the baby was born in a drug-cupboard. Everyone laughs.
