SUDAN: Monday is market day in the dusty south Sudanese town of Warawar.
Cakes of pink soap are piled high alongside sacks of sugar. Tiny polythene bags of cinnamon and ginger are arranged on rickety tables beside cigarette packets.
For 21 years this region saw some of the worst fighting of a civil war that pitched southern rebels against a Muslim, Arab-dominated government in the north.
But today the town's market stands as a symbol of hope as dark-skinned southerners shop among stalls run by Muslim-robed traders from the north.
South Sudan's first peace market, as it is known, is a sign that trade can replace conflict between two sides that formally put down their weapons in January.
"Business is good," says Deil Mohammed Hamed (40) over an ice-cold Pepsi bearing a label in Arabic script. "We have many customers."
He has traded here for 14 years - ever since the market opened. His rickety shop is filled with a shifting range of stock replaced once a week with the arrival of a lorry from Darfur or Khartoum, 500 miles to the northeast.
Camel caravans replace trucks during the wet season.
Hamed comes from Kordofan on the far side of the Kiir river which divides territory held by the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the main southern rebel force, and government-held land in the north.
Warawar lies on the SPLA side, close to the informal border. But it has been visited by Arabs from the mainly Muslim north since 1991 as part of an attempt to foster relations between the warring communities.
Among the stall holders are men who once fought for the government-allied Arab militias.
Adam Abas David was a member of the Khartoum government's Popular Defence Force which fought the southern rebels before he joined the peace committee which runs the market.
"We must come here - to places like this - to change our war ideas into peace ideas," he says, pointing to the stalls.
The Arab Messeriya tribe and Dinka clans have clashed over pasture land for the best part of two centuries. Their conflict was enflamed further during the civil war in the 1980s as Khartoum used the Messeriya in its "scorched earth" policy against the southern Dinka.
Throughout the south some two million people died in the 21-year conflict and four million fled their homes.
Yet the market, set up in a brief lull, flourished in the darkest days of the civil war. Warawar, with its regular supplies from the north, was the only place in the hot, dusty, region of Bahr el Ghazal to buy cans of Pepsi, eggs and bars of soap.
Now it has more than 400 shops, with some of the makeshift stalls being converted into permanent structures.
Maybe one day the south - which is due a hold a referendum on independence in six years time as part of the peace deal - will no longer have to rely on the north for manufactured goods.
But for now a trip to Warawar remains a weekly ritual for shopkeepers in surrounding villages.
Kuol Deng Kuol (44) cycles an hour and a quarter to reach the peace market from neighbouring Malual Kon. The journey back takes longer with a bike laden with sugar, dresses and garlic.
His visits are also loaded with symbolism.
Kuol spent 17 years fighting for the SPLA against the men he now trades among.
"There are fighters there and everyone knows it. But I am a businessman now," he says.
"Even if you have bad feeling about your enemy, if they have killed your people, there's nothing you can do now.
"I believe in peace."