On the wall of a mud hut in southern Sudan, simple scratchings tell the tale of a child's world turned upside-down. Chalk drawings depict invasion by men on horses and camels, knives and machine-guns held aloft.
On the opposite wall planes fly in, dropping a deadly cargo of bombs. Five-year-old Madul says there are no people in her tableau of war because they have all run away or been killed.
People like her uncle, who was one of those who fled from the village of Audhor in Bahr El Ghazal province when the mounted Arab invaders launched one of their raids last year. He disappeared into the swamp and never returned.
In the nearby village of Turalei we come across a woman and child seated, Pieta-like, under the shade of a lalok tree. Nyabol's bare breasts have shrivelled to nothing, her shoulder blades protrude like coat-hangers from her back. Metal ankle bracelets hang loosely on stick-thin legs.
She has had seven children; six of them have died. Malual, her last, is dying in front of her eyes.
"I bring them leaves to eat but he will not," she says of the ghost-child in her lap. They rest on a small piece of plastic sheeting, their eyes vacantly directed at a single datelike fruit perched on an up-turned gourd. Dinner.
Nutritionists and a doctor from the Concern team with whom I am travelling ask questions and make dietary recommendations. But there is little they can do when suffering is so widespread and health facilities so limited.
Throughout the arid scrub of Bahr El Ghazal, the people have been reduced to foraging for wild fruits as mass hunger starts to bite. In Turalei the sultan (chief), Garial Achwil, brings us a basket of tamarind seeds and other wild fruits.
"We have been eating these since January," he tells us. We politely decline the invitation to sample a lumpy, brown and unappetising fruit.
Things were bad before the Arab raiders came two weeks ago, but now they are catastrophic. "They set fire to our houses, killed the young men they could find, and took away our women and children," says Ayuel, who managed to flee into the bush.
Turalei lost 150 people and thousands of cattle in the looting, according to the sultan. Cattle are central to the life of the Dinka people in this part of Sudan. They define a man's status in the community and they provide the staples, milk and cheese.
A bride's value is expressed in numbers of cattle and their dung is even used to ward off mosquitos.
"We used to trade our cattle in the towns for food and clothes, but now all these routes are blocked because of insecurity," says Garial. The average bride-price has dropped from 80 cattle to just 20.
Bahr El Ghazal's misfortune is to lie in the "transitional zone" in Sudan's civil war between the Islamic government in the north and rebels in the south. Brutal attacks by Arab militias from the north, as well as repeated bombing raids from Khartoum, have sent thousands fleeing across the savannah and swamps. Nothing has been planted and the hungriest are starting to eat what seeds they still have.
Women who have escaped the clutches of the Arab militias say the raiders are planning to return. The population is seized with fear but is too tired and too hungry to know what to do.
BUT is this a famine, the West wants to know? The relief effort organised from northern Kenya has certainly staved off the worst - for the moment. Many of the severely affected areas have received emergency food drops in the past few weeks. Yet more remote parts seem to be slipping into a slow famine.
"This is a different situation from, say Burundi, where we are dealing with a famine that has happened. Here, we are at a different stage, but clearly, there is a disaster in the making," says Dr Peter Salama of Concern.
And is there any point in intervening when the raiders may return at any time? Concern, for example, has already had to pull out of Sudan twice during its 15-year civil war, for security reasons. For this reason, perhaps, the agency is thinking of working in a more southerly region which, although less severely affected by the food shortage, offers a better chance of long-term intervention.
At Wun Rok, Colonel Faustino, the avuncular local commander of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, admits his men have difficulty coping with the horse-backed invaders. "But soon the rains will come and their horses will stick in the mud," he says optimistically.
Ironically, it was Col Faustino's men who set off the latest brutal phase of the civil war when they launched an ill-advised attack on the government-held town of Wau last January. This put thousands of Sudanese to flight and inspired the government to encourage revenge attacks by the Arab militias.
In Turalei, Sultan Garial pleads for seeds to replace those that were looted. "We will not keep the harvest any more in the house, we will hide it in the bush, where the enemy cannot find it," he says.
But these are bad times. "Since I have become chief 12 years ago I have not experienced any good situation in this village. Only looting," he says.
