SUDAN:A patch of desert has become home for 14,000 refugees, writes Rob Crilly, in the al-Salaam camp, in Darfur, Sudan.
In the clumsy jargon favoured by the aid world, she is a "serially displaced person".
To anyone else, Khadija Ahmed Hassan is a widow who has been forced from her home not once but twice by Arab militias intent on forcing her tribe from their land.
"I came here to find a safe place and food," she says in Arabic, cradling her feverish daughter in her lap. "Once we are okay here, then we will bring the other children."
For now, she has found safety in al-Salaam camp. The name means "peace" in Arabic.
It is not long ago that the area, just outside the southern Darfur capital of Nyala, was a patch of desert. Now it is home to 14,000 people. And still they are arriving.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
It is a year since Khartoum signed a peace deal with one rebel faction. The rebels, led by Minni Minawi, have landed plum jobs in Darfur's regional governments in return for throwing in their lot with a regime they spent three years fighting.
Officials in Nyala say it is already bearing fruit. They say thousands of people have begun returning home from the camps.
Their $8 billion (€5.9 billion) , six-year reconstruction plan envisions railways, ring roads and ambitious targets for reducing infectious diseases and increasing school admissions.
They say it is only the Darfur Peace Agreement - and its funding - that make the vision possible.
Not many of the aid workers in Darfur or analysts watching Sudan share their optimism.
"Compared to a year ago, the situation in Darfur is much, much worse and we're finding it increasingly dangerous to work," said Alun McDonald of Oxfam in Khartoum.
"The number of attacks on aid workers has rocketed, putting our entire operation at risk, and the region is increasingly lawless and volatile."
Carjackings and kidnappings of aid workers have become an almost-daily occurrence.
Meanwhile, the international response has stuttered from misplaced hope to pessimism.
The United Nations is trying to boost a struggling African Union force with logistics support, hardware and personnel.
But while Khartoum agreed last month to allow in UN attack helicopters, giving the green light to the second phase of a three-step programme, it said it would not permit the final phase - a 20,000-strong hybrid African and UN force.
And all this time, the trucks keep arriving in al-Salaam unloading their human cargo.
An estimated 1,700 people have arrived here in the past fortnight trying to find shelter amid the bleak desert sandscape.
They join more than 200,000 displaced since rebels took up arms against a government, which then turned to the feared Arab militias known as Janjaweed in a scorched-earth policy.
The new arrivals make for a pitiful sight. They have had to endure a sand storm and heavy rains in the past week. Their damp blankets and rugs hang from bare-branched thorn trees.
Khadija's story is typical.
Her village was one of dozens in South Darfur attacked by gunmen from the Habbania and Fulata tribe last September.
She was at home preparing lunch of a thick maize porridge for her husband, who was out tending his cattle and goats.
When she arrived at his field, Khadija found her husband lying face-down. His body was riddled with bullets.
She gathered up her eight children and, like the rest of the people of Abjow, she ran for the safety of Ghirba town.
"There [we thought] we could at least try to look after the children and try to earn some money," she says. "But we could not do that."
The militias who had forced thousands of non-Arab villagers to seek safety in Ghirba, turned their attention to the town.
Khadija ran for the second time, ending up in al-Salaam, near the state capital Nyala.
Lorryloads more arrive everyday.
"I turn around and go straight back," said the driver of a cattle truck with about 30 passengers just arrived from Ghirba, a day's ride to the southwest. "There are another 3,000 people who want to come here, so I'll be driving backwards and forwards for the rest of the year."
Last week, Minni Minawi, the rebel leader who took his faction of the Sudan Liberation Army into the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) last May, was in town launching the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority - one of the fruits of the deal.
He told a rally that the deal had brought stability and that thousands of people had started the journey home. He admits the deal is not perfect, but said it was the only one on the table.
"We need to keep working to develop the DPA with international help, to bring the non-signatories on board," he told The Irish Times during his visit to Nyala.
"Why would I regret the DPA? When I signed it, I knew the DPA would not bring peace immediately."
The truckloads of people arriving in al-Salaam will testify to that.