Sudan is the largest country in Africa. Since time immemorial, hostilities have raged between the Muslim Arabs of the north and the Animist and Christian Africans of the south.

A seventeen-year civil war ended in 1972. However, the north coveted complete control over the vast oil and water reserves of the south, resulting in increasing clashes that heralded the second civil war breaking out in the early 1980s. Over the next two decades, two million people lost their lives and a further four million people displaced.

This story is set in 1986. The conflict was escalating with the emergence and rapid growth of the rebel forces, the SFF, which already controlled roughly half of Southern Sudan. Thousands of people had fled their farms and villages, seeking shelter in refugee settlements.

An international relief and development organisation, SudanAID, had initiated vital programs for the war-ravaged communities in many townships and villages across Southern Sudan. Over one hundred expatriate relief workers, recruited from fifteen countries around the world, developed projects in health, education, building, agriculture, and administration.

Maggie Walker, with her husband, Dave, and children, Melody and Ben, arrived from Australia to work in the headquarters of SudanAID in Nairobi, Kenya.