Cease-fire

Greeting me in my inbox this morning was an email saying that President Omar Al-Bashir in Khartoum has agreed to a cease-fire and some hybrid peacekeeping troops in the Darfur region of the Sudan.

Yay!

Okay, okay... cautious optimism. Could this be a result of this week's bombing in Somalia? Yes. Could this be a bluff? Yes.

But it could also signal the end of what has been called the 21 century's first genocide. It certainly could be the end to the rapid diaspora of non-Arab Sudanese.

While the unfortunate part of all Diasporas is that most of the people never get to go home again - their former existence in that place having already been erased - maybe some people who are still there will get to relax, regroup, and start to rebuild. I want that for them.

Will there still be African tribe/Arab unrest, distrust, and violence? Um, yeah.

But maybe we've reached the tipping point. Maybe the Sudanese people, especially those in the north, have been reminded that racism and genocide are unacceptable. What convinced them? Fear of God? Fear of U.S/U.N retaliation? Fear of their own conscious?

I don't care. I just hope that peace really comes. I hope they find relief on both sides. I hope the displaced can find comfort and a place that feels like home, maybe even a place that feels better than home ever did before. That is my wish for them all.