When I headed to southern Sudan recently in the wake of the peace deal that ended Africa's longest civil war, I'd heard a lot about how desolate and undeveloped the region is. There's a bevy of statistics to prove it: Only a few miles of paved roads in a place more than twice the size of California, not a single land-line phone network, etc.

So I expected to spend my days there camped on the floor of some dingy UN office, eating the trail mix I'd brought with me. But then we pulled into "Afex" – a camp built by an American-run company called Africa Expeditions.

And the food is splendid: beef stroganoff or barbeque chicken for dinner, for instance, followed by chocolate desserts and a cheese plate.

Aid workers who live at Afex say they gain weight while there. Amazingly the company has to truck or fly in all of its food. Little of this fare is available in southern Sudan.

Unfortunately for the Monitor's budget, it's the only place in town to stay. Still, for all the luxury, the price isn't bad: $70 a night.

But it was a little odd living in luxury in one of the planet's least-developed places. Outside the gates, people weren't exactly starving. But they were often eating just one meal a day – and that was typically nothing more than a simple corn meal porridge or some other basic food.

It made me wonder how Afex got here in the first place. I was told it came in the 1970s to serve American oil-company staff who were working in southern Sudan. Of course!

And now that foreigners are flooding back into southern Sudan – whether they be UN workers, journalists, or oil-company people – Afex is going to have to import a lot more chicken, chocolate, and cheese.

In a remote place like Rumbek, Sudan, where there are no taxis, no rental car agencies, and no public transportation, journalists usually rely on international aid groups for logistical help.

While I was there, the UN’s World Food Programme provided transportation around town – and helped me and several other journalists navigate the local bureaucracy. They were very generous. But relying on them – and riding around in their antennae-bedecked 4x4s – meant we were always somewhat removed from ordinary village life.

Looking for more interaction with the local residents, a journalist friend and I decided to walk a couple of miles into town from our camp. In the bustling market, we saw blacksmiths making tobacco pipes and spears out of recycled bullet casings. (After all, this is southern Sudan, which has been in a civil war with the north for more than two decades – and just signed a final peace deal on Jan. 9.)

We saw people gathering under a giant mango tree whose trunk must have been 30 feet around – and whose branches reached about 80 feet into the sky. And we saw a bike shop. In fact, we persuaded the owner to rent us four bikes – two for us, and two for four local guys to follow us home on, and then ride the bikes back to the market.

So we set out on our lumbering Chinese bicycles. Mine didn’t really have brakes, but it did have a bouquet of silk flowers attached to the handle bars. It turned out my bicycle seat was a perfect perch for getting a better view of the rhythms of local life.

In the town square we came across people practicing traditional dances for the big celebration planned for when former Sudanese rebel leader John Garang came to town. Click here for a video clip of the dancing (1014K).*

As we got out of town we came across a village where two teenage girls were standing under a giant tree, taking turns pounding what appeared to be sorghum seeds into a mealy substance that would be used for food. Video clip of the girls (781K).*

Then there was an older woman preparing dinner in a round bowl over a coal fire. Only after watching her for a moment did I realize she was blind. She’d clearly done this task so many times that she didn’t need to see in order to get the food ready. Video clip of the woman (772K).*

*You must have Quick Time 6.0 or above to view the clips. Don't have Quick Time 6.0? Download it quickly here.

The comment that struck me most while reporting on Sunday's signing of the Sudan peace deal in Nairobi, Kenya came from a staffer of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP).

"They're going to have to remember what their identities were before the war," she said, referring to the people of southern Sudan.

She was talking about the enormous task of developing the south of the country - a region with about 16 million people that's the size of France and Italy combined - after two decades of war. It's one of the world's least developed areas, and people there will have to start building completely from scratch.

The government and its people - with help from the international community - will have to construct a telephone network, as well as the area's first hard roads and first new schools since Britain's colonization.

But more than the physical tasks, it's a mental shift that's required, this WFP official said.

This may be enormously hard.

During two decades of conflict, she explained, the entire social order in southern Sudan revolved around the concept of "How do we flee?" - from airplanes, bombs, landmines, from government or rebel soldiers. But now the individual and collective mental focus must shift to, "How do I stay?" and "How do I build?"

More than at any time in the past 20 years, people in southern Sudan have the opportunity to make that shift. Whether their country prospers in its postwar era may depend on whether they do.