It started out as a normal Monday morning in Pajok in South Sudan — children walking to school, shopkeepers raising their shutters and hawkers laying out their wares in the market, where a shower had just dampened down the dust.
Then, in the distance, came the rattle of machine gun fire as government soldiers from the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) clashed with rebel SPLA-IO (SPLA-In Opposition) militiamen lurking in the bush.
Fearing the worst after three years of civil war in the world's youngest nation, Pajok's residents — most of them from the minority Acholi tribe — started to head for the safety of home.