The shallow irrigation trench winds away from the women splashing in the spray of a newly dug well, cuts through a patch of tall grass and curves past the spot where John Makur Agok tends to his peace dividends: a fragile array of seedlings swaddled in black plastic, a future of lemons, oranges, mangoes, papayas and dates. "What shows that I've resettled," says the rangy 43-year-old farmer, "is that I'm planting all these trees — and there's nothing to disturb them."

For two decades, the people in Agok's village of Mayenwal have lived a life of fear. When the Sudanese military captured the nearby city of Rumbek in the mid-'80s, the villagers walked for two weeks to a quiet area in another tribe's lands, far from the fighting. They weathered famine, sometimes eating leaves, and when the southern rebel army retook the city in 1997, began their slow trickle back. But they have been too poor and felt too vulnerable to put down roots.

Outside government-held towns, there are no telephones in southern Sudan, no electrical grids, water pipes, sewage lines or paved roads. Even Rumbek, the closest thing the rebel-held south has had to a capital, is a city of mud, thatch and broken brick. Guests in the Africa Expeditions Hotel, the town's top hotel, sleep in army-green tents on concrete slabs. The warehouses of the World Food Program are made of canvas. Still, the locals consider themselves relatively fortunate: though fighting has continued in other parts of the country, Rumbek has been calm since 2001. "The level of insecurity, of trauma, has really fallen," says Paul Macuei Malok, 51, Rumbek county commissioner. "We have embarked on development," he says, then corrects himself. "Not development really, but rehabilitation."

Rumbek is ahead of most of the rest of the south in its recovery. A few crumbled buildings have been rebuilt and refitted with corrugated-iron roofs. Merchants have opened new stores. The hospital may not have reliable water, electricity or supplies — "They don't have soap to wash the floor, so you work in the dirt in a surgical ward," says Filippo De Pasquale, an Italian volunteer doctor — but at least it has been dug out from the bush. Should negotiations between the rebels and the Sudanese government end the two-decades-long civil war, it's these types of basic necessities — roofs, shops, trees — that the southern Sudanese will gain.

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) An early January breakthrough in the negotiations led to some optimism. At peace talks in Naivasha, Kenya, the two sides agreed to split the south's resources equally for six years, before the southerners vote on whether to secede. But the peace is fragile. Still on the agenda are the delicate issues of a power-sharing agreement and the fate of three northern regions that fought with the rebels. Two weeks ago Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir ruled out any deal over disputed regions. His soldiers continue to wage war against other rebels in the west, where fighting has killed 3,000. "There is still war somewhere," says Deborah Ayen, a mother of five in Mayenwal. "So we still fear."

A number of donors — the U.N., the E.U., the Arab League and usaid — are promising help in the reconstruction of the south. But many worry that the region could slip back into chaos if the southerners feel they are getting less than their share.

Almost every family owns a gun — often their only brush with modernity. And while the south was unified in its fight against the central government, the geographically and ethnically fragmented region is not a natural political entity. "The fear is that in the absence of any other battles, they will turn these arms against themselves," says Macuei, the county chairman.

In Rumbek, those concerns can wait: what the locals want right now is aid. The World Food Program is fencing off the airstrip, so that planes bearing essential supplies aren't threatened by cows and goats, and building an office and housing complex — with brick this time, not canvas. Says Andrew Gremley, the project's architect: "Permanence is a sign of confidence." And that's something southern Sudan desperately needs.

• STEPHAN FARIS | Rumbek
• Reconstruction starts amid a fragile truce