On Monday, I joined hundreds of people packed into the John Garang Memorial Centre, armed with small "South Sudan" flags. A big TV screen connected us to the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission in Khartoum.
Finally – the announcement that all of southern Sudan has been waiting to hear – the results of our vote on our future, whether or not to become a separate nation.
As I heard the news, my mind was ringing with the challenges ahead. Then my phone also started ringing, with friends from around southern Sudan telling me how they were celebrating.
People were happy but calm, as they had already known that the results were a landslide. Some groups went to hotels and bars to party, and danced until morning.
I am proud that we have been able to defy the doubters, with a calm vote – a clear show of everyone's heartfelt wish for peace.
Unified in our almost 100% vote for separation, among southerners the talk on the street is now a determination to pull together for the development of our new nation.
I hear more than 200,000 southerners have returned from the north, many coming back with the desire to develop our new nation. In Juba, where I live, many are stranded at the Nile River port, still awaiting assistance so they can reach their final destination.
The hopes and expectations of southerners for our new nation are enormous, and there are difficulties ahead. Our jobless youth hope for a new start in life, our parents hope for schools for their children – everyone is dreaming of a better tomorrow.
We are all citizens of our new nation now, and it is the responsibility of every citizen, including me as a young person, to bring about our success. We need to pick ourselves up from a sad position, as a country suffering, with terrible poverty statistics because of the war, and accelerate ahead so that we can compare ourselves more proudly against other nations. And I want to finish my education and be a part of it.
If we can manage our own resources, perhaps there is hope, finally, for development in the south.
But the reality is that not everyone will have a job, clean water, paved roads and good housing immediately, so I hope we can be patient while we work together to make the dream come true. They say Rome was not built in a day, and southern Sudan won't be either.
I know investment will be very important to the south's growth, and to tackle poverty. The international community should understand that the south is a new nation that will need a lot of support.
With six important months before the peace accord comes to an end, our politicians must get moving on solutions to the outstanding issues, such as citizenship, border demarcation and sharing oil revenues. But in the same way the vote took place on time, I'm cautiously optimistic that these too will be settled; even if, as usual, political posturing will play its part.
I think we've reached the stage where there can be no backsliding.
Politicians in the north and south must start to build good relations with neighbours, because we will need each other – in trade, in peaceful co-existence, and even in families whose parents have married across the divide.
The southern government must ready itself to become an independent nation. But success requires teamwork, and the southern governing party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, must ensure democratic and inclusive government that incorporates all the ethnic diversity of the south.
In the spirit of Monday's results, my hopes are still positive, because I hope our united optimism will lead us to achieve together the peace and justice we have been fighting for.