“We Just Survive”: The Lives Shattered by the War in Sudan

Still, he holds onto hope. “Weapons will not bring any solution. The only solution is peace. If everyone holds a weapon against one another, we’ll only have more chaos. We need people to sit around a table and listen to each other,” he says.

“If we took the path of peace, people could work again, send their children back to school. The solution is among ourselves – the people of Sudan. There should be no distinctions among us.”

In the dusty remains of a once-bustling neighbourhood in Al Geneina, Um Adam stands where her home once was. The house was destroyed in the early days of the conflict.

In its place is a shelter she has built from branches, plastic sheeting and sheer determination.

When airstrikes and heavy fighting reached her home in Nyala, 35-year-old Zainab had no choice but to flee. She made the journey to West Darfur with her four children, injured and alone. Her husband was missing, and she still doesn’t know what happened to him.

To begin with, Zainab and her children found shelter with her mother. Later, Zainab received support from one of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)’s community access centres, which helped her buy materials to build a basic shelter and provide somewhere safe for her children to sleep.

“This centre gave me hope when I had nothing,” she says. “I used the support to build a shelter and buy mats and a mattress for my children. I prepared a place for them to sleep.”

Now, she washes clothes to pay rent and put food on the table.

“Some days I find work, some days I don’t,” she says. “I’m tired. I had surgery and my hand is damaged. I have no other way to provide for my children.”

Her children, aged between 9 and 13, have come to depend on the centre – not just for material support, but as a rare source of stability in a time of unimaginable upheaval.

When fighting reached Mariam’s home in Al Geneina at the start of the war, she lost her entire family in a single moment.

“Five of my children died in the attack,” she says. “My daughter, the eldest, was just 11. The others were 10, 7, 5… My youngest was only a toddler.”

Mariam herself was severely injured. “I was hit in the head and lost my hearing on one side. I also lost my eyesight. I had blood coming out of my mouth. I still can’t sleep at night,” she says.

“My husband was killed in the last war, years ago. Now I have no-one left.”

After her injury, relatives helped her get medical care. When she had recovered enough, her youngest surviving son brought her to a damaged house, where they now live in limbo.

Mariam found some relief through NRC’s access centre in Al Geneina – a lifeline for displaced people like her who have nowhere else to turn.

“This centre helps everyone – the weak, the blind, those who have no-one.”