In the shadow of war in Sudan: “I n my dreams, no-one can find each other. Evsryone is screaming”

Human Wrongs Watch By The Norwegian Refugee Council*

Text: Kristine Grønhaug. Photo/video: Richard Ashton. Design: Tove Skjeflo

One day last year, when 12-year-old Salwa was at the market in her hometown in Sudan, the dark shadow of war came over her. And when, a few weeks later, her neighbours’ house was bombed and the children who lived there were killed, she fled.

Now she is in a transit centre in South Sudan.

But her heart is still beating.
And beating.

Salwa is sitting on a plastic chair in a shelter in the transit centre in Renk, in the north of South Sudan, close to the border with the Republic of Sudan.

Her dark hair is covered by a black shawl. Her hands are in her lap. From time to time she toys with the shawl. Her voice is high-pitched, but clear. She has been explaining how much she misses her school back home in Al Obeid in Sudan.

She has demonstrated, with a straight back and great clarity, that she still remembers every single word of her long school-radio speech about the dangers of drugs – an assignment she was given when the school was expecting a visit from a prominent person.

And she has been talking about how much she misses her friends, about playing in the school playground, about the drama lessons she loved, and about when they would go on a trip to swim.

And now she recounts that very unusual day.

The day at the market.

She still lives under the shadow of that day.

At night, it all comes back:

“I usually dream that I’m at the market with my aunt. Then they start shooting, and there are people running in all directions. Auntie and I try to find somewhere to hide. Then I wake up from the dream. Then I’m scared. I drink some water. And then I lie down again with Mum or Dad.”

Hear Salwa reading an excerpt from her school radio show

“And thus, we can benefit from the minds and energy of young people in building our country and a healthy society. And in conclusion I extend to you a salute of health and wellness.”

A reading by Salwa of an excerpt from her school radio show back in Sudan.

But her heart is still beating
… and beating

Hometown

Salwa’s hometown of Al Obeid is in south central Sudan, in the state of North Kordofan, about a three-hour drive from the capital Khartoum. It lies on a branch of the Khartoum–Nyala railway, and is a commercial centre, focusing mainly on rubber, millet, oilseeds and livestock. Al Obeid is one of the largest cities of the Kordofan.

It is built on a sandy plateau covered in scrub, surrounded by woodlands that protect the residents against sandstorms.

Salwa’s parents are Sudanese. Her father Omar, who is 50 years old, has a PhD in philosophy, and before the war he was a lecturer at the University of Kordofan.

He is also a graphic designer and artist. Salwa’s mother Fatima, who is 33, is a qualified teacher, and back home in Al Obeid she taught physics to children aged between 15 and 17.

Salwa has four siblings: two brothers, Shafe, who is ten, and Mohammed, eight, and two sisters, Solwan, six, and Salsabel, who is one year old.

Since they crossed the border to South Sudan on 13 February this year, the family has been living at the transit centre in Renk.

When the world turns away
The war in Sudan is currently the largest conflict-related displacement crisis in the world. Even so, in terms of media coverage it barely registers compared with Ukraine and Gaza.

Fighting broke out in the capital Khartoum in April 2023 as a result of conflicts between the government’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their former allies, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Since then, the war has spread over more than half of the country.

The war came on top of many of Sudan’s existing challenges, including ongoing conflicts, disease outbreaks, economic and political instability and climate emergencies. More than 2 million people were displaced prior to the conflict.

A total of 10.2 million people have now been displaced within Sudan. About 1.9 million have fled into neighbouring countries, including South Sudan.

South Sudan

South Sudan gained independence from Sudan on 9 July 2011. It remains a country plagued by intercommunal violence, compounded by economic and climate crises such as flooding.

This has caused massive displacement. Over 9 million people – about two thirds of the population – are in need of aid, including 7.1 million people who are experiencing hunger.

As of 30 June, more than 720,000 people had crossed the border from Sudan into South Sudan, and several hundred people still arrive every day in Joda, the entry point to Renk. The majority (78.5 per cent) are South Sudanese returning to their country of origin.

Typically, these are people who fled from the civil war in South Sudan in 2013 and settled in Khartoum, or who moved to Khartoum to study or find work.

The second-largest group arriving at Renk (20.7 per cent) are Sudanese who have been displaced from their home country.

About 60 per cent of all those arriving are children.

A very different place

The small town of Renk is located in the Renk County of upper Nile State, in the Greater Upper Nile region of South Sudan, close to the international border with Sudan.

There is only one road through Renk. It leads south to the town of Malakal, on the banks of the White Nile. To the north, it leads to the towns of Rabak and Kosti in Sudan.

Renk has a few small houses. A couple of skinny goats have laid down under a dusty lorry. A stray dog with chestnut hair sleeps in the shadow of a parked donkey cart.

In Renk, the sun is so fierce that even the shadows want to find shade.

Life in transit
The transit centre is about a ten-minute drive from Renk. Leju Dickens helped to build the centre. He is the field coordinator for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Renk.

“There was virtually nothing here,” he recalls. “No-one was prepared for the displacement crisis from Sudan. And that includes me. But our Rapid Response team got going quickly. We started by bringing in water, and we set up emergency housing and latrines. Within a short time we managed to provide shelter to between 3,000 and 4,000 people. And early on we set up a school with classroom-based psychosocial support.”

People arrive every day. There are so many that there isn’t enough space to house everyone indoors, so people make tents out of their clothes, bits of cardboard or plastic sheeting, and find a place along the fences around the centre.

Life in Sudan before the war

“I would describe what we had as a beautiful life,” says Salwa’s mother Fatima.

“The everyday routines were what made it beautiful. When I woke up in the morning, I would help my children to get to school. I went to my own school to teach – a job I love. In the evening I made dinner and we ate together.”

War

“It was just one week after I’d given birth to our youngest daughter. That morning, I was lying asleep at home. It was 10.50 a.m. on 15 April 2023. We had relatives from Khartoum visiting us, because it was Ramadan. One of them came and said to me: ‘They are saying on the news that the situation in Khartoum is not good. The city is on fire and war has broken out.’

Fatima and her youngest daughter, Salsabel.

“I couldn’t believe it. I knew that the situation was tense. But I hadn’t thought that it would go so far. I watched the news on TV, then I rang a relative in Khartoum to find out what was happening. My relative said: ‘There’s just a bit of trouble now – it will pass in a few days.’ But it just got worse.

“One month later, my daughter Salwa went to the market with her aunt.

“When I got to hear that there had been shooting at the market, I was terrified. I rang Salwa and said: ‘Try to find a taxi that can drive you home.’ But there was no transport available. They just had to hide.

“Three hours later my daughter got home. She was very anxious. Shaking. She’d never heard shooting before. I just held her tight.”

“Later I found out that it had just been warning shots – they wanted to get people away from the market because they were expecting an attack.”

“That’s when I said to my husband:
‘We have to go now.’” Fatima

Salwa and her family fled from Al Obeid in North Kordofan to Renk transit center.

Thousands leave, some choose to stay
Leju Dickens explains that people feel relief when they arrive at the transit centre. They feel safe. At last, they can breathe.

He explains: “Every family member receives financial support for seven days so they can buy what they need. After seven days’ rest, they can continue on their journey. South Sudanese are offered transport to Malakal and then onto their place of origin in South Sudan. Sudanese are offered transport to a refugee camp in South Sudan an eight-hour drive away.”

“Having said that, there are some South Sudanese who choose to stay, because they don’t know where to go. They have lost contact with their family, and they don’t know whether their village still exists. They don’t know whether it’s safe to go home, or what the situation is like there when it comes to housing, school and work. They have no-one to phone, no-one to contact. And they don’t have any money. The transit centre is all they have.

“And when it comes to the Sudanese, there are some who don’t want to go to a refugee camp a long way away. They prefer to stay near the border, to make it easier to cross back and go home when the situation improves.”

Planning to flee

Fatima continues:

“Should we go? We had a family meeting. There were arguments for and against. One said: ‘It will all be over in a week or two.’ Another said: ‘But what if something happens to the children?’ We decided to leave and go to another town. But the car’s fuel tank was empty. Lots of filling stations had been bombed. And we heard that most of the main roads were closed.

“So we waited.

“One month passed.

“It was a very difficult time. Stressful. We often heard shooting, both in the morning and in the afternoon. The water was cut off. There was no electricity. The shops were closed.

“We didn’t have much food. The children were used to having three meals a day, but now there were far fewer.”

For most of those who choose to remain in the transit centre, gathering firewood is their only source of income.

Brief respite
The relief that many people feel when they finally arrive at the transit centre in Renk soon passes.

“People really don’t know what will happen to them. There is a lot of frustration. It’s heartbreaking to see the desperation in those who stay. It’s not possible to get work here, and the children go to bed hungry.

“The lack of food is threatening to escalate into a major crisis. We are expecting people to be starving over the next few weeks and months.

“When people come to me and explain their plight, all I can do is listen. Show that I understand,”  says Leju Dickens.

Listen to Fatima talk about fleeing the war

“We had to flee here, and they told us, in fact, that there was a war. We thought it would last maybe two or three days and then it would end. They didn’t expect the conflict to last this long.”

Children killed

“Two weeks into the second month, we heard that it was possible to get petrol. But the roads weren’t safe.

“So we waited.

“One afternoon, a neighbour, a woman, visited us. About 4 p.m., we heard a lot of shooting. The battle was nearby, and it went on for over two hours. I hid with the children under the bed.

“The neighbour couldn’t go home, of course, so she stayed. Later on, her husband came looking for her. He said that she should wait with us a bit longer, because he wanted to fetch his elderly mother, who was alone in the house. Then he left. He came back a couple of hours later, wearing different clothes. His wife wondered why he had gotten changed.”

Fatima starts to cry.

After a pause, she continues, calmly:

“He said there had been heavy fighting. In a neighbouring house, there were a pair of twins who were playmates of my children. They had been shot, and one boy had died. His brother was still alive, but he had an open wound in his stomach. The neighbour’s clothes had been covered with blood because he had helped to take the little boy to hospital, but he died on the way.”

Fatima falls silent for a moment, then she says:

The war has left Salwa and her siblings struggling with trauma.

“After that incident, my children started behaving quite differently. One of my sons started hugging himself while he was sleeping. One of my daughters would cry out when she was asleep, and when she woke. And Salwa, who had witnessed the shooting at the market, started asking: ‘Am I going to die now? And what about my friends – will they die too?’

“That’s when I said to my husband: ‘We have to go now.’”

Schooling in an emergency
NRC’s Better Learning Programme (BLP) is adapted to emergencies. We deliver psychosocial activities through the BLP which promotes children’s recovery from traumatic experiences and stress. The programme also supports children with sports and recreational activities contributing to healthy social connections and for their wellbeing.

“Our school programme is designed to help children to get back some kind of normality in their lives,” explains Leju Dickens.

“We want to give them something to think about other than war. We give them a type of ‘package’ that they can have with them when they return to normal school,” says Leju Dickens.

He sees that the humanitarian response is stretched to capacity. And with hundreds still crossing the border every day, additional support is needed to scale up lifesaving assistance.

“I hope the eyes of the world will be opened to what is going on here. And that the world will help,” he adds.

Leju Dickens

 The road to Renk

Three months had passed since the war had broken out in Sudan. The family drove by bus and car for four or five hours before they arrived at the town of Rabak in the south-east of Sudan.

They spent the money they had renting an apartment there. It was difficult to get food. The father of the family, Omar, managed to sell some of his drawings at the market sometimes.

But the war got closer. Soon, there were rumours of attacks and they had to leave again. But where could they go?

“I’d been worried for some time about the children missing out on their education. At the market, my husband had heard some people talking about Renk and that there was a school there,” recounts Fatima.

Most people leave the transit center after a few days. Here life can be put on hold.

On 13 February this year, they drove for two or three hours to Joda, and then crossed the border with what little luggage they had. They were then taken to the transit centre in Renk.

“When we arrived, we were given a small amount of money, two mats, two blankets and a water bucket. There were so many people there. To begin with, there was no space for us under cover, so for three weeks we slept under the stars. It was February, and it was cold at night. When it got warmer, we left our things behind to find some shade.

“Now we have a shelter, about two metres by three.”

What about school?

“At first, Salwa enjoyed the school here. There were lots of songs and games and psychosocial support. And that’s important, because I can see that many children and young people are struggling mentally.

“But after two or three weeks, Salwa said that she was getting bored: ‘It’s just the same songs every day. And there are no schoolbooks.’ She doesn’t go any longer. She says: ‘Mum, there is no proper school here. Why did you bring me here? Let’s go back to Rabak.’

“I and my husband are teaching our children ourselves. But we so want them to be able to go to a normal school.

“I and my husband are teaching our children ourselves. But we so want them to be able to go to a normal school.”Fatima

“We really want to work as teachers, in this area, so we can earn money and send our children to school. But because we don’t have any documentation with us to prove our qualifications, we can’t get a job. And there’s no other work here either.

I considered selling my mobile phone so we could afford to send our children to a school in a different town. But what about transport and school uniforms? We don’t have any money for that. Now I’ve sold my phone to get money for food.

People have to make a living – here in the transit center someone runs a little shop.

“We really want to leave here.

“Go anywhere, anywhere that’s safe. And where our children can go to school.” 

Her heart

Outside, Salwa is skipping rope with her friends. She jumps high, and she jumps strongly. She’s having fun. Her heart is beating.

And her shadow is jumping with her.

*SOURCE: The Norwegian Refugee Council. Go to ORIGINAL: https://www.nrc.no/feature/2024/in-the-shadow-of-war/ 2024 Human Wrongs Watch

Source: https://human-wrongs-watch.net/2024/08/31/in-the-shadow-of-war-in-sudan-i-n-my-dreams-no-one-can-find-each-other-evsryone-is-screaming/