In Sudan, 150 families risk their lives to feed each other

According to several volunteers, the kitchen usually only has about two weeks’ worth of supplies at best.

Cairo:

Sameh Makki’s soup kitchen is just 100 meters from the market, but it takes two hours to walk through Sudan’s war-torn streets, often under hail of bullets.

The 43-year-old, his family and local volunteers risked everything to get supplies to some 150 families caught in the crossfire between the army and paramilitary groups.

“The only thing that matters is people eating. If I die making that happen, so be it,” Markey said.

Tens of thousands have died and hundreds have been killed since war broke out last April between General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s forces and his former deputy Mohammed Hamdan Daglo’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Thousands of people were forced to flee their homes.

With the impoverished country on the brink of famine, initiatives like Markey’s are the only way people can survive.

Markey fled to Egypt to seek medical care for his daughter and left the soup kitchen in the care of his mother and young volunteers from the neighborhood.

Like many of his compatriots, he now coordinates donations from Sudanese abroad to be sent back to those who survived the fighting.

Rush to the frontline

Soon after the first shots were fired in the clashes, young people began volunteering to cook at home, volunteer coordinator Abdel Ghaffar Omar told AFP in Cairo.

The idea quickly spread, and hundreds of self-funded “community kitchens” popped up across the country.

They were able to tap into grassroots community youth groups known as “resistance committees” that had previously organized pro-democracy protests and helped coordinate the Covid-19 response.

When war broke out, the Council established an Emergency Response Room (ERR) to provide medical care, evacuation assistance, and food aid to civilians caught in the fighting.

Most ERRs have their own kitchens, others coordinate and provide funding.

International aid groups call it the frontline of Sudan’s humanitarian response, and the United Nations says the ERR has helped more than 4 million civilians across Sudan.

Several volunteers told AFP the kitchens served between a few dozen and 200 families a day.

In the capital alone, tens of thousands of people rely on ERR for their daily meals, which mainly include rice, beans, lentils and occasional animal protein.

“We must smuggle”

Volunteers like Makki are occasionally able to broadcast meal times from local mosques in Khartoum’s twin cities of Omdurman.

The situation is very different across the Nile in northern Khartoum (also known as Bahri), which has been under siege for nearly a year.

“The army considers Bahri an MSF stronghold and treats anything that comes in as MSF supplies,” one activist told AFP, requesting anonymity to avoid compromising his work.

“We basically had to smuggle our stuff in.”

Volunteers went door-to-door distributing rations, but Bahri’s streets were crowded with paramilitary militants known for looting life-saving supplies.

“Bringing a lot of food will attract attention,” ERR Bahri volunteer Mahmoud Mokhtar told AFP in Cairo.

“If the army catches you, they will say you are smuggling for Médecins Sans Frontières, and if Médecins Sans Frontières catches you, they will call you an army spy.”

Mokhtar’s eyes quickly filled with tears when asked if he had lost any comrades in the line of duty.

“We are used to people being killed, raped, beaten, detained, beaten, taken away for months at a time,” he said.

There is no official count of how many activists and volunteers have been targeted by either side, but the ERR and doctors’ unions regularly publish obituaries for civilians who have died while delivering life-saving aid.

“The kitchen itself was shelled several times from both sides,” Mokhtar said.

“If we stop, we will starve”

According to several volunteers, the kitchen usually only has about two weeks’ worth of supplies at best.

“They’re always worried about running out of stock,” said volunteer coordinator Omar.

In February, a communications outage crippled an online banking app that Sudanese people rely on, forcing the closure of every community kitchen in Bari.

Omar said communications in the greater Khartoum region had not yet been fully restored, although about half had been restored to life.

Instead, volunteers need to spend hours getting an internet connection so they can get their money.

“One man had nine cellphones belonging to his neighbors, and the neighbors trusted him with their mobile banking apps to get their money back to them,” Markey said.

Despite the difficulties, the volunteers are determined to keep going.

“We have no choice but to continue,” Mokhtar said.

“If we stop, we’ll starve to death.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)