Someya was pregnant when she fled her village in Western Darfur with her children. “They killed my father in the mosque after the evening prayer,” she says, rocking her baby in the shadow of a tarp stretched overhead. “When I heard what happened, I ran to the mosque. He died in my arms. My husband always away for work, he was like a father to my children.”
When Someya and the children arrived in Adré, having walked for hours, she collapsed on the ground and was sick for several days from fear and exhaustion. A month later, she gave birth to a baby girl under the tarps and shortly after had to look for work to feed her four children.
“I tried working at a construction site, but it was physically hard, and they wouldn’t let me breastfeed the baby,” Someya says. “Now, I do laundry in people’s houses. They don’t mind me coming with the baby.” She goes to work early in the morning and buys food for the day with her wages.
A henna artist, Someya says the family had a good life and enough food back in Darfur. The reality of the camp is different, and at one point, the new mother lost milk because she wasn’t eating enough.
While Someya is at work, her kids fetch water – a long, tedious task in a place that had known water scarcity long before its population exploded. A long line of jerrycans and plastic buckets stretches out at five in the morning. “I leave my jerrycan in line, then check on it every couple of hours so as not to miss my turn,” says Zuhal, Someya’s 17-year-old neighbor in the camp.
Source : Icrc
