For about three months now, the two soup kitchens in neighbourhoods 43 and 44 in Elsawra in Omdurman have been providing simple daily meals to 400 hungry families in the area. This is all too necessary, as money has run out, there is no work, and the prices of foodstuffs still available are rising by the day. Once again, we read reports about people dying of hunger, also in Omdurman.
Contrary to what we wrote earlier, not 600, but 400 families are receiving a meal. When starting, both the Sudanese Hadhreen organisation, which delivers the food (without charging transport costs) and the Elrayan school teacher who coordinates the soup kitchens, were very keen to serve as many people as possible. But in practice, it proved better to fill 400 buckets and pans to the brim rather than 600 half. This decision has been in place since mid-May.
Since Education East Africa Foundation launched the WhyDonate crowdfunding campaign for the soup kitchens in early May, some €11,632 has been deposited so far by 199 people. Food aid donations received directly into the Foundation’s bank account total €11,060. So, the proceeds so far are more than €22,000. A great thank you to all the generous donors!
Many thanks also to everyone who helped the campaign, whether by collecting, cooking as part of ‘a meal for a meal’, or spending a whole day baking pancakes ‘for the good cause’ in Den Bosch. Thanks also to the friend in Stockholm who collected a more than ‘good amount’ from her entire family and circle of friends, and those who provided impressive donations from churches in Bielefeld in Germany and Vlaardingen in the Netherlands.
Continuing our campaign
Unfortunately, there are no clear signs yet about the warring parties in Sudan willing to negotiate a ceasefire any time soon, let alone agree to peace. Last week, there were indirect consultations between delegations to discuss the possibility of safe transportation of humanitarian supplies in the country, organised by the UN Secretary-General’s ‘personal envoy to Sudan’ in Geneva. The consultations ended without any agreement.
Very likely, therefore, food aid will be needed for months to come. This is why the Foundation’s board, which has been expanded since early May to include Marjan van der Horst, Khalid Eltayeb, and website manager Marcel Piters, has decided to continue our campaign after the summer.
Marjan came up with the idea of asking people to donate a tenner (or a multiple thereof) every month for food aid – because €10 will provide a family with a simple meal every day for a month. This is what we will focus on after the summer holidays.
We want to announce this new initiative in local newspapers and through regional broadcasters. We also want to try again to contact companies that have a charity fund. This has proved to be quite difficult, so if you have any tips, we would be glad to hear them from you.
Sign of life
In the previous newsletter, I reported that we had lost contact with Salwa, the founder of a free kindergarten in Jabarona in western Omdurman. Jabarona has been under the control of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militiamen since the start of the war, April last year, so we were fearing the worst.
But last week, I received an app with a spoken message from Salwa, through a cousin of the grocer’s near the nursery. Salwa is doing reasonably well, but she is especially worried about her relatives in another part of town, whom she has not been able to reach for months. Her telephone is broken, and the internet works rarely. The grocer himself was shot dead by militia men when he refused to hand over his telephone.
The Elrayan school is located in an area controlled by the army but lies close to neighbourhoods occupied by the RSF. As a result, there is regular fighting in the vicinity of the food kitchens.
Some of the school’s teachers have fled to ‘safer places’ in the country. Some of them can no longer be reached, board member and teacher Afoudia told me. She does the school’s accounting and we have now agreed that from July onwards, the school will receive a smaller amount than before.
After the war, the school will also need funds for reconstruction. At the moment, all schools in the neighbourhood accommodate people who have fled from other districts. If any money is left over from the monthly amount we are currently sending, it is spent on helping the poorest of the poor, such as a number of single mothers.
The third project we’re supporting, a small school for children with disabilities in El Gezira Aba, an island in the White Nile about 300 kilometres south of Khartoum, is also full of refugees. People are still safe there, but it looks like the RSF militia also plans to occupy this part of the country in the foreseeable future.
Let us hope and pray that the warring parties in Sudan and the countries that support them will be put under firm pressure to end the violence. The big question remains who is able or willing to achieve such a feat.
Today, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that he has invited the warring parties to convene in Switzerland on 14 August to reach a ceasefire. The army has so far refused to sit down with the RSF (‘We will fight on until victory’), but it seems the pressure has been stepped up.
