Sheikh el Deen is a village leader representing the people of Solba in South Darfur. Solba is an Internally Displaced Persons community located outside of Nyala town, the location of GHNI’s South Darfur sub-office.

When GHNI visited the area to assess the needs for water resource development in August, we took time out to accompany local community leaders in eating a hearty Sudanese breakfast complete with Fool (beans), Shai’a (meat), and A’esh (bread).

At the end of the meal, Sheikh el Deen ordered Zabadee (local, unpasteurized yogurt made from goats milk) in order to communicate his excitement that GHNI would choose to assist his village. He was even more excited that the foreigner who came along on the assessment trip (myself) ate nearly the entire pot of Zabadee.

He communicated that the white people who had visited in the past would never sit and eat with him and that he was very happy to find that GHNI staff “cared about his people enough to eat breakfast with him.” He explained further that his impressions of foreigners remained skeptical, but that he now knew that GHNI staff were “good people.”

He communicated that he was aware of the kidnappings of foreign aid workers which had taken place in his area over the course of the past several months, and was very appreciative that GHNI would still provide assistance to his people at great risk to their own personal safety.

Before GHNI installed a handpump well in Solba, residents of the community had to walk a total of 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) per day to retrieve water from an open hand dug well. The roundtrip time was approximately 3.5 hours, not including water collection time.

Sheikh el Deen can be seen in picture above of him testing the well after construction of the handpump itself. The second picture is of him praising God for his community’s new handpump well.

To give you some background, last February our GHNI team had to evacuate the town of Feina in Darfur due to an increase in fighting and tightened security. The GHNI Boy’s Home and Training Center in Feina was over-run and looted. Thankfully, everyone got out in time and no one was hurt. Our team continues to try and keep in contact with the 20 young men who were a part of the home. Amanda Dennis, one of our GHNI staff members in Sudan shares:

Adam (pictured above with Amanda) is one of the smartest teenagers that was living at the GHNI Boy’s Home and Training Center. He comes from a broken home, from which he ran away at a young age to shepherd goats. When his abusive father found him, he enrolled Adam in a Religious Primary School. Adam left this environment and traveled to Feina for school. He worked hard in the market for three years to pay for his own schooling and books. Then he heard about GHNI’s center and enrolled so he could better achieve his goal for an education.

When the fighting escalated last February, Adam missed his 8th grade exam. This is a nation-wide exam that students have to pass in order to officially complete primary school. The exams were being held in the capital of South Darfur, but he couldn’t get through. He was one of around 500 children that missed the exam. Eventually, he made it to the capital and was supported by some of our staff there while waiting for a make-up exam to be prepared.

You can imagine how ecstatic we were when the first ever make-up exam in Sudan was conducted in South Darfur and Adam was among the 240 students who managed to take it. If Adam passed the exam, he would be joining the other four students from the GHNI center that passed the 8th grade exam and graduate from primary school. GHNI has been instrumental in enabling these boys to return to school and complete their primary education.

Education has been Adam’s driving motivator and hope for a future. Through the generous support of many of you as friends and donors, GHNI has been able to help him fulfill the first stage of this dream. Thank you!

Amanda Dennis
GHNI Field Staff, Sudan

This spring GHNI was authorized to work in the Otash IDP Camp and are working with an amazing group of women. We partnered with a Sudanese NGO, Children’s Development Foundation (CDF), and built a new women’s center where there will be livelihood and income generation training, health and hygiene classes, counseling, and cultural exhibitions. 

GHNI recently held a Training of Teachers (TOT) for Community Health and Hygiene classes. One of the new teachers who will be working at the center is Hamed.

Hamed is an IDP in Otash Camp. He is a teacher in one of the camp’s emergency schools and a member of the Otash Youth Committee. He is a husband and father of three children, and he is deaf.

At the end of the TOT he gave a short illustration explaining the importance of reaching the disabled population within the Otash IDP Camp. He was overjoyed with the fact that the health and hygiene classes were being offered to the deaf. Too often the disabled are overlooked and considered sub-human. Hamed is excited to be part of our team working to empower the community with the knowledge needed to improve the conditions of individuals, families, the disabled, and the camp as a whole.