This story about Lubna’s heart wrenching journey contains great loss, suffering, and death. If you wish to read on, please hear her story of Hope that was shared to the Transformational Community Development (TCD) committee in Ezbet El-Haggana.

“I was living in Khartoum, Sudan, and I had a stable life. My husband worked in the army, and I have seven children. When the Rapid Support Forces took control of the neighborhood where we were living, I fled barefoot with my husband and children without taking anything from our house. We got into an open car heading to Egypt, but my husband was arrested on the way and taken to an unknown place. I learned from some friends that my husband died in prison from torture at the hands of the Rapid Support Forces.

On the way to Egypt, we were driving in the desert. Suddenly, the car broke down, and we spent ten days in the mountains. We ran out of food and water. We slept on the sand, and I stayed up all night to protect my children from snakes, scorpions, and other desert things. After spending two days without water, my daughter almost died of thirst, but it finally rained, and we were able to drink from the rainwater. We were grateful for the rain. Then a car approached us and gave us water, flour, sugar, and salt and told us we could mix them together and eat them.

We arrived with a human smuggler at the border with Egypt. In turn, he handed us over to an Egyptian smuggler who was smuggling gasoline in his car to the Sudanese refugees. We rode with him until we reached the Egyptian city of Aswan. From there, we took the train to Cairo to meet some of our Sudanese friends. It was a journey full of death, terror, thirst, and hunger. I am grateful to the friends from Egypt and GHNI who helped us when we arrived in Egypt.

I joined the TCD community after receiving training. I am now providing TCD lessons to Sudanese refugees, including women and children, and I participate in home visits to learn how to best help them, health-wise and psychologically, overcome the deadly journey from Sudan to Cairo.”

Today, we received 28 quilts, and our GHNI team distributed them to the Sudanese refugees, who were very happy to receive them.

Thank you,

Written by Azmy, GHNI TCD Worker