Sudanese Mothers Risk Lives to Flee Hunger and Conflict for Egypt

WFP
سيدة سودانية وصلت لمصر
Sudanese people cross into Egypt at Qustol - the country has received 88,000 refugees so far. Photo: WFP/Mirna Noaman

Aiesha, a mother of five children, is one of 88,000 Sudanese refugees who, according to the Government, have made it to Egypt after conflict broke out in their country on 15 April.

She and her family took a perilous four-day journey from Khartoum to the border in the back of a refrigerated truck - an extreme measure they were forced to take because of the cost of travelling via safer means was too high.

In daytime temperatures of up to 45° Celsius, with virtually no ventilation, the family got by on what little food Aeisha had managed to bring.

"The children suffered tremendously from the heat and the tight space, but we had no choice, we had to run for our lives and this is the only transport we could afford," says Aiesha, a week after making it safely to Aswan.

Sudanese refugees in Egpyt
WFP team on the ground at the border town of Qustol hands out ready-to-eat packages to the new arrivals from Sudan. Photo: WFP/Elsayed Mohamed

Since the beginning of the influx six weeks ago, the World Food Programme (WFP) has been greeting new arrivals at two border locations with packages of essential nutritional food items, with enough rations for more than 90,000 people.

At the border entry points of Argeen and Qustol, buses line up on the Sudanese side waiting for the paperwork of hundreds of passengers to be processed. This can take up to two days, forcing families to spend the night on the border with minimal food and water before being allowed to cross.

People who make it to Egypt tend to arrive with almost no resources and without knowing where to head next.

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