Resilient Sudanese refugee rebuilds shattered lives in Chad

Fleeing the horrors of conflict in Tandalti, northwest of El Geneina, Marka and her seven children walked for hours under the torching sun to find safety in Chad. Amidst the chaos during the journey, she lost contact with her husband. Their possessions reduced to mere memories.

After arriving in Chad in June 2023, Marka and her children squeezed into a small makeshift shelter crafted from cloth and hay and supported with wooden sticks in the overcrowded spontaneous site in Adre. For five months, that tiny and unstable makeshift shelter is all they had while enduring harsh living conditions in Adre, as the border town originally housing 40,000 people, is now overwhelmed by a sixfold population increase. Makeshift shelters sprawled across the town, exacerbating the severe lack of already limited basic services.

In November 2023, Marka and her family were relocated by UNHCR and partners from the border to the extension of Farchana refugee settlement. Upon arrival in Farchana, Marka set out to transform their emergency shelter into a home and restart their lives. Within merely 4 months, she replaced the walls of the emergency shelter with bricks and constructed an extra bedroom and a kitchen/dining space in the yard. “I want it to feel like a home for me and my children. Now the kids have their own room and some private space, and we have a place to sit, cook and eat together.”

Marka is no stranger to hard work as she and her husband cultivated a farm back in Darfur. Recently, Marka’s sister and her child joined her in Farchana. Together, the two women are working hand in hand to rebuild their lives from scratch. The resources from the emergency shelters, which are designed to be easily transformable into semi-durable homes, were fully utilized by Marka as the wooden structure of the shelter is repurposed into bed frames. Now Marka is working on a new toilet and more rooms, “I hope my husband and more of my families will join me one day so I want to make the house better to host them.” To Marka, shelters are more than protection, they offer a semblance of normalcy and control. It is the first step towards a new live that is filled with hope again. Transforming the shelters also brought back a sense of community, “my neighbors and friends are all working on their shelters, and we help each other out.”

To date, UNHCR and partners have constructed 5 new refugee settlements and extended 10 existing ones, hosting more than 337,000 Sudanese refugees. More than 715,000 emergency family shelters have been built since the start of the emergency but the needs remain immense.

Thanks to the generous support from King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center, hundreds of thousands of families like Marka’s are given a beacon of hope and a chance to rebuild their shattered lives in Chad.