Hoyam Babiker, 32, studied law in Sudan and had dreams of working in the beauty industry in Saudi Arabia, where her mother has lived for years to support their family of 11. But when civil war erupted in April 2023 between two rival factions of Sudan’s military government, her life went into a state of flux.
Along with thousands of other civilians, she fled from one supposed safe zone to the next: Nyala, Ed Daein, Kordofan, En Nahud, Wad Madani, Al-Qadarif and then Port Sudan, the nation’s main seaport. Each successive leg of the journey, which she made with her two daughters — Soujah, 4, and Salam, 7 — was more straining than the last, and they were running out of options. “We went all over in Sudan,” she says. “For three days we were in Port Sudan. It was too hot, a lot of flies. When the war is coming, no one knows where to go; no one knows what’s going on.” Everyone was exhausted and uncertain, scrambling to find family or friends to stay with.
The fighting between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known by the mononym Hemedti), a former camel trader from western Darfur, and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, erupted during Ramadan last year, when the RSF attacked government sites via air strikes and artillery. The war was initially confined to the capital city of Khartoum as well as the western region of Darfur, where an estimated 200,000 people were killed from 2003 to 2005 in what is known as the Darfur conflict. But the war expanded as rebel groups joined forces on both sides. And the 2023 Treaty of Jeddah — an international agreement backed by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and both the RSF and SAF — proved fruitless. Just a day after the combatants agreed to a weeklong cease-fire, violent clashes started up again.
According to the United Nations, an estimated 13% of civilians from one of Africa’s biggest countries have had their lives uprooted. One year into the war, more than 6.6 million Sudanese have been internally displaced, with over 2 million fleeing across borders to neighboring countries like South Sudan, Chad, the Central African Republic, Kenya, Uganda, Egypt and Ethiopia. Casualties thus far could be as high as 150,000, according to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. The instability triggered by the war could also cause the world’s worst hunger crisis, says the World Food Programme, with 18 million people at risk of hunger and 5 million facing starvation.
Babiker initially considered relocating to Canada or Egypt. But as the war dragged on, Sudanese nationals lost many passport privileges. Her visas to those two countries were not approved. Also, in unsuccessfully attempting to obtain a visitor’s visa to the kingdom, “I’d left my passport at the Saudi Arabia Embassy in Khartoum, since much of my family is in Saudi.”
With the help of connected friends, Babiker retrieved her passport and was at last able to cross into Uganda, a liminal space where she and her daughters stayed for a couple of days. “I didn’t like the conditions there. It wasn’t okay,” she says. “It was too noisy, too tough.”
She tried to quell the horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. She was tired, she recalls, worried about how her young daughters were faring through the heat, fatigue and the yawning pandemonium of trading one war zone for another with no end in sight. They forged onward, further south to Kenya. “Here, it’s very peaceful. Kenya feels more familiar, looks like Sudan. You can develop yourself, meet with people who look like you — mentally, emotionally, everything.”
Kenya bears a reputation for stability amid the otherwise restive Horn of Africa. As of 2021, there were at least 160,000 refugees from Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Uganda and Burundi in Kakuma Camp alone. It is estimated that over the past three decades, Kenya has hosted more than 750,000 refugees, with upward of 100,000 residing in urban areas.
Kenya’s former encampment policy, as part of its Refugees Act of 2006, barred most nonnationals from receiving refugee IDs and obtaining work permits, leaving many in a constant state of limbo. Eventually, the government liberalized its policies, recognizing the refugees’ potential contribution to the local economy. A 2018 World Bank report noted that Kakuma alone hosted more than 2,000 businesses and livelihoods and a consumption economy of $56 million, from produce and firewood vendors to phone charging stations and barbershops. Since 2021, the country’s revised Refugee Act has enshrined the right to work and facilitated the integration of refugee camps into society at large.
Upon reaching Nairobi as a refugee in January 2024, Babiker envisioned opening a small cafe. In the capital city’s Kilimani neighborhood, she opened Mazaj (Arabic for “mood”) this spring. We’re sitting on the cafe patio as she describes how she began the business. “I wanted to have something to keep me busy,” the young mother admits, to keep her mind from constantly drifting back to the horrors in her homeland. In Kilimani, most cafes are Ethiopian, but “I wanted to create a place to gather all the Sudanese together,” she explains. “Maybe here, we can find common ground, since we’re all in the same situation.”
As we chat, regulars drift in for a hot drink. The smell of bakhoor, a traditional incense, wafts through the air. Children, some on rollerblades, stop by to hawk their paintings or chat with Babiker, clearly the beloved neighborhood auntie. “It’s a place to reconnect for us. Here we can gather, update each other on situations in Nairobi and back at home,” says Yousif Mohammed Ahmed, 38, who arrived in Nairobi last July. “We’re supporting Hoyam,” he continues, “but it’s also a place where we feel safe and can speak Sudanese. You’ll find everyone here, from people working at the Sudanese Embassy to those new to town.”
The small amount of income helps, of course, as Nairobi has a notoriously high cost of living. “Most people coming here have no money.” A small cup of tea in most places costs about 75 cents, though at Mazaj, it’s half that price — even in the tumult of restarting her life, Babiker hopes to help others.
Five years ago during protests in Sudan, the people had made it clear that they did not want a military government. Ahmed was working as a program officer for resilience and social cohesion for UNICEF and living with his family in Zalingei, a town in the Darfur region, when war broke out. The father of a girl and a baby boy, Ahmed reflects on his journey during a visit to Babiker’s cafe. “None of us asked for this,” he says.
Getting out of Sudan was difficult, even for someone like Ahmed with much stronger connections than most. He wrote impassioned emails to the U.N. Refugee Agency, detailing the looting of his house amid chaotic clashes between the RSF and SAF, as well as general societal collapse. They went unanswered. With his 3-year-old daughter recovering from kidney cancer and needing urgent medical care, the stakes for Ahmed to get his family out of Sudan were high. “We needed to get out to save her life,” he says. “We just needed to get out.”
Travels in war-torn Sudan proved hectic. At various checkpoints, civilians would be interrogated regarding their tribal loyalty (the RSF consists of mostly Arab tribes, while the military government is majority African). After Ahmed’s family had spent four months last year moving across Sudan, in a pattern similar to that of Babiker and her daughters, his employer at last helped the family with a medical evacuation.
Now in Nairobi, looking for work since his UNICEF contract has lapsed, Ahmed feels immense frustration with the U.N. for withdrawing its services from one of the most dire humanitarian catastrophes on earth. It’s hard not to think about what is happening back home.
“Human rights violations are continuing from day to day,” he says. “Looking at the protection of civilians — nobody cares. People are losing their lives in a systematic way, from the shelling of weapons to how basic social services have all been destroyed, targeted and bombed. Everything has been taken.”
Although Ahmed is glad to be in Nairobi now, away from the havoc of war — his family is safe at last — the situation is still far from ideal. “To be forced to leave your home country due to the political conflicts between two conflicting parties, it’s too painful,” he says. Crossing with his family across four regions to flee war zones has likely left trauma that he does not have time to deal with at the moment. “Arriving here in Kenya, we found that everything is different: the cost of living, including renting an apartment in Nairobi, as well as school fees — it’s all far more expensive.”
And because Nairobi is considered a medical tourism country, Ahmed continues, the medical consultation and laboratory fees, as well as medication costs for his daughter, are not easy to pay for, especially now that he is searching for new employment. Visas are also expensive, he adds.
As a whole, there isn’t enough attention from the international community, he says, and the withdrawal of U.N. services and peacekeeping forces is appalling. “This is an agency with a mandate of providing basic needs — clean water, education, psychosocial support, medical services.”
Meanwhile, famine is ascendant; people are eating leaves off of trees. There is hardly any communication. Starlink, the sole satellite system that provides connectivity in Sudan, is not officially available and service is spotty. The level of violence and harm has not been enough to persuade international communities to intervene. “What’s happening in Darfur? Zalingei? Can it be justified? Until when?” Ahmed asks.
There’s no deadline for the end of this war, he laments. Arms trafficking across Sudan’s open borders with the Central African Republic, Chad and South Sudan — none of which is a particularly friendly neighbor — will continue fueling war crimes. Ahmed is thankful that his family is at last stable. Although they would be happy staying in Kenya, he is considering a move to New York. “You never know with war. It’s unplanned. Everything is last minute. You need to be strong to keep up with the situation.”
Rawia Alhaq, 34, a self-taught filmmaker, found unexpected family throughout the turbulence of relocating to Kenya from Sudan. Before the war broke out, she was directing a film called “Khartoum” (where she lived) along with three colleagues, following the stories of a single mother, a medic and two street boys. The end of peace altered the trajectory of both the movie and all their lives.
Incredibly, all her co-director colleagues and the protagonists from the film managed to move to Kenya. We’re sitting at Jayta cafe in Nairobi, opened by Jawad, the medic from her film. Alhaq says that they hope to finish the film by the end of this year, pivoting the set to Nairobi.
Over “agashe” (traditional Sudanese-styled barbecued meat), Alhaq reveals that she is not married and has adopted two children in Kenya. They are not just any children — Lokian and Wilson are the two 13-year-old boys from her movie. They arrived this past February, four months after she did. Alhaq had pushed for them to come to continue their studies in Nairobi, now a significant diaspora city for the Sudanese.
“Families are getting destroyed, split up by this war,” Alhaq says, but her commitment to and love for her sons is a hopeful sign. With the help of her friends, they are building their community here in Kenya and trying to make life fun. She takes Lokian and Wilson on outings, to cultural events that make them feel close to their heritage. “I really wanted to do something to change these boys’ lives,” she says. “In Sudan, there’s no life; it’s a very dangerous area.”
The boys are enrolled in Kenyan school and work with a tutor to catch up on their studies. Although they are lovely, the situation can be stressful. They always ask about returning to Khartoum, Alhaq admits.
“They miss their families and friends, what they’re familiar with.” Every couple of days, they talk to their family through her phone, struggling with the inconsistency of Starlink. “But I tell them, we need to stay in Kenya. Here, we can change our future, make a new life.”
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