From Water to Bread… Rising Prices Turn Daily Life into a Daily Struggle for Sudanese People

The day for 60-year-old Sudanese woman Siham Al-Dai begins early. She heads to Omdurman Market, not with a shopping list in hand, but in search of work that will enable her to put food on the table that day. Sometimes, she cleans a sack of fava beans for 5,000 Sudanese pounds (less than one dollar), using the earnings to buy some lentils and flour to prepare qurassa, a traditional local flatbread. If she cannot find work, however, she takes another path—begging.

Traders say that “women and men have begun approaching them asking for animal fat and bones that were previously thrown away for stray dogs.”

Siham’s daily struggle is no longer an exception in a country exhausted by a war that has entered its fourth year, forcing many people to search for food in what was once discarded.

For millions of Sudanese, meeting even the most basic necessities has become a struggle that consumes much of the day: finding water, calculating the cost of bread, preparing food with fewer ingredients as prices rise, and sometimes having to postpone buying essential medicine.