Sudanese refugee foster families offer hope and a home to lone children

But when a group of neighbors stopped by the same tree to catch their breath, Abdoulaye’s priorities quickly changed. In the chaos of the escape from the militia that raided their village, the neighbors found two small children whose mother had been killed in the attack and whose father had disappeared.

The neighbors left the children with Abdoulaye and his wife Hawaye and continued their own frantic flight to the relative safety of the border with Chad.

There was no question of leaving the terrified children behind, Abdoulaye recalled in his new shelter in the Arkoum refugee camp in eastern Chad. He watched as the two young children – 5-year-old Saleh and his younger sister Maimouna, 3 – played under the canopy of their shared home.

“I decided if we die, we die together, I’m not abandoning the children,” he said of the hot summer afternoon in 2023 when he ran away from home and found the children.

Shortly after the conflict in Sudan erupted in April 2023, Abdoulaye and Hawaye sent their three children to Chad for safety, where they lived with family members. As he limped into camp with his wife and two rescued children, Abdoulaye discovered word had spread that he had died in the attack on their village.

Welcome to the family

“Everybody thought I was dead,” he said. “They were so happy to see me alive.”

Abdoulaye and Hawaye were reunited with their children, who welcomed their two new siblings with open arms.