Since war broke out in Sudan in April 2023, nearly 600,000 Sudanese refugees have arrived at the camp, some after gruelling journeys through several countries. They came with few belongings and many memories, trying to piece together lives that have been turned upside down.

Located about 275 kilometres from Kampala, Kriandongo is also home to refugees from South Sudan, Burundi, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, as well as the surrounding host community.

What unites them is greater than their differences: the experience of loss and the need to start again.

UN News travelled to the camp to see daily life up close and hear the most pressing challenges residents face since they fled war.

From engineering halls to a refugee tent

Hussein Hashim Taiman, a civil engineer with a master’s degree, once worked with the civil engineering department of the UNAMID mission in Darfur.

Hussein Hashim Taiman is living a life he never imagined. A civil engineer with a master’s degree, he once worked for the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID).

Today, he sits inside a tent, serving as the head of the Sudanese refugee community in Kriandongo, one of the largest refugee camps in Uganda.

He fled Omdurman with his children in May 2023, travelling through South Sudan before reaching Uganda on a journey he describes as filled with fear, harassment and abuse.

“Here, when you complain, you find that someone else’s misfortune is greater than yours, so you try to forget your own to help ease theirs,” he told us.

 “We draw strength from each other. Sometimes we sit together as professionals and talk about our past. I am now living in a tent, but this is what war does.”

The situation has not improved as many had hoped. Aid has dwindled and tents designed to last six months have become permanent shelter more than three years on.

Healthcare is inadequate, education irregular, and even water and food have become a shared responsibility among residents.

Hussein warns that the future of an entire generation is at stake and urged the United Nations and the international community to give greater attention to Sudanese refugees in Uganda.

Food: A matter of life and death

Mutasim Mohamed Ahmed, originally from the city of Nyala in South Darfur State, was living in Khartoum and working in trade between Sudan, China, and Dubai.

Faced with this harsh reality, simple initiatives emerged. Among them were community kitchens, which began as a response to an urgent need, before gradually becoming a lifeline that helped save Kriandongo refugees from starvation.

Out of this harsh reality, simple but far-reaching initiatives took hold, including community kitchens, which began as a response to an urgent need, has become a lifeline for Kriandongo’s refugees.

Twenty such kitchens now operate within the camp, helping to reduce hunger and build social bonds among Sudanese residents.

Mutasim Mohamed Ahmed, from Nyala in South Darfur, once traded between Sudan, China and Dubai. The war upended that life, and he arrived in Uganda in 2023. Today he serves as secretary of the camp’s community kitchens.

“These kitchens were set up after the World Food Programme cut food rations,” he said. “We saw malnutrition among residents. There were deaths and miscarriages because of hunger.”

The work has changed him. “Working in community kitchens taught me to be human,” he said. “You see people hungry here, and if you don’t have humanity inside you, you can’t feel this. I feel it for my Sudanese people, they are my own flesh and blood.”

‘We survived to help others’

Dr. Wadad Makki (2nd left) travels long distances to reach the Kryandungo camp, because she has chosen to stand with those who live inside it.

From Kampala, where she now lives, Dr. Widad Makki regularly makes the long journey to Kriandongo camp, not because she has to, but because she has chosen to.

A former university professor and director of the Special Education Department in Khartoum State, she fled her home under bombardment.

“It was difficult to move my children through the gunfire, the smoke, the burning cars and the bodies in the streets,” she told UN News. “I used to ask them to cover their faces so they would not see.”

Now based in Kampala, Widad remains closely connected to the camp, visiting regularly through her work with the Al-Malam Darfur for Peace and Development organisation. She and her colleagues support community kitchens and provide meals for refugees at Kriandongo.

“We survived and arrived safely in Uganda, and now we are helping our Sudanese brothers and sisters in the camps,” she said.

But her concern about the prolonged crisis runs deep. “Our biggest fear is that this war will last a long time. There are so many challenges here: education, rent, living costs, no income, no jobs. We dream every day that the war will stop so we can return to Sudan.”

Refugee doctors on call

Dr. Abdul Jabbar Ahmed Adam, an internal medicine specialist, now works at the Gombe Hospital in Kampala, Uganda.

Away from the camps, the picture looks different in Kampala, where some Sudanese professionals have managed to rebuild their careers.

In one of the city’s hospitals, Dr. Abdul Jabbar Ahmed Adam in his white coat treats patients of various nationalities.

The internal medicine specialist, who previously worked at Ibn Sina Gastroenterology Hospital in Khartoum, arrived in Uganda in 2023 and joined Gombe Hospital.

“Uganda received us warmly. The work here is good and there is no discrimination,” he said. “We haven’t felt like strangers, we feel just as we did in Sudan.”

He was not alone. Several Sudanese medical professionals found the chance to keep practising in their host country. Some have opened their own clinics. “Uganda has good hospitals, but there is a shortage of staff,” Abdul Jabbar said. “That is where Sudanese doctors have contributed. Patients come to us from many different nationalities.”

He is also keen to challenge a common assumption. “Not everyone who comes here relies on aid,” he said. “There are professionals, traders and people with skills in many fields.”

White Heart hotel

Ibrahim Zakaria Yahya recounts the chapters of a long journey spanning years of displacement and attempts at resettlement.

Ibrahim Zakaria Yahya settled in Biale, near Kriandongo, long before the latest wave of displacement. He left Sudan’s South Darfur in late 2007, reached Uganda in 2008 and, after five years in Kampala, moved to Biale where he says he was the first Sudanese to arrive with his family.

The early years were hard. “I suffered a lot when I first arrived,” he recalled. But gradually he found his footing – trading, farming, then moving into property until he had built a business of his own.

Three years ago, he opened a hotel he named The White Heart. “I chose that name as an invitation to purify hearts and consciences, to overcome the bitterness Sudanese people have lived through during repeated wars,” he explained.

“Anyone who comes here should come with a pure heart. We fled from war, and we need to coexist here so we can one day return home safely.”

Ibrahim is grateful to Uganda. “They welcomed me with open arms. I never felt like a refugee. I am only a refugee on paper, I have the same rights as citizens, and I even own land I was unable to own in Sudan.”

Yet he longs for home and hopes peace will come soon, so that he and the thousands still in Kriandongo can return.

For those inside the camp, that hope is what remains. The future is uncertain, services are scarce and anxiety runs deep, especially among children and young people. But people hold on.

Until the war ends, life here continues with its simplicity, its hardship and its endless stories.