\n Sudan's war has left university lecturer Ali Seif without pay for months. To make ends meet, he has turned to making soap in his room at a makeshift displacement camp.\n<\/p>\n
\n Out of work as fighting rages between the forces of rival generals, many Sudanese have been forced to find creative ways to support themselves and their families.\n<\/p>\n
\n Until April 15, when the conflict erupted between the army headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, Seif had worked at a Khartoum university.\n<\/p>\n
\n Now the engineering lecturer and his family live in Wad Madani, a city where most of the nearly three million people displaced from the capital fled for safety with the few belongings they could bring.\n<\/p>\n
\n Wad Madani has been spared the violence so far, but air strikes and fighting are taking place around 150 kilometres (95 miles) to the north.\n<\/p>\n
\n Like many others, Seif said his house was \"robbed\" by paramilitaries, and he told AFP he has not received a salary since March with banks closed.\n<\/p>\n
\n In order to survive, he has started selling soap.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Misfortune makes you creative,\" said Seif.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I noticed there was no soap left on the market even though everyone wanted some, so I decided to make soap bars,\" he recalled, surrounded by plastic pots he uses to mix soap paste before pouring it into ice cube trays to mould the bars.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'No choice' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Like Seif, Michelle Elia Moussa used to stand in front of a classroom full of students.\n<\/p>\n
\n But since the war turned her life and country upside down, she has spent her days standing in front of a stall at Al-Hasaheisa market, halfway between Khartoum and Wad Madani.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I've given up hope and shelved my ambitions of being a brilliant teacher,\" she said, glasses on her nose and apron around her waist, as she looks over her cakes.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Without a job, I can't support myself,\" she said, in a poverty-stricken country where the spectres of famine, epidemics and widespread war crimes now loom large.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It's the first time I've worked in a market,\" she told AFP.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I'm not comfortable, I'm ashamed, but it's a war. I have no choice,\" she added, expertly spreading a light dough on cast-iron plates to make thin wafers with holes.\n<\/p>\n
\n Eshraqa Mousa, another woman who fled Khartoum, has opened a small stall to sell tea. Without it, she said, she could \"only provide one meal a day\" for her children.\n<\/p>\n
\n - Leaving 'everything behind' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Her family's hasty departure from the capital at the start of a war that has killed at least 3,900 people and displaced four million is still fresh in Mousa's memory.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We left everything behind... so I came here and bought this little stall to sell tea,\" she said, draped in her long, multicoloured veil.\n<\/p>\n
\n In a conservative society where tea sellers, though numerous, are often stigmatised and harassed, the move was an act of bravery she had never imagined she would achieve.\n<\/p>\n
\n But with the war, such taboos were shattered, and survival and resourcefulness took over.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"We were forced to find alternatives,\" said Mohammed Ali.\n<\/p>\n
\n A former civil servant in the capital, he \"teamed up with some colleagues to open a small mobile food stall\", he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n Made of white sheet metal and powered by a generator, it's \"in the style of those you find in Khartoum, which don't exist in Wad Madani.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Every day, he now sells mashed beans, falafel and other snacks loved by his compatriots, and he makes enough to feed his family.\n<\/p>\n
\n That is, until the next storm: the streets of Wad Madani are buzzing with speculation that the war could soon come to this city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sudan's war has left university lecturer Ali Seif without pay for months. To make ends meet, he has turned to making soap in his room at a makeshift displacement camp. Out of work as fighting rages between the forces of rival generals, many Sudanese have been forced to find creative ways to support themselves and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-120338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n