Adoum's story

As told to Kari Costanza, World Vision USA

For Adoum and his family, who abandoned their house in Sudan because of the war, the journey to Chad was terrifying.

Adoum couldn’t stop crying. “I asked him to stop,” says Kaltoum, Adoum’s mother. “When he cried, I was afraid.” Her fears were well-founded. People endured beatings as they made their escape.

Along the way, the mother of three passed the bodies of those killed in the fighting. “I have seen four dead bodies. They weren’t soldiers,” she says. She was worried about her son. “I covered his head on my back so he wouldn’t see.”

In the confusion of the journey, Kaltoum, Adoum, and sister Mariam, age 3, were separated from 10-year-old Yahia. Kaltoum, a widow who had already lost two children before the crisis, thought she’d lost another child.

Once at the spontaneous settlement, Adoum’s mother created a small hut from sticks for her family. Ten days later, they experienced a miracle. Her missing daughter, Yahia, was found, alive. After getting lost during the escape, she’d made it to Adré. “I took and I held her,” Kaltoum says. “I cried.”

The family has lost so much. Kaltoum’s husband died three years ago. Now she is concerned for 5-year-old Adoum. His medical card recorded his weight from a recent visit at just 26 1⁄2 pounds. A healthy 5-year-old boy weighs twice this amount. Adoum’s ribs show through his thin chest, and he has an infection in his tooth or jaw.

“[Before] he was fat and normal,” Kaltoum says, as Adoum lays in her lap, too hungry to move.

Adoum’s mother has food for only four more days—a liter of oil, salt, a cup of okra, millet, and some flour. She’s has watched people in the camp take desperate measures for food. They find an anthill to dig up and pull out the millet the ants have stored there.

Kaltoum is stuck in Adré. “Because Adoum is sick, I can’t go to work.” She worries for her son, who used to fly kites with the other boys in the camp. Now he sits on his mother’s lap, his big, brown eyes vacant. 

World Vision staff checks on the family, helping Kaltoum with medical costs, but they have no idea when they will be transferred to a formal camp like Farchana or Metché.

This case study is part of a larger report. Please click here to check it.