Ali Seif, a university lecturer, has gone months without income due to the fighting in Sudan. He started producing soap in his room at a temporary camp for displaced people in order to make ends meet.
Many Sudanese have been compelled to discover innovative ways to feed themselves and their families as a result of being out of job as war rages between the forces of opposing generals.
Seif had been employed by a Khartoum university prior to April 15, when hostilities broke out between the army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Daglo’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The engineering professor and his family are currently residing in Wad Madani, a city where the majority of the roughly three million people who were uprooted from the capital and fled for safety took what little possessions they could bring with them.
Although fighting and airstrikes are now taking place some 150 kilometers (95 miles) to the north of Wad Madani, the area has so far been spared from the carnage.
Like many others, Seif said that paramilitaries “robbed” his home. He also told AFP that because banks have been closed since March, he has not gotten a wage.
In order to survive, he has started selling soap.
“Misfortune makes you creative,” said Seif.
“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.
