This article highlights the resilience of a Sudanese mother, Nadifa Ismail, who fled her home due to the brutal conflict in Darfur, and contrasts it with the under-taught history of Kenya's political repression during Daniel arap Moi's regime.
From those performing extraordinary acts in times of war to the woman changing views of children with disabilities, these people gave us hope in a tumultuous yearShe strode across the border, back straight, face raised towards the burning sky. A soldier from Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) turned towards her. Nadifa Ismail slowed, staring him straight in the eye. Weeks earlier, the RSF had executed her only son, burned down her home, raped her friends.
She kept looking at the man and his gun. The man, eventually, backed off. The mother and her five daughters had been walking for weeks, hiding from RSF kill squads, until reaching the border with Chad. The last thing she needed was a Guardian reporter harassing her. Yet Ismail ducked no question,Photograph: Mark Townsend/The Guardian “I have to speak. The world has to know what is happening in there,” she said, gesturing towards Darfur, the vast region of west Sudan where her home once stood. Her eagerness to help, her indefatigability, her determination to keep going, encapsulated not only the instincts of a mother, but also the millions of Sudanese whose lives have been flipped upside down by its brutal conflict. War is often about ordinary people enduring extraordinary events and, in my mind, 10 months on from our meeting, Ismail embodies the greatest humanitarian crisis on the planet. Sadly she had no phone, so I am unable to offer an update on Ismail’s plight. Instead, I fantasise that one of her daughters will one day return to rule Sudan and, like her mother, stare down the men with guns until they go away.for the Kenyan government to memorialise Nyayo chambers, the underground cells where people opposed to the autocratic rule of Kenya’s second and longest-serving president, The brutal crackdown on political dissidents and activists during Moi’s rule, at its height between 1986 and 1992, is one of Kenya’s darkest periods yet it is barely taught in school
Conflict History Activism Courage Sudanese Conflict Darfur Nadifa Ismail Daniel Arap Moi Nyayo Chambers Kenya Human Rights Political Repression
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