Médecins Sans Frontières - ENG - Narin's drawings of Sudan

Unique Identifier Code / URN MSB248288

Date taken / Date Recorded 20/09/2025 12:00 AM

Country Sudan

Commissioning section MSF-SWITZERLAND

Copyright MSF

Usage Rights (MSF) External Media, MSF Fundraising, MSF Publications, Social Media

Formal Consent Copy available no

Editor's rating ★★★ (F)

Video format h264 (Main) (avc1 / 0x31637661)

Duration 2m50s

Maximum Size 1080px × 1350px 80.23 MB

Additional Information / Shotlist SCRIPT

I draw for myself to slow down a bit the time and reflect on my emotions
It become a part of my coping mechanism of everything I see in the field.

Narin’s drawings

Narin Fandoglu - MSF Operations Advisor and illustrator

This year, I went twice to Sudan, first in Darfur in February and then later in May to Port Sudan and then to Khartoum. When I visit countries like Sudan that we can say forgotten crisis, even the people who are very close to me, they are reluctant to talk about it because I think they only think about the war and suffering. So I really want to bring a feeling of the daily life with my drawings, like the markets, like the coffee rituals, like food or everything that I see that inspire me. And then it really helped me to have this dialogue about Sudan with the people I care.

This one, it's a drawing of a pick-up with some men on it. It was two weeks after that the Sudanese Armed Forces took control of Khartoum. There were so many people going back to Khartoum with their best clothes, very nicely dressed. And I think most of them, they were going for the first time back after one and a half year that the conflict started in Khartoum. So I was having these thoughts of how they could be feeling. I can imagine that's a lot of excitement, a lot hope, but also the fear, how they are going to find their houses, the relatives they left behind.

And another drawing was this lady who was selling coffee. I asked for a coffee without sugar, without ginger, without spice. So she was laughing at me to have a very bad taste in coffee. And later on she explained that it was she already moved three times since the beginning of the war, but each time she restart her coffee business and she keep taking care of the children with her all the time

It showed me this beauty of daily life, the beauty of the social structure, the resilience of people. It really gave me a wider picture than the conflict or the war.

Today we have the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world in Sudan, we have millions of people displaced, we have a man-made catastrophe and there is so little media attention to Sudan.

There are people in Sudan that they want and need the same things as we want, and for them to take back this life and their dignity, we really need this attention to Sudan.