All posts by : Mercy Juma

This would be my second time on the border between Chad and Sudan. It’s been a year since war broke out in Sudan and one of the few ways to get to the heart of the story has been through its western neighbor,

On the journey there I kept thinking of all the people who had shared their stories with me on my first visit. Are they still there? How are they holding up? Did those who had lost touch with their loved ones reunite with them?

Touch down – the heat was the same. I could feel the sun in my bones. But many other things had changed.  At the border town of Adre, the first batch of refugees who had crossed over to Chad at the beginning of the war have been relocated to another camp several hours away. The Sheikh who served me coffee last time, the journalist who gave birth while fleeing, the survivors I had met at the local hospital… none of them were there in Adre. 

Humanitarian organizations have also now set up permanent bases and offices near the refugee camps. Their off road 4x4s parked in every street you walk through.  And we got a place to rent and stay, unlike last time, where we had to lodge in Farschana, a town, two hours away from the border, and we would drive to and from, every single day!

Not much has changed in the refugee camps at the border though.  They are still full. More people are coming in from Sudan every day, the queues at the water pumps are endless and the local health facility is still overflowing with patients. Just like last time, there are hundreds of people with gunshot wounds being nursed there. There are not enough beds, and some are forced to sleep on the floor. Many have severe injuries, with metal pins protruding from their limbs. The malnutrition stabilization center is treating dozens of severely malnourished children.

More than 600,000 people have fled Sudan to come to Chad. Almost all of them have seen or experienced violence. Everyone I met knew someone who has been killed, injured or is missing. Sexual violence is also a huge problem, but official figures are low because many victims do not speak out for fear of further victimization and social stigma.

I met Amina at a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) facility inside the refugee camp. She’s 18 years old with big brown eyes, though she did not look at me much, but when she did, she looked, lost…  Amina was raped by men from an armed militia as she fled her home in Sudan. Two months on, she has just been told she is pregnant. And has decided not to keep the baby. She decides, in secret, to have a medical abortion. Without a goodbye, she disappeared into the camp and got swallowed by a crowd of people heading towards a food distribution site set up by the World Food Programme.

Zahra, both a social worker and a refugee, invited me to a space where she brings together survivors of sexual violence for them to talk about their lives now and how they are coping.

I thought it might be just five or six women in there but, there were close to 40. Maryamu, a university student, was raped as her mother was forced to watch. Nima, who was kept for days by her captors and lost count of how many men abused her…. Zuhura, Maria, Leila… They cried together and hugged and two hours later, just like Amina, each disappeared into the crowded camp, to their own makeshift tent. 

 After my assignment I flew home to Nairobi. Throughout the journey, I could not get Amina out of my mind. Was her termination a success? How heavy is the burden of the secret she is carrying? How hard is it for her to go through this alone? You see, she cannot tell anyone, not even her sister or mother…what happened. Her family could disown her, may not be able to get, married, and there will definitely be gossip in the camp.

Ordinary women in Sudan are paying the price for the brutality which has been unleashed by the conflict. Sadly, there is no end in sight to this ruthless  war. 

There is always a moment just before a panel begins when the room shifts.

The microphones are tested. The audience settles. Speakers glance at their notes or exchange a few quiet words with one another. In those few minutes before the conversation officially starts, I am often reminded that moderating is less about asking questions and more about creating the conditions for people to truly listen.

From the outside, moderating can look straightforward. A moderator introduces the speakers, poses a few questions, and keeps the discussion moving. But the real work is quieter than that. It lies in understanding the room, sensing where clarity is needed, and knowing when to step forward or step back so that others can think aloud.

My instinct for this work was shaped long before I ever sat on a stage.

As a journalist, I learned early that listening is rarely passive. Good reporting depends on hearing not only what is said, but also what is implied, avoided, or left unsaid. The same discipline applies in global policy spaces. Experts arrive with deep knowledge and strong perspectives, but meaningful conversations often emerge only when someone holds the space carefully enough for those ideas to unfold.

In many of the rooms where I now work  conversations on global health, humanitarian response, or development policy  the discussions can be highly technical. Financing models, policy frameworks, and institutional strategies are often at the center of the dialogue. Yet behind those discussions are decisions that affect real communities and real lives.

Part of the role of the moderator is to help keep that connection visible.

Before most conversations begin, I spend time with speakers shaping the arc of the discussion. We talk through the themes, the sequence of questions, and the ideas we hope to explore. Preparation matters. It helps ensure the conversation has structure and purpose.

But once the discussion begins, I rarely follow those questions exactly as written.

A room has its own rhythm. Speakers respond to one another in ways that cannot always be anticipated. Sometimes a comment opens a new line of thinking. Sometimes a pause reveals that a thought deserves more space than the agenda allowed. In those moments, a moderator must decide whether to hold the structure or allow the conversation to evolve.

Often, the most meaningful moments emerge when the conversation slows down.

This is particularly true when lived experiences enter the room. When someone shares a personal story  about working in a community, navigating a crisis, or witnessing the human consequences of policy decisions  the conversation changes. It becomes less abstract. The room listens differently.

Numbers and data remain essential. They shape policy and guide decision-making. But they are rarely what people carry with them after the event is over. It is the stories, and the people that tell them, that they remember.

Over time, I have come to see moderating less as a performance and more as a form of stewardship. It requires resisting the temptation to dominate the conversation and instead focusing on what the room needs in that moment: clarity, balance, and sometimes simply patience.

Every conversation carries its own rhythm.

Some move quickly, driven by urgency and expertise. Others slow down when a story enters the room and asks to be heard.

In those moments, the task of the moderator is simple: make space, listen closely, and allow the conversation to unfold with care.

Because in the end, people rarely remember the numbers.
They remember the names, the faces, and the stories that made the conversation real.

I wouldn’t call myself a coffee connoisseur, but I do enjoy a good cup. And I thought that, through my travels, I’d sampled some of the best brewed coffees around – until I arrived at the camp in Adre, to meet refugees from Sudan. 

Dark, thick, with a little extra sugar. Spiced with ginger and cardamon. Served in a fancy tiny cup with an even fancier saucer. It didn’t matter that it was 40 degrees outside…that Sudanese coffee was exceptional – Marek Polaszewski , my camera operator, who’s a self-proclaimed coffee expert, declared it the most delicious he had ever had. 

Every day, for more than a week, we made the two-hour journey from the town of Farchana, where we were staying, to Adre on the border of Chad and Sudan. It was A torturous journey. The terrain was unforgiving. I sat beside our Arabic-speaking driver in the front of our hired Landcruiser; my job was to protect the camera kit which had been put between us.  Anytime we hit a pothole – which we did a lot – I clung onto our expensive equipment as if my life depended on it. Well, in a way it did, because how else could we document the stories we’d come to hear without the camera? 

In the back sat the cameraman Marek, producer Peter and the fixer, Mahammat. There was no air conditioning in the vehicle; by the time we got to Adre their shirts were clinging to their skin. 

That spiced coffee was served to us by Sheikh Mohammed, who was the first refugee we spoke to/visited in Adre. He is one of almost a million people who are living here, after fleeing Darfur across the border in Sudan. 

Fighting there between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has taken an ethnic turn – once again? pitting black African people from Sheikh Mohammed’s Masalit community against Arab groups. And on this assignment, we wanted to hear the personal stories of people from Darfur.

These were told over those cups of coffee. Grim accounts of people being butchered and torched, of women and girls raped, of babies born on the roads as their mothers fled. Stories of families who had lost everything, of women having to leave the unburied bodies of their children behind, of separated families, of children who cannot sleep at night and who just scream and scream – and who now often show a lot of anger. There’s a lot of traumas. 

After we had downed the coffee, we made our way to the main encampment in Adre and the local hospital. Nothing had prepared me for what we found there. 

There were hundreds of patients, with gunshot wounds, burns, and multiple fractures.  And hundreds more kept streaming through the border – so many that new tents had been set up around the hospital? to accommodate them. In one tent there was a group of women and babies. All with gunshot wounds. Who shoots a child? A 9-month-old baby? 

Most of them were waiting for surgery. But there was a shortage of surgeons, and medical equipment. Many wounds were turning septic. People were crying in pain. The children especially. One of the young women in the tent was called Mamou. She was lying on her stomach, a bullet lodged in her lower back. As we debated where to put the microphone and the right angle to place the camera, a nurse called me aside.  She said quietly that the young lady was paralyzed from the waist down and the doctors had not yet told her this. That she may never be able to use the lower part of her body again. My heart broke. 

Before we left, we went back to the Sheikh’s house/tent. This time, a tray of food was placed in front of us – some cooked maize and millet, and vegetable gravy in a large bowl. The food wasn’t a lot, he said – but he insisted we must join the family in the meal.  He wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

We took a coffee with him as well, one last time. 

At the end of the week, as we headed back to Chad’s capital N’djamena – with eleven people crammed into a low-flying aircraft- all I could think about was the generosity shown to us by the refugees we had met. At the camp, many of them seeing how hot we were, had offered us water. The Sheikh, with the food and coffee. They had barely enough to get by, yet – unreservedly and with no expectation of anything in return – they had offered these to us, complete strangers. 

Why, do those who have less, give more?