I’m in Port Sudan now, safe and quiet in my sister Mai’s house after nine days of unbelievable stress in Khartoum, 800km (500 miles) to the southwest. Here, on the Red Sea, there’s electricity, there’s running water, and there are no sounds of gunfire or jets flying over our heads or bombs going off. We were able to sleep a bit last night. The kids have calmed down, their resilience is amazing; they’ve managed to find space to function and are even playing right now.

I have no family left in Khartoum, they’ve all scattered to whatever safe destination they can get to. Everyone used to escape to Khartoum. Now, everyone is escaping from Khartoum.

What they’re doing, these generals, it’s not right – neither is the fact that we’ve been left to deal with them and we didn’t create them. We’re a punching bag, we’ve been the punching bag for so long. How long and how much more can we take?