Sudanese diaspora in Connecticut connects to help people at home

By Ben Gin­gold | UConn Jour­nal­ism
June 15, 2026

Ragaa Abdal­la, sur­round­ed by pots and pans, stuffs a squash with meat and rice. She is mak­ing mahshi, a tra­di­tion­al Sudanese dish, in a kitchen near­ly 7,000 miles from home.

Abdal­la, who now works as a chef at New Haven’s non­prof­it Sanc­tu­ary Kitchen, fled her home coun­try sev­en years ago and fears for the safe­ty of her fam­i­ly still in Sudan, includ­ing her par­ents. In recent years, two spar­ring mil­i­tary fac­tions have fought for con­trol of Sudan, cost­ing thou­sands of lives in a con­flict that has been con­demned inter­na­tion­al­ly as a human rights cri­sis.

“When the war start­ed, that made us grow clos­er to each oth­er,” said Abdal­la about the local Sudanese com­mu­ni­ty in Con­necti­cut. “We are now meet­ing twice a month, we’re talk­ing about what’s going on in our coun­try, and we try to share some mon­ey from each fam­i­ly and send it to our coun­try.”

When Abdal­la arrived in Con­necti­cut in 2019, she joined a grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of Sudanese immi­grants tak­ing refuge in New Haven and the sur­round­ing area. In 2024, the World Pop­u­la­tion Review found that there were 449 Sudanese peo­ple liv­ing in Con­necti­cut.

“We have a real­ly big Sudanese com­mu­ni­ty from dif­fer­ent parts of Sudan, and they live between New Haven and West Haven,” Abdal­la said.

At New Haven’s Sanc­tu­ary Kitchen, a project of the food-focused City­Seed non­prof­it, refugees from many coun­tries around the world are hired to make their culture’s favorite dish­es. The goal is to build eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties for dis­en­fran­chised peo­ple through food.

Each week, they offer a rotat­ing menu of fresh dish­es from dif­fer­ent cul­tures, often tai­lored to the chef’s per­son­al upbring­ing. Abdal­la spends many of her days cook­ing tra­di­tion­al Sudanese and Egypt­ian meals. One of her favorite dish­es to make is mahshi, or stuffed veg­eta­bles. Kof­ta, a spicy meat­ball dish which Abdal­la not­ed was the “most deli­cious food in her coun­try,” came in at a close sec­ond.

Civil war

Abdal­la grew up in the Nuba Moun­tains in the south of Sudan, a region she remem­bers for its lush green hills, cul­ture and brief peri­ods of sta­bil­i­ty.

In the ear­ly 2000s, issues in Sudan came to the fore­front of inter­na­tion­al atten­tion. After a series of human­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ters, Sudan was left espe­cial­ly weak, prim­ing the coun­try for a rebel takeover.

In 2003, after an upris­ing in the region of Dar­fur and with ongo­ing con­flict in the south of the coun­try, Omar Al-Bashir, Sudan’s pres­i­dent, began a coun­terin­sur­gency oper­a­tion that would ulti­mate­ly lead to Sudan’s present civ­il war. This con­flict is between two war­ring groups, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Sup­port Forces. The Rapid Sup­port Forces, or RSF, are a para­mil­i­tary group that grew out of the Jan­jaweed in Dar­fur, a mili­tia group that Al-Bashir had fos­tered and armed.

“For years now, mil­lions of Sudanese have been kind of on the precipice of dis­as­ter because of the con­flict in South Sudan, because of the con­flict in Dar­fur,” said Yonatan Morse, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut.

South Sudan gained its inde­pen­dence in 2011, fur­ther weak­en­ing Al-Bashir’s gov­ern­ment.

In 2018, in the midst of eco­nom­ic cri­sis, thou­sands of civil­ians took to the streets in one of the largest upris­ings in Sudan’s his­to­ry. The fol­low­ing year, amid ongo­ing unrest, the RSF and SAF joined forces to top­ple Al-Bashir and vio­lent­ly repress the protests. After inter­na­tion­al inter­ven­tion, a civil­ian gov­ern­ment was installed, but it didn’t last long.

In 2022, Prime Min­is­ter Abdal­la Ham­dok resigned and the mil­i­tary was once again in pow­er. Under fur­ther inter­na­tion­al pres­sure, the RSF and SAF began to grow increas­ing­ly hos­tile toward each oth­er, form­ing the foun­da­tion of the mod­ern human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis.

“At some point, the par­ties agreed to some para­me­ters of a peace deal,” said Morse.

But when a deal was final­ly bro­kered, it did not address how to inte­grate the RSF back into the army. This led to a halt in peace nego­ti­a­tions.

“For the Sudanese army, it’s this idea of monop­oly over the legit­i­mate use of force to become a more func­tion­al state. For the RSF, the con­di­tions of that were very dif­fi­cult to swal­low,” Morse said.

On April 15, 2023, an arid and windy day, civil­ians from the hills of Khar­toum watched as the RSF and SAF rapid­ly descend­ed upon each oth­er. The lat­est civ­il war had begun and the qual­i­ty of life for the aver­age Sudanese per­son plum­met­ed.

Help from the dias­po­ra

Abdalla’s extend­ed fam­i­ly is from Khar­toum, which was an epi­cen­ter of the rebel upris­ing.

“I real­ly miss Khar­toum, the cap­i­tal of Sudan,” she said.

Abdal­la lost her youngest son three years before the lat­est out­break of war, around 2020. As the war raged on, she would ulti­mate­ly lose her broth­er as well, in the bru­tal con­flict.

“My lit­tle broth­er, he passed away from the war in Sudan two years ago now,” Abdal­la recalled.

Rawaa Ghazi, the direc­tor of oper­a­tions at Sanc­tu­ary Kitchen, who also served as Abdalla’s trans­la­tor, said that she can see the con­flict tak­ing a toll on her.

“She always feels sad,” Ghazi said. “She’s always look­ing for the news, about what’s going on, and always feels that she’s not able to do any­thing to help her fam­i­ly.”

Sudan is now at the cen­ter of one of the biggest refugee crises in mod­ern his­to­ry, with more than 13 mil­lion Sudanese esti­mat­ed to have been dis­placed since the con­flict began, accord­ing to the Unit­ed Nations Refugee Agency.

In New Haven, Abdal­la and oth­er Sudanese refugees are doing what they can to help their peo­ple. To ease the finan­cial strain on rel­a­tives abroad, they have orga­nized a mutu­al aid group that meets twice each month.

“All of them don’t have a lot of mon­ey, but they try to col­lect maybe $20 from each fam­i­ly, and they send it to the peo­ple there who live in the moun­tains,” Ghazi said.

At the end of each meet­ing, they col­lect mon­ey from the fam­i­lies and pool it togeth­er.

“They are real­ly suf­fer­ing,” Ghazi said, “so when this small mon­ey arrives there, it makes a big dif­fer­ence.”

Even though these fam­i­lies were brought togeth­er by war, the bi-month­ly meet­ings have served as a unique bond­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for New Haven’s Sudanese com­mu­ni­ty.

Abdal­la said she doesn’t see an end to this war. She has watched gov­ern­ment after gov­ern­ment fail to ush­er in sys­tem­at­ic change, but she still has faith in the Sudanese peo­ple.

“We are known for our kind­ness. We are very kind peo­ple. These are the qual­i­ties that Sudanese peo­ple will always have,” Abdal­la said.

She looks for­ward to the day when she can final­ly vis­it her fam­i­ly again. “After the war stops, I think this is the most impor­tant thing,” she said.

“When the war stops, and then the peo­ple are hav­ing a chance and oppor­tu­ni­ty for work, they can sup­port their fam­i­ly and build fac­to­ries, build schools, and hos­pi­tals,” Abdal­la said. “That all will make Sudan a good coun­try for the peo­ple to live in.”