In Shambat, Khartoum, a young man named Mazin runs a community kitchen that has never once let a family go home empty-handed. This Ramadan, as kitchens across Sudan fall silent, his story is one of the most important you will read.
Every day of Ramadan, before the Maghrib adhan (the call to prayer), there is food waiting.
Asida (a Sudanese porridge-like dish) with a stew. Boiled chickpeas. Fava beans. Juice. A full iftar, set out for around 300 families in the neighbourhood of Shambat, in Khartoum Bahri.
The young men who prepare the feast have been fasting since before dawn.
“During Ramadan, the work became even bigger,” Mazin says without complaint. He is one of the volunteers running the Dewan Almahas takaaya (community kitchen).
How the kitchen began
The Dewan Almahas takaaya started, as many have, from almost nothing.
When the conflict broke out in April 2023, Mazin and his fellow volunteers gathered together and made a decision. They would cook porridge.
From porridge, it grew to lunch. Then to breakfast and lunch, delivered directly to people’s doors before there were even queues. Then, when Ramadan came, to a full iftar.
“Thank God, things kept getting better and better, until Ramadan came,” Mazin says. “During Ramadan, the work became even bigger.”
Two lines, one table
Each day the kitchen serves 2 groups.
The first are the Ahl al-Takiya – the people of the kitchen. Around 230 local families from Shambat, who are completely reliant on these meals. The second are the Duyuf al-Takiya – the guests of the kitchen. Around 80 to 90 families who travel from surrounding areas, from Al-Shabia and beyond, because they have nowhere else to turn.
Mazin is clear about what it means when a guest arrives from far away and finds an empty plate:
“It’s a shame for us when someone travels such a long distance and goes back empty-handed. We can’t accept that.”
When supplies run short, the team quietly takes from the portions meant for the local community to make sure the guests are also fed.
“We believe our rizq – our provision from God – actually comes from the guests of the kitchen, because their prayers bring us ease and success. And whoever helps people, God helps them in return.”
A kitchen that runs like a family
The work starts at dawn and doesn’t stop.
One team collects the firewood. Another goes to the market and handles storage. A third prepares the food. A fourth organises the queues, the internal line and the external line. Everyone has a role.
“The community here is very cheerful,” Mazin says. “The spirit of cooperation has been visible from day one until this very night, 2 years later.”
He describes the kitchen the way you might describe a childhood home. “It is like the big kitchen of our neighbourhood. The old and the young, like one big family. There are children we play with. There are our mothers and aunts, we sit, chat, and serve them.”
Sometimes the youth pause their sports and football to focus on the kitchen. They understand that the kitchen is essential to this neighbourhood.
Mazin says he feels only pride at the end of each day. “I feel greatness and pride – something only those who have experienced it can truly feel.”
“God willing, may He never cut us off from it, nor disappoint anyone who comes here.”
The question that comes every night
When the last iftar is cleared and the queues have gone home, Mazin and the team sit together and they ask the same question they have asked every night for 2 years: how do we secure tomorrow’s meals?
“Honestly, without exaggeration, the kitchen survives day by day,” he says.
The support they rely on comes mainly from Sudanese people living abroad but that support has weakened. The diaspora’s generosity – once focused on the kitchens – is now stretched thin across schools, medicine, orphans. Too many needs, not enough to go around.
The kitchen needs between up to 1.3 million Sudanese pounds (approximately £1,560 GBP) every week, just to cover a single lunch meal. Some weeks it arrives. Some weeks, Mazin and his team have had to cut breakfast entirely.
“We are trying to bring back breakfast meals,” he says, “because we truly feel the people’s hardship. Their conditions are very tough. We ask God to lift this suffering.”
This Ramadan, the silence is spreading
Mazin’s kitchen is still open. But across Sudan, many others are not.
In 1 part of Khartoum, 8 of the 11 takaaya that were running have shut down. The 3 that remain – including 1 similar to Mazin’s – are, as a volunteer put it, “hanging by a thread.”
Across the country, more than 63% of community kitchens have been forced to close since aid funding was cut.
At the same time, the number of families going hungry has grown.
More than 21 million people in Sudan are now facing acute food shortages. More than 83% of families do not have enough food to get through the day. This is the world’s largest hunger crisis, and the kitchens that were holding back famine are running out of the support they need to keep their fires lit.
For the families who walk to Mazin’s kitchen from far away, carrying their pots, there may be nowhere else to go.
What your zakat means this Ramadan
The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), said: “The best of people are those most beneficial to others.”
In a country where governments and international donors have repeatedly fallen short, ordinary people – young men like Mazin and his team have stepped forward to do what the world has not.
That is the spirit of zakat made real. A commitment to others, rooted in faith.
This Ramadan, your zakat and sadaqah can help Islamic Relief to keep kitchens like Mazin’s open, and to reopen others that have gone dark. It can mean that the families walking up with their pots at iftar will find something waiting for them. Give your zakat to Sudan this Ramadan.
