The last place Lina Mijok wanted to go when fleeing the fighting in Sudan was to go back to her own country, South Sudan, which she had left when the civil war broke out in 2013.
But when the Sudanese army began fighting paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the streets around her home last month, South Sudan was the only place she and her two children they could arrive.
“I would not have gone back to South Sudan. He would have gone anywhere, but he had no choice,” said the 26-year-old.
She had managed to carve out a new life for herself as a maid in Omdurman, the city across the Nile River from the capital, Khartoum.
Then shots started ringing out and his family had to pack up and leave that behind, everyone except Mijok’s husband.
She had to stay behind because they did not have enough money to pay for her place on the trucks and buses that took Mijok and her son and daughter to the border, two harrowing days on tree-lined roads.
Now they are among thousands camping out in South Sudan’s Renk county on a dilapidated university campus, whose buildings are scarred by bullets from fighting a decade ago.
The refugees have built basic shelters with sticks and pieces of cloth. The United Nations refugee agency and other aid groups are distributing food, water, blankets and mats.
The fighting has turned the humanitarian situation upside down.
As of last month, more than 800,000 South Sudanese refugees were living in Sudan. Since fighting broke out in Khartoum, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has registered more than 30,000 people crossing into South Sudan, more than 90 percent of whom are South Sudanese, but the agency noted that the true figure is probably much higher.
Aid agencies fear the influx will worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis in South Sudan, where more than 2 million people are displaced and three-quarters of its 11 million people need aid.