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Through a series of audio recordings, Jacob Burns, project coordinator for MSF, shares what he saw and experienced at the heart of the conflict during his first days on the ground. This recording was made on 26 December 2023.
Although you can see fruit and vegetables being sold, they’re so expensive that not many people are buying them because they need to husband their money and it’s not a wise choice to buy so little food for so much money.
I guess the war has been going on for so long now, and people have been displaced for so long now, that any sort of coping mechanism that they had at the beginning of the war, any money saved up, are probably now exhausted.
Any sort of aid they could rely on from neighbours or families is probably long exhausted. And I think that’s what sort of led to the big desperation that we see every day and that we continue to see with the aid convoys.
As soon as the convoys come out, they're mobbed by people, often quite small children. Part of it seems to be a sort of game for them, and part of it seems to be very serious.And of course, it's immediately very serious now because there are armed people on top of those convoys.
Last night was really cold, and I was just imagining how bad must that be for people stuck in those tents […] I can't imagine how bad those nights must be for them. How awful they must be feeling.