From global managing editor Morgan Lee: Earlier this year, I traveled to Chad to meet with Sudanese refugees who had crossed the border after facing horrendous violence in their country. World Vision organized a number of logistics, including securing translators—an important detail since I don’t speak Arabic.

My translator was a Sudanese man named Hatim Fadl, who had studied English at university and translated for and administered programs at the UN. At the time of the war, he was earning his master’s in peace and development and trying to connect humanitarian organizations with victims on the ground.

Hatim is devout. It was Ramadan, and he prayed multiple times during the days he translated for me. He’s also funny. He noted his height and explained that it was hard for him to be inconspicuous while moving from one place to the next after paramilitary forces placed him on their wanted list. 

Hatim translated more than half a dozen conversations with me, including conversations with the clinic’s midwife and several mothers of underfed children in the clinic, and he still spent nearly two hours with me to tell his story—which I share in my piece. He told me he has been offered opportunities to leave his current situation but has declined. "It looks like escaping from the reality," he said. "I cannot leave my people in such a situation just to think about myself and my family."