‘My favourite movie is Dune: Part Two’, says 19-year-old Mohammad as he unlocks the padlocked door to his ‘TV club’, housed inside a temporary shelter in the Farchana refugee camp in eastern Chad. He wears a long beige shirt and matching trousers.
Farchana camp lies in a dry, open landscape. Low hills with sparse trees and large rocks rise in the background, and the ground is covered in reddish sand. Temporary shelters stand in straight lines, surrounded by grass fences for privacy. Some residents have extended their shelters or built kitchens from local mud bricks. A horse grazes outside one shelter as women pass by carrying axes on their shoulders, heading to the hills to collect firewood. The temperature is close to 40 degrees Celsius.
Mohammad pulls a generator from his shelter and drags it across the sand. He disappears briefly inside, then returns with extension cords to move it far enough away so the noise will not drown out the television. He checks the diesel level and starts it with a firm pull. Within seconds children appear at the fence. They know the sound means film night. The shelter fills with children sitting on plastic mats in front of TV screens mounted on wooden stands. Two of the four screens work. Mohammad flips through channels until he finds a film where an animated polar bear talks to a young girl. The generator hums in the background as everyone watches quietly.
Mohammad started the TV club after his father bought the televisions at a market in Chad. People come to watch films and sports, paying 30 rials (about five USD) to cover diesel and provide Mohammad a small income. He opens whenever there is demand, for films from Hollywood, Bollywood, China or Türkiye, or for European football. Mohammad’s favourite teams are Barcelona and Real Madrid. ‘We watch all the European games’, he says. ‘My friends and I sometimes pick opposing teams to make it more exciting.’
Outside, Mohammad sits in the shade beneath two satellite dishes mounted on metal stands. His best friend joins him. He is 17, lives alone in a nearby shelter, and walks with a slight limp. ‘I was shot in the leg when we fled Sudan last summer. It still hasn’t healed properly’, he says. His mother was killed during the flight; his father, several years earlier. There is no school in the camp, so the two friends spend most of their time together here. After a while they get up and join the others watching inside.
A Crisis Beyond the Screen
Across eastern Chad stories like Mohammad’s unfold every day. Since conflict escalated in Sudan in April 2023, more than 850,000 refugees have fled into Chad, now hosting the largest Sudanese refugee population in the region. Entire communities have crossed the border in search of safety, many settling in camps like Farchana.
By mid-2025 around half a million people had been relocated to planned sites or integrated into host villages, while tens of thousands continued to arrive each month. Yet one in two refugee families still lacks adequate shelter, and access to clean water remains critically low, averaging about 10 litres per person per day in some areas, far below emergency standards.
Humanitarian agencies have appealed for more than USD 550 million to meet urgent needs for refugees in Chad, including shelter, food, water and sanitation, as the conflict in Sudan shows no sign of easing. BetterShelter, a non-profit organisation that provides shelters for displaced people, designs modular structures in response to conflicts and disasters worldwide – for example, BetterShelter has designed and constructed more than three thousand shelters to protect refugees and displaced Sudanese in Sudan and Chad.
A Moment’s Escape from Refuge
In displacement, design often begins where formal systems end. A generator, a mat and a few screens become a cinema, a gathering place and a moment of escape. Research from UNESCO and UNHCR shows that access to art and culture in times of crisis supports resilience, restores dignity and strengthens community ties. Mohammad’s cinema is a reminder that creativity is as vital to survival as shelter and food.
Across the world people have adapted BetterShelter’s modular structures for far more than four walls and a roof. The structures have served as homes, clinics, classrooms, maternity wards, hair salons and gyms. In one camp a shelter has become a child-friendly space covered with children’s drawings; in another, it has been decorated with pink sheer fabric, heart-shaped pillows and teddy bears for a wedding. Each adaptation reflects both need and imagination: a structure designed for protection becomes a space for life and for love.
This story is part of What Makes a Home, a photo project by BetterShelter. More info at www.whatmakesahome.org.
