As Mary Jeshi and her family fled violence and sought shelter at an UNMISS base in Juba in mid-December, it seemed inevitable to her that life as she knew it would change. She just had no idea how much.

“My work was to look after my family and home,” says Ms. Jeshi, a former housewife from Munuki, a Juba suburb. Her husband, a businessman, was the sole breadwinner in his household.

As she and her older sons began to put up a make-shift tent, she hoped her husband would join them soon. He didn’t. Almost three months later, his whereabouts are still unknown. In a matter of hours, Ms. Jeshi had become a displaced, single mother of eight, learning to cope with challenges she’d never had to think of before, challenges that many other women were also facing.

During her visit to the UNMISS base last month, they told UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka about leaving their homes and belongings behind and struggling to care for their children.

“They told me about the lack of food, water and medication … disease and death,” said Ms. Mlambo-Ngucka. “They told me about their suffering, the violence they endured, the children and husbands they had lost or been separated from … and about their yearning for peace for South Sudan.

Despite the challenges, giving up was not an option for Ms. Jeshi and many other women in similar situations.

“I realized that I could not sit around and wait for my husband,” she said. “My children’s needs could not wait. I had to do something.”

As she settled in the protection of civilians’ (PoC) site, she identified her niche. People were receiving food aid, but there was need for more variety, as well as people willing and able to buy food. As other women started to go out to markets to get different foodstuffs for sale, she joined them.

Soon, her little make-shift restaurant was up and running, one of many small eateries that line the “business street” of the PoC site. Women cook fresh and smoked fish, kisra (a local spongy flatbread), beef, beans and greens, while others sell foodstuffs in raw form. Every few metres, a women is roasting coffee beans before pounding them to brew fresh coffee for customers.

Business is brisk at Ms. Jeshi’s four-seater stall, which specializes in “akop” (akin to steamed rice) with greens and large chunks of cow foot soup cooked in a huge pan. Before midday, customers are already streaming in. As one group finishes a meal and pays up, another four are waiting. On a good day she makes up to 500 South Sudanese pounds (about $125), she said.

“There are challenges of course,” said Mary Mario, a 42-year old woman whose stall sells bread rolls stuffed with fried beans and fried pasta. “You get people who eat and then say they have no money. You make losses.”

Yet they persevere. Every day, well before daybreak, the women in the camp wake up. Together, they stand in a circle, and pray for peace. Then they start their day’s work.

Many go out to the market, in spite of any fears they harbor about doing so. Others clean the pathways. A driver is the only man among the crew on the garbage truck that collects rubbish in the PoC site – the rest are women, climbing and hauling large bags of refuse. They carry children to clinics, wash clothes, light fires to cook food.

Occasionally, a fight breaks out at a water point, but that quickly gets resolved. Women representatives attend meetings with UNMISS and other agencies to discuss their problems and the role they can play to solve them.

As the sun sets, they all get together again to pray. After that, the women in Ms. Jeshi’s group meet and pay a small amount from their day’s income into an emergency fund they set up.

“We have all learned that we need to support each other,” she said. “The money we collect is used for contributing to anyone in our group with a problem that she cannot solve on her own.”

Harrowing testimonies and scarred hearts abound in the PoC area and, given the choice, the women would go back to their old lives, as difficult as those might have been too.

“There is nothing pleasing about being here,” coffee-seller Tereza Wilson said curtly as she carried a pot of roasted beans off a smoking fire.

Yet a gallery of pictures of these ordinary South Sudanese women going through what has now become their typical day would show great acts of courage, resilience and determination in the hardest of times.