The Waiting Room: Sudan at a Crossroad

A film in the making by Canadian film-maker Alexandra Sicotte-Lévesque, a development worker, journalist and filmmaker. “She worked for almost 3 years in Sudan, in the field of media and development, with the BBC World Service Trust and the United Nations peacekeeping mission.”

At a historical crossroad, Sudan is about to split in two. A referendum on self-determination in early 2011 will likely separate the Muslim North and the Christian South into two countries. Yet the current country’s capital, Khartoum, is a haven of peace and stability where Sudanese from different regions, ethnicity and religion coexist. Youth from diverse backgrounds are all waiting each in their own way to build Sudan. But their country is a ticking bomb. The film follows young people ranging from the ages of 8 to 30 whom all live in Khartoum, and are each confronted with a unique quest.

See the demo of the film, read more about it, and if you like what you see, you can help make it happen by backing it on Kickstarter.

The African World Cup

The rhetoric all over Africa was that it was their World Cup, South Africa would be sharing it with the entire continent. Cafés and restaurants over Khartoum were filled with men watching screens, ranging from Sudanese men clad in their traditional djellaba puffing on narghile, to shirt-wearing Westerners, ummm, also puffing on narghile. With alcohol illegal in the country, what would have been a very pleasant beer was replaced with fruit juices and thick, warm sahleb.

Everywhere was broadcasting the matches. In the small grocers next to my house, the owner was huddled behind the counter, straining to hear the commentary issuing from his radio. Cultural centres screened their countries’ matches, as did the embassies. The folk of Sudan Boombox organised an event on the street in front of the Dutch embassy, a giant screen next to the stage where DJs were spinning hip-hop. People danced in the street, one eye on the screen, the other on the MC — I checked my self, was I still in Sudan? The Dutch ambassador took to stage, inviting everybody back if his team made it through. (They did, but there was no follow-up event.)

I watched games in the dust-floored back room of an Ethiopian restaurant, the rooftop of an Egyptian café, the opulent courtyard of a Sudanese establishment. The cries of one particular Arab commentator become a running joke.

As friends headed over to the most western-leaning café in town for the final, I joined some others in a smoke-filled room of a local shisha joint, as the waiters squeezed through the crowd carrying baskets of hot coals, waves of heat passing through the already baking room. When Spain scored, the men in white behind me were on their feet, dancing. It may not have been their country’s team, but their love of FC Barcelona or Real Madrid took precedence.

The amjad driver who picked us up afterwards had a big grin. He, too, was rooting for Spain, and outside in the dusty streets of the capital, he had sat, hunched over his radio.

Khartoum nights often offered little in the way of activity, but for that month of the tournament, the city felt alive.

Sudan’s N° 1 Tourist Attraction

We wake with sunrise, the land beginning to heat up. This is our first sight of the desert in which we had slept, of the rolling dunes that surround us. Between the crests of two of them rises the pointed tip of a pyramid, and so we pack-up our bags and walk across the sand before it begins to burn beneath our feet, leaving our lone tracks across the dunes. Our blind, nighttime ramble had brought us close.

The pyramids of Begrawiya are a far cry from their Egyptian brothers, and from the crowds that constantly surround them. We arrived and were virtually alone, with only a camel herder for company. Hiking up to the closest of them, we breakfast in its shade, beside these monuments of the Meroitic Pharaohs who flourished from over 500 years BC.

Due to their isolation and the virtual nonexistence of tourism in Sudan, one is left alone—and unhindered—to explore this site, freely entering the antechambers still carved with ancient hieroglyphs. Some attempt has been made to restore parts of the great doorways of some of the more crumbling tombs, but unfortunately they now find themselves covered in a rather crude concrete. It is questionable if this “restoration” has refurbished or simply scarred the two thousand year old edifices.

The scourge of the white man has not left the pyramids untouched, however. In the 17th century an Italian archaeologist plundered the pyramids for gold and other treasures. In the first that he raided, he found treasure in the top of the pyramid itself, thus leading him to lop off the tops of others, all of which proved fruitless as custom has it that the dead pharaohs’ treasure be buried underneath. With many of the artefacts having been sent abroad—to Egypt and Europe—Sudan was left with empty, ravaged tombs.

But for us, the sun was ascending high into the sky, the brutal heat of the desert rising. We walked back out to the road, hoping to flag down a passing bus, plying the route back to Khartoum. In the end, it was a pick-up truck that stopped to offer us a lift. We climbed in the back and sped down the road, the people in vehicles we passed bemused at the sight of three Westerners traveling not in air-conditioned four-by-fours, but huddled in the back of a truck, dropping us in the small market town of Shendi in time for a lunch of fuul and fresh fruit juice. As is the hospitality of the Sudanese, the driver refused any sort of payment.

Asleep in the Nubian Desert

It is night when a bus drops us by the side of the long dark highway stretching from Khartoum to Atbara. To the left are a couple of buildings, to the right, a vast expanse of darkness stretches out - the Nubian Desert. The other passengers of the bus wonder what these three khawaaja are doing, getting out here, miles from nowhere. The conductor assures us that this is the site of the pyramids of Meroë, but with the darkness of the desert and a new moon, all we can see is black.

We picked a direction, east, and walked into the sands, away from the occasional illumination of passing vehicles. We knew not where we were, or where we were headed.

After forty five minutes of walking we find a dune, both sheltering us from the road and providing a mattress for the night. We lay down our bags and prepare supper by the light of head-torches. Silence. All that is visible are the stars, abundant above us. The Milky Way stretches across the sky, and for me, has never been so conspicuous.

And so we sleep on this dune in the cool desert air, sand below and celestial bodies above. Fingers crossed that there are no scorpions.

From the World’s Biggest Prison

It seems almost contradictory, talking to many Eritrean refugees in Khartoum. They all speak with this great love of their country, extolling the beauty of Asmara and claiming that “you will never find another country like Eritrea anywhere in the world”. Yet every one of these tales came from the mouth of someone who has fled their country and was now living as a refugee in Sudan.

So with such fondness for their country, why do they leave? Their love comes from the country, and their countrymen, but not the regime running the country. Eritrea has been described by numerous sources as “the world’s biggest prison”; freedom of expression, and of the press, are non-existent. Last year, Reporters Without Borders placed Eritrea as the world’s worst ranked country in terms of press freedom. Human Rights Watch describe the situation in the country as follows:

There is no freedom of speech, no freedom of movement, no freedom of worship, and much of the adult male and female population is conscripted into indefinite national service…

Human Rights Watch — ”Service for Life” (link)

(To get more of an idea, read the first paragraph on this page of the report.)

This military service is a major factor amongst those I spoke to. Notionally lasting four to five years, it can become never-ending, fuelled by on-going tensions with Ethiopia. I heard a story of a police officer who at the age of 59 was “still defending his country”, along with his eleven children. He wants two or three of his children to return home to help with keeping the house, but is told he should be “proud” that they are serving the nation. When his first child was killed by war, he accepted this fate, attributing it to a sacrifice for his country. The death of his second child was more difficult, and when the third was killed during national service, he came home sick. His remaining eight children are still serving. “Even if you had a twelfth child”, the man was told, “he should be defending his country”.

And so, many flee. Eastern Sudan is home to around 66,000 Eritrean refugees, many of whom live in the crowded camp that is the first port of call for anyone “legally” seeking refugee status here. Those here officially rely on the work of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to process their applications and to place them in other countries. Others take a more clandestine route, passing through Sudan and the Libyan desert before risking their lives on crowded boats crossing the Mediterranean en-route to Europe.

The whole of this journey is fraught with danger. One refugee spoke of crossing the Sahara, the desert that envelops over 90% of Libya, packed into the back of a pick-up truck with very little water and the constant risk of becoming lost or stuck in the desert sand. He now harbours a great fear of going thirsty.

Once through the desert, the sea crossing to southern Italy is no less dangerous; over-crowded boats do not always make land. This option is becoming increasingly less viable, with Italian police patrolling the Libyan coastline, and Gaddafi asking the European Union for $6 billion a year to help keep out a swathe of African migrants destined for Europe.

For those who seek legitimate refugee status through IOM, they face a long wait in Sudan, a country—and culture—which is not always easy to live with. Female refugees I have spoken with describe the discrimination they face in the street, often attracting comments from men who regard them as Ethiopian prostitutes. They don long robes and veils before leaving the house, and talk of feeling “scared” when leaving the house. Add to this is the oppressive climate of Sudan—the heat and the dust—and they reminisce of the pleasant climate of their native Asmara.

But the Sudanese government does welcome these refugees, allowing them to work and live, and never refusing them at the border. It is in Sudan that they apply for refugee status, an identity card and an Eritrean passport. It is from Khartoum that flights leave, bound for Europe, Canada and Australia.

“My husband is in Norway”, one girl said. She is waiting on her application to go and join him, but it is a slow process. In the meantime, she works as a cleaner for an expatriate working in the NGO sector in Khartoum. Before coming to Sudan, she worked as a video editor, and loved her job.

Another refugee has been here for over three years, finding little jobs fixing computers. “Life here is hard”, he says, but he feels that he was “reborn” here. He had served for six years in the military before deciding to leave. He had been arrested with some people from the university, just before they graduated, because police found “some writing” on the wall and blamed them for it. When he eventually escaped to Sudan, he had walked for four days across the desert to the Sudanese border, without food and with little water. When crossing the border he was shot four times by his own border guards. “The Sudanese doctors saved my life” he says. But now when he does work, he still has to fight, or beg, for his salary, because he is an immigrant. “I can’t wait to get out of here, it’s been too long.” His process is in the final stages, and he will soon—he hopes—be relocated to a Western country.

Not every Eritrean in Sudan is here as a refugee, though. One girl I met had completed her military service, was married and had children, and had come here seeking work, sending money home to her family. She says her children are “kept” in Eritrea, unable to travel, a guarantee that she will return. “Of course, I miss them.” She lives in a room measuring four metres by three metres, which she shares with five other people. They cook on a small gas burner, and their only running water is a tap outside.

“Why aren’t they doing anything about it, when they see the President lie?” one refugee laments. Last month, however, eight Eritrean opposition forces had formed a military coalition, a move to enable the deposition of the President and his authoritarian party.

» More photographs and stories of Eritrean refugees in my portfolio.