Sudan 11/10/07
My fixer picks me up (he has secured a rental car for me) at the hotel to take me to the mall to the Western Union office to get my cash. I’m feeling reasonably well rested, though the cold shower wasn’t what I was hoping for—the funky wall-mounted hot-water heater in the showed didn’t work, so I had to make due with cold water that smelled worse than I did before I got into the shower. Anyhow, we get to the mall and retrieve my cash without incident. I’m feeling better now—nothing like the security of having a few dollars in your pocket. We make our way to downtown Sudan where the traffic rivals that of anyplace I’ve been. Part of the reason the traffic is so extreme is the fact that pedestrians here make pedestrians in Boston look like Europeans. If that’s too obtuse, the point is that there are no crosswalks to speak of, and people wander in and out of traffic almost as if cars didn’t exist. Clearly, not enough people have been run over in order for the public to develop a healthy respect for cars—either that or people fire that if enough people are walking around in the streets, then might makes right and drivers have to live with it. We arrive at the passport registration office. My fixer hands someone his ID and my passport. The guy looks at us and shakes his head. Apparently he’s unwilling to accept my fixer’s ID as my sponsor for registration. We walk out and my fixer starts making calls to other people looking for someone else who can come with an ID and register my passport. He tells me that someone will meet us at Ozone. We are met by my fixer’s friend who drives me back downtown to the passport office, but they are closed until 2, so we drive to the bank of the Blue Nile and walk around. We head back to the passport office only to be told that we have to come back tomorrow for some reason. So, we decide to try the next level of bureaucracy—the Ministry of Information where I am to apply for my press card and travel permit. We find the office and ask for the paperwork. The woman sits me down to fill out the forms and tells me that the travel permit can’t be processed today because the person who handles it left at 2pm—it is now a little after 2:30. Also, she tells me I need to submit 5 passport photos, and of course I only have 4 with me, so I have to come back tomorrow anyhow. The good news is that as I am moping about this detail, someone walks into the office and hands me my press card/work permit. I have actually accomplished something, and I can now legally interview people. Of course I am told that I have to submit requests to speak with any government officials through her office. My second fixer and I head off to a market in town so I can get the worst (both in terms of my pose, and the photo quality) passport pictures of me ever taken. From there we head back to my hotel so I can make some calls—including a call to my girlfriend to send me some more money since the office is closed back in DC. After completing that business, fixer #1 drives me to the office of Ahmed Badawi-Malik, a British educated Sudanese public relations expert who consults for the government. We speak on the record at length about Sudan, the government, the history of the conflicts in the country, the UN mission and a number other topics relating to Sudan, the US, and the UN. He's good at what he does, but he's facing an uphill battle. Putting an anti-negative (it's too much to say "positive") spin on the Sudanese government is a tough case. I won't judge either way, but I'll just say that my first-hand impressions, observations, and conversations with people don't tend to support hi arguments...
