Sudan I
I was warned. I read information. I prepared myself. Yet, I was still shocked by the level of bureaucracy in Sudan.
If there is one word that sums up the experience of working in Sudan, it’s “Permission.” There’s no point mincing words, Sudan is a police state, and a horrible place to try to do journalism. The government gets in your way at every turn—and often has some interesting explanations why.
The first challenge is getting into the country. Some journalists report that it took months or even years of waiting to get an entry visa. I got lucky and managed to get one after five days of making calls and sending emails. From what I’ve been told, things are opening up a little bit, but it still helps to have connections, and I was lucky to learn that a friend did a summer internship in Sudan, and that got me in the door.
The second step is registering your passport once you get into the country. It took me three days to complete that process, partly because of mistakes I made, but largely because of the nature of Sudanese bureaucracy.
Next, you need to secure a press card. This was actually the easiest step, and it took about 15 minutes to fill out the form and receive the card.
The difficult step is the Darfur travel permit. Actually, difficult isn’t the right word, applying was very easy—I just had to fill out a one page form. Granted, I did have to come back a second time because I only had 4 passport photos with me, and they needed 5. The difficult part was waiting for the permit. The woman in the office told me that it would take three days, although others said it should only take two days.
In my case I filed the application on Sunday morning, and received the permit on Thursday morning—coincidentally the day I was supposed to fly back to the US.
Once I arrived in Darfur, I found out I needed approval from a local office in order to speak with people in the IDP camps. That office required an additional three copies of all of my documents before I could even talk to the administrator who would then decide whether to grant me permission. Ultimately, I ran out of time on the ground before I could complete that process and could only drive around an IDP camp and surreptitiously take pictures.
There’s one other word that describes Sudan, and that is “Generosity.” Really, I should be charitable and say this is the first word to describe Sudan, but the permission issue was so pervasive, corrosive, and offensive, that it’s hard to hold my tongue on that issue.
Anyhow, the Sudanese people are some of the most generous I have ever met—and the paradox of those having little being the mot giving is not lost on me.
I had two “fixers” or assistants in Khartoum. I had not met or spoken with either one prior to my arrival in Khartoum. From the outset they both bent over backwards to accommodate me, and to make sure I was safe and had everything I needed. They bought me meals, took me to their homes, and largely put their lives on hold for a few days to tend to me.
I can’t possibly express my gratitude to them, and I can’t stress enough how lost I would have been without them. I consider both of them friends at this point, and hope someday to be able to repay them. I don’t want to belabor the point, but they went way beyond the level of a normal fixer.
They also demonstrated the best qualities of the Sudanese people—again, not just generosity, but also the value of personal relationships and networks. Of course, everyone knows that it’s not what you know, but who you know. These men had friends in every sector, and it was hard to go for more than a couple of blocks without them shaking hands with someone or saying hello to a friend.
They had the ability to solve problems—and I certainly had a number of them while in Sudan…
