Surviving Sudan
ASH Ramraj is grateful to be home in Durban.
The Morningside resident had a harrowing experience as he and other South Africans fled war-torn Sudan.
Ramraj is a business development manager for a car company in Sudan and arrived in the country on March 11. About a month later, fighting broke out between two military factions battling for control of the North African country.
As the fighting raged on and escalated, Ramraj feared for his safety.
“It was scary and nerve-racking. From inside my home, I could hear the explosions as well as the fighters outside.
“I was lucky to have friends, other expats and colleagues living in my building. It made it somewhat easy for us to communicate, especially when it came to giving each other safety tips.
“We quickly started running out of supplies like food and water. We also had no electricity for most of the day. We used a generator but only for two hours in the morning to charge our phones and to have hot water. In the evening we used it for lights.”
With little support from the South African government, Ramraj reached out on day six of the fighting to Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, founder of Gift of the Givers.
“Dr Sooliman agreed to help us. He emotionally supported us. I was his key person in Sudan. I provided input on what was happening and how he could help. He was brilliant and right until we reached South Africa, he kept in contact with us.”
Ramraj said by day eight of the fighting he realised they needed to get out.
“We lived in Khartoum, about 2km away from the palace where most of the fighting was taking place. I found that other countries were hiring buses to get to safety and so we did the same.”
The South African government was supposed to pay for the buses, but according to Ramraj, the South African Embassy failed to make payment.
“The Kenyans had also arranged for a bus but they too did not make payment on time. The buses were expensive because of the situation.
“I arranged with the bus company the Kenyans had booked to use their buses. They wanted $24 000 per bus (about R450 000). The South African government later paid for two buses while Gift of the Givers paid for one,” said Ramraj.
But securing the buses was just the start. They still had to navigate poor roads and the fighting to get to safety.
“We travelled through the night in a bus that was not in particularly good condition, on roads that were not the best. Throughout the journey we heard explosions in the distance. We had no food, no water and no order.
“The South African embassy sent a woman to be our spokesperson, but in Muslim countries no one listens to or respects a woman as a figure of authority. So it put us in a difficult position, because no one wanted to help us. We waited for hours until eventually at 1.35am, some were given border passes to enter Egypt.
Ramraj was not one of them.
“I was alone as I waited for approval. I had told my fellow South Africans to leave without me because there were mothers with children on board and it was not fair that everyone had to wait for me. I did not panic. I prepared myself emotionally for what I knew was a long journey ahead.
“I got my pass at 2.45am. I did not know where I was and where I was going, but eventually I found a bus that was willing to take me on the four-hour ride to Aswan, Egypt, as long as I paid in dollars.
“On the bus, we helped each other with water. I had to leave all my belongings behind, I had no clothes. The only thing I took was my laptop bag for work. The drive was horrible with bombs going off in the distance.
“While on that bus, I did not know where in Aswan I needed to go, until I received a pin to a hotel. I reached the hotel on Wednesday evening.”
Ramraj and other South Africans left
Aswan on a C130 South African Air Force plane to Nairobi, Kenya, on Saturday. From Nairobi, they flew on a commercial flight to Johannesburg, where he caught a flight to Durban. He reached home on Sunday at around midday.
From his home in Durban, he said the South African government should have been more organised.
“We were not equipped for this. Our ambassador did not speak the language and the government did not communicate effectively with us. They did not know where the South Africans were and they had nobody that could help us.
“Eventually, we used a WhatsApp chat group to find each other.
“We were scared. It was hell, but I told myself that I would not die there. It was that determination to live that allowed us to create a plan to get out.
“The whole time I was there, I felt like I was in a movie. It did not feel real. I watched the Ukrainian war on TV but to experience it in reality was surreal.
“I saw dead bodies lying on the road and collapsed buildings.
“I will never forget the image of a once beautiful building crumbled, or how military tanks were on the streets. But the worst was seeing children suffer and some die.
“I have children of my own and that broke my heart and left me distressed.”
Ramraj said he was glad he was home but he would never forget the experience.
“The South African government has offered us counselling for our trauma, which is definitely needed. It was a war zone and a memory I will never forget, it’s something I require counselling to help forget.
“It’s an amazing feeling to be back home with my wife and kids.
“I finally got to eat, not only my wife’s cooking, but just food in general.”
Responding to Ramraj’s comments about buses not being paid for initially, Clayson Monyela, spokesman for the Department of International Relations and Co-operation, asked: “Why would anybody make this an issue when you have been evacuated from a war zone?
“What is the yardstick to determine whether a payment was slow or fast in an environment where these companies that we were getting buses from were overwhelmed with requests and buses were not readily available?
“And we did secure the buses. “Why would this be an issue for him in the context of a country that is at war?
“We were not procuring buses to send people on holiday, we were procuring buses to get them out of a war situation so that we help to evacuate them and we get them home safely and his gripe is the pace?”
He said the majority of the people who had returned home were grateful.
“They understood how difficult it was to pull off this operation, especially in the context where bigger and richer Western countries are still struggling to do what we did as a country, where we brought our people home.
“So, he is a lone voice in criticising a very successful operation to bring our people home safely and the question has to be asked why is he doing this?”