As far as we know, there are no more Finns in Sudan. Ekhlas Osman fled with his 77-year-old mother through terrifying Khartoum.
Ekhlas Osman was in a stalemate. The Finnish state was ready to evacuate him from Sudan, but at the same time he should have left his sick mother alone in the middle of the fighting.
Osman is a Finnish citizen, but his mother Eltouma Khidir No. Therefore, this was not among those evacuated from Sudan.
– I said I wouldn’t go. I am my mother’s only child and I could not have left her alone, Osman told Radio Suomen Päivä on Monday.
A 77-year-old mother had a hip fracture and a cerebral infarction a few months ago. Eklas Osman quit his nursing job in Finland and went to take care of his mother in Sudan.
In the end, the Finnish government promised to take the 77-year-old mother on board the bus going to Ethiopia.
– However, the journey would have taken 10–12 hours, and my mother would not have been able to sit for such a long distance.
The children could not contact their mother and grandmother
In recent weeks, the Sudanese army and the rival RFS have been fighting for power. The situation in my mother’s home village near Khartoum was dire. Paramilitary forces had struck there as well. So we had to escape.
The situation was scary for the rest of the family living in Finland. Osman’s daughter Wiam Elfadi told Radio Suomen Päivä that it was several days before he could get in touch with his mother and grandmother.
– When we finally got in touch, the mother said that the RFS had closed the network.
Ekhlas Osman began to investigate the possibility of getting an ambulance ride from Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, to Cairo. In Finland, Osman’s daughter Wiam Elfadi and her siblings got a permit for a small collection and collected 6,500 euros in a day for an ambulance.
Checkpoints were scary from the beginning
The difficult four-day journey towards Cairo began.
– The beginning was terrible and scary. When we passed through the capital, the situation was bad. There were checkpoints every couple of hundred meters and aggressive soldiers in front, says Ekhlas Osman.
The soldiers rummaged through the bags and even looked under the mother’s pillow and blanket. However, Osman had been clever and hid the money and the phone in his mother’s lap.
Osman says that the atmosphere in Sudan is scary. Nobody dares to move anywhere.
– The streets are very quiet and important houses have been demolished. If the hospital has not been bombed, there are no doctors there because no one dares to go there.
Ekhlas Osman described the situation in Sudan to already at the end of April. In the article, in addition to the battles, he talks about electricity and water shortages, among other things.
Osman and Khidir arrived in Cairo last week. Now they are trying to get Khidiri a residence permit or a visa to Finland.
There were a total of about 15 Finns in Sudan when the fighting started. Now they have been evacuated to neighboring countries.