After spending a total of 24 hours on various buses through Sudan, Safa and her family have reached Port Sudan, where they booked tickets on a boat to Saudi Arabia.
But the boat they were supposed to travel with has instead been used by Saudi authorities for evacuations.
“We hope to be able to go tomorrow instead,” says Safa, who works for the telecom giant Ericsson in Stockholm.
High prices
She and her family have managed to find an apartment to rent in Port Sudan and so far they feel safe in the port city. The shops are open and she can access the internet at the local Unicef office. Outside the office, however, there is no connection and the telephone network is down.
Although the fighting is far away, most of it takes place in the capital Khartoum or in the Darfur province, the war is still palpable in Port Sudan, roughly 80 miles from the capital. Prices rise as more and more people make their way to the city.
— The prices are much higher than normal. The bus tickets cost 300 US dollars per person (equivalent to approximately SEK 3,000) and in Sudan that is a lot. There were people who spent all their savings on bus tickets here and now they have nothing, says Safa.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is trying to help
She and her family first made their way from war-torn Khartoum to Madani, about three hours by bus. From there it was another seven to the next town before they began the nine-hour bus journey to Port Sudan. The busloads have continued to come after that.
— There are more and more people with each passing hour and it is becoming more difficult for them to find somewhere to sleep. The area where the Saudis do their evacuations from is chaotic, people get there and sleep on the street until they can be evacuated, says Safa.
She herself is in contact with the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but as her family are not Swedish citizens, they cannot receive the same help as Safa.
— They (the Foreign Ministry) are trying their best, but they can only help me. They called about a flight going to Jordan from Port Sudan but I can’t leave my family, it’s hard.
The Swedish evacuation was from Khartoum, which Safa had already left, and returning to the fighting and violence was not safe enough. Safa does not believe the war will end anytime soon.
“It’s a power struggle between two people, so I don’t think it will end until one of them runs out of weapons or dies,” she says.