Well it looks like I have seen my last days in Darfur. With only two weeks remaining in my contract when Bryan left I was determined to throw myself into work and make sure all the loose ends were tied up and my handover was done well. In true Sudan style my plans are irrelevant when travel paperwork is involved.
To come to Darfur you must get a travel permit that allows you in the region for a certain period of time. I had one that was valid for one month after I returned to Sudan from my break in February. So once this month was up and with no new travel pass from Khartoum I was able to receive a five day extension with strict instructions that I had to leave at the end of these five days. We were still hoping that my travel permit would come through from Khartoum in time. So after I dropped Bryan off at the airport with our last difficult goodbye before we get married, I got a phone call with our Logistics Manager on the other side saying, ‘Angie, you’re hooped, you have to get out of Nyala tomorrow’. We are used to this feeling of being ready to jump and run at any moment but I was not prepared that this was how I would say my final goodbye to Darfur. Without knowing if I would get a travel pass to come back I had to pack up all I own and somehow get mentally prepared to say goodbye.
I don’t think I have processed it all yet and I think denial is rampant right now but as I sit in Khartoum I am pushed and pulled with various emotions and thoughts. The last month has been a stressful one that has pushed me to my limits on many occasions. Good things have happened in that I was able to get a large amount of funding for the education program for the next year that will make a huge impact on the communities that we work in. Just as successes bring a level of stress it is still Darfur and they are still a long way from peace. A community that we have worked in since we came to Darfur has seen a level of fighting this month that I don’t think it has ever seen before. It has always been rather calm and a consistent location that we have been able to work in even when we had to take a helicopter in because the roads were unsafe. But now due to some rather complicated tribal and political disputes everyone has fled the area and a village nearby has been burnt to the ground. It’s difficult to see this happen in an area that we know so well and have done so much work. As everyone seemed to go on R&R at the same time I had the responsibility to make the final calls on which staff to pull into Nyala and which ones can stay. It’s a responsibility that is not fun and I don’t envy our staff that have to do it on a regular basis.
So in the chaos of pulling staff from the field and saying goodbye to Bryan, I got the news that I have to leave Nyala in less than 24hrs. It’s a strange process to say goodbye to a place that has brought such strong emotions of success, frustration, love and hate for the last two years of my life. I’m not sure what the healthy and best way to do that is, however I can guarantee you that it’s not packing and leaving in 24 hrs. One thing that I can say has been consistent about Darfur is that it has pushed me to my limits and somehow I have been able to get through and learn lessons that would not have been learnt any other way. So I have said goodbye with amazing things ahead of me and am eager to try and walk away from Darfur into the new and wonderful things that are waiting for me.
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