"An unexpected present!" Top 5 Page for this destination Sudan Favorite Tip by mafi_moya

Favorite thing: I told you living in Sudan was at times a bizarre experience. For example...

I was doing some work for a daily newspaper called the Khartoum Monitor. An English language paper, it was run and read mainly by southern Sudanese and gained a reputation as being an anti-government opposition paper. Now Sudan has all the usual 'third world' problems in abundance and media freedom is a pretty unknown concept, so most of the editors and some of the writers got used to spending nights in jail, going 'missing' for a week or so, hassled by the security police and so on. Nothing as extreme as electrodes to the genitals or anything like that but still enough that is legally classed as torture. Behind all this were the shadowy 'secret police' and they'd also regularly come to the offices and confiscate the next day's issue and impose large fines - generally making life as difficult as possible for everyone.

Most of the senior staff were Christians but there were also plenty of Muslims involved (both northern and southern) so Islamic festivals were celebrated on a par with Christian ones. It was over the festival of Eid-al-Adha that we were all sat around in the office preparing for the night's party when a boy delivered a parcel to the door. It was from the secret police...

Fondest memory: Highly confused and a little wary we passed the parcel between ourselves, one person half-joking that it was probably a bomb. Eventually we unwrapped it and... there was a box of expensive Belgian chocolates and a handwritten note (the type you might send to your girlfriend) wishing a happy holiday and the best of luck for the future! The chocolates had obviously been brought from abroad - ones that nice weren't available in Khartoum!

The same police service responsible for imprisoning, harrassing and torturing our staff were now sending us chocolates! I tried to search for an ulterior motive but there was none - it was simply a very Sudanese, totally unfathomable gesture. Of course, straight afterwards they got back to arresting people, locking them up and doing their best to put us out of business!

So how were the chocolates? Well after nervously wondering whether they were laced with arsenic we decided to take the risk, and they were delicious! So thankyou very much Mr Secret Policeman - now if you could just stop torturing people maybe we could get on better!