“First I sent my wife and my daughter to Sudan. I knew that in that area so many girls were getting raped and a lot of people left dying on the way. It’s dreadful.” says Meron
“I was with my child, we walked. There were all kinds of animals, hyenas, snakes. I was expecting it but having a child with me made it more difficult and stressful. Later, they brought me a donkey. I kept falling and getting up again, but the journey went on.” Says Netsenet
The journey was exhausting, and she was constantly being harassed by some of the smugglers. Finally, she reached Khartoum and stayed with some relatives, waiting for Meron to follow her. Meron planned his journey together with a friend of Natsenet’s They left together, pretending to be a married couple. They crossed the border on foot after having walked 20 km and then continued by car.
“We came to a big river and there was a rope tied from a tree to another tree on the other side. Just before we reached that place, we saw a pickup truck coming toward us. The smugglers said those were from the Rashaida (bandits). We started to run. We had to cross the river very fast so the bandits wouldn’t catch us.”
In Hajar, which is a smugglers’ holding camp in Sudan, Meron met people who had been kept there for months because they could not afford to pay the smugglers’ fee. It was a sad situation and Meron left them all the money and food he could before he continued to Khartoum. From Khartoum, Natsenet and Meron headed towards Egypt. .
“To reach the Egyptian border we had to cross a mountain. It’s very hard. So many people have fallen from that mountain. You can’t even look down from the top and it’s very slippery.” Says Meron
They finally arrived in Egypt and were taken by car to Aswan. There they were kept waiting because the money they had paid for the journey had not yet reached the smugglers. They had to wait for 10 days before they could proceed to Cairo.
“We were telling them to let us go as we already had paid, but they would tell us to wait, the money didn’t arrive yet. Like this, we stayed there for 10 days. The food and drink we’d finished, we starved. Whenever we ask for food they wouldn’t care. It was dreadful. 10 days later they told us the money was received and that we could leave.” Says Natsenet
Today, Natsenet says that this was a journey she would not wish even upon her worst enemy. She says people should learn from her experience and not go travelling with smugglers.
