This Sunday, South Sudan will decide whether to split off from the North in a historic referendum that’s part of a 2005 peace deal. All week, Takeaway producer Noel King will be reporting from the southern capital, Juba.
It’s not the first time Noel has been to Sudan. Here is the story of one of her first reporting experiences in the country back in 2005.
The death of Sudanese Vice President John Garang in 2005 was the second story I covered as a radio reporter. My first story was a disaster. I was a rookie and I over-promised. I expected that Condoleezza Rice would give a press conference in Khartoum following meetings with northern officials, and I'd promised my bureau chief a home run. But Secretary Rice was only briefly in the capitol and left without speaking to the press. I committed a radio reporter's cardinal sin: filing without any tape. My bureau chief was kind enough to let it slide.
A little over a week later a friend woke me with a phone call. He was a young, northern man, raised abroad, who had many southern friends. He was a believer — like many of his generation — that Sudan could and would achieve peace someday. He told me that Garang was dead. "A plane crash," he said. "Even if it's an accident, no one will believe that."
I lined up a hasty interview with one of the few Sudanese government officials who was accessible at the time. When I stepped into the alley in front of my house that morning, Khartoum was on edge. In my slightly shabby neighborhood the street was often lined with impoverished southern men who sold batteries, cookies and trinkets and southern women who sold tea. There were no women in the street that day. A southern man stopped me at my gate and said "The Arabs put a bomb on John Garang's plane." He cried openly while I interviewed him.
I finished my interview with the government official a little after 10 a.m. and emerged to the sporadic popping of gunfire and small explosions. I walked home, but something was burning in my alley and a group of policemen told me to turn around.
With nowhere else to go, I wandered downtown Khartoum, interviewing anyone who would talk. The older men were mostly heartbroken; the younger men were furious. I avoided large groups.
When I did see a big group of people, I'd turn down a side street. Twice, I asked people to let me into their homes and they refused — unusual in Khartoum. But I was a foreigner with a microphone and, for that day, the rules had changed.
On the last try, I didn't ask. I slipped past a little girl and climbed to the roof of her building. The whole city looked like it was on fire. In the distance, a man on the ground was violently kicked by several young men. A policeman ordered me off the roof.
I stopped next at a tall office building, where I pleaded with a security guard. "I'm American," I said. He let me pass and set me in an elevator to the top floor, where I told a startled but sympathetic Sudanese businessman that I wanted to call my father. But after he led me to the phone and left me alone in his office, I called my bureau chief in Nairobi instead to tell her I'd be late filing.
As the day wore on, I ran out of places to go. At sunset, my plan failed — I ducked onto a side street only to realize that both ends were blocked by groups of angry, armed young southern men. I crawled through a window into a building that appeared abandoned. An elderly man crouched on the floor. He was Egyptian, a Coptic Christian, polite and formal. We sat on the floor together in the dust, away from the windows. For a long time, we listened to the shooting get closer and then, finally, recede.
Our conversation should have been lost. But I discovered later that I'd accidentally turned on my recorder. Sometimes I listen back to the tape to hear my shaky whisper, "Sudanese are nice people. This will be over soon." I said it again and again. And finally before the tape stopped, "They'll figure it out."
I spent three years in Sudan and nothing ever changed my mind that ordinary Sudanese, overwhelmingly, were exactly that: nice people plagued by political instability and an oppressive government. Like many others, I wondered when they'd figure things out.
Sunday's referendum may offer that opportunity. Southerners appear to have made up their minds to vote for secession. Northern government officials are indicating in public statements that they will accept the results of the vote. The map might change, but the fact remains: north and south Sudan, for better or worse, will always share a border and remain inextricably linked.