This is the script of this morning’s Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, following my return from a visit to Sudan.
Sudan is a dangerous place right now and all the advice is: don’t go there. Conflicts between the army and the paramilitary rebels (the RSF) have largely escaped the world’s attention, but nearly 11 million people are displaced, many millions more face an imminent famine, and unimaginable genocidal violence is taking place daily. So, why go?
I remember many years ago getting cold feet about taking a group to Zimbabwe during an economic and political crisis there only to have the bishop say to me: “Don’t wait until everything is OK before visiting us; come when it is tough and then we know you love us.” I’ve never forgotten that. So, after much debate, I went to Sudan anyway – with my colleague the Bishop of Bradford – and we got back a couple of weeks ago.
It’s one thing to watch or listen to something on the news, but something else entirely to see it with your own eyes.
Essentially, we went to visit our sisters and brothers in the Episcopal Church of Sudan. Although Port Sudan itself is safe, we visited camps for displaced people and refugees, listening to stories of loss at every level: family, land, home, possessions, jobs, hopes. 2,000 people in a single camp, many of them children living in fear or uncertainty and with little food or effective sanitation.
We also listened to stories of terrible violence. One pastor told how his home had been raided in Khartoum and everything destroyed or stolen. After his fourth beating by RSF soldiers, he was asked how he wanted to die. It was his Muslim neighbor who saved and gave him refuge until he could escape and make his way to Port Sudan.
Tomorrow is World Refugee Day. I have no idea who designates these things, but it has a different resonance when you have been sitting in a tent and listening to real stories of real people. People we met had no choice but to flee – and it wasn’t an economic choice. The economic choices lie in the hands of those countries which arm mercenary militias and fund the indiscriminate violence inflicted on innocent people. Everyone knows that stopping the violence is the precursor to any restoration of hope and security for these people.
I am driven by a faith that is incarnational – it is embodied, physical, material. No privatised airy-fairy ‘spirituality’ here. Speaking with people on Zoom or WhatsApp is better than nothing. But, it’s a poor substitute for human touch, physical embrace, face-to-face conversation. Our friends in Sudan, bereft of stuff and optimism, know they are loved … and are drawn by a hope that knows it is not the violent oppressors who will inherit the earth in the end. We stand with them.
